Long Overdue
I have to admit, Easter kind of puts my mood in a funk. I dont really know why. I've been trying to figure it out today and thinking about it only made my mood funkier. I distracted myself with a genealogy project this morning and between looking at tiny records and my new blood pressure medicine, I ended up feeling a little tired. I also lost track of time and didn't get to spend as much time on my hair as it needed so I felt self-conscious at my in-laws which made me quieter and I felt socially awkward. I was happy to get home. My mother-in-law is such a great cook/Baker and we got a bunch of goodies to bring home. After being already full/bloated I found myself eating another frosted jelly bean cupcake when we got home. My stomach and brain felt so bad after all that. Plus, yesterday I made a pan of my grandmother's blueberry crumble cake, a recipe I used to help her make when I was a child, and I just recently received the recipe and thought Easter was the perfect time to make it, to make her feel closer. It has nearly 2 cups of sugar, white flour, butter and shortening...anything but a healthy recipe. That buttery crumble on top of the blueberry pie filling and coffee cake smelled like a dream, but sadly I couldn't taste much of anything. Between last night and this morning I ate 5 pieces, hoping I could taste the memory of my grandmother. What's wrong with my tastebuds? Anyway, all the indulgence this weekend made me feel bad psychologically and today, physically. I'm not used to being so over-full anymore. It probably doesn't help that I'm eating all those extra carbs and salt at the same time as I got off the diuretic.
So, one of the things I wanted to do this weekend was to find some screen shots I took from an online article. At the time I snapped these, it was an article Google had recommended and it claimed to be free-to-view for a limited time. The tag line was something like 'I designed my own version of Weight Watchers and lost 100 pounds'. I would give credit to the person who was teaching this stuff if I had taken a screen shot of it but sadly I did not. I believe he is a personal trainer or nutrition coach and if I remember correctly he was selling his program. I took a fraction of the information away but after looking at the info again today I think I have all the most crucial stuff. Looking at it put me in a better mindset and got me very interested in tracking my food to see where I am at. So now I will share what I learned from his article.
In order to lose weight, you have to create a calorie deficit. First you have to know how many calories per day will maintain your current weight. He calls the TDEE which I think stands for Total Daily Energy Efficiency ??? At any rate to figure this out, you take your current weight and multiply by one of the 3 following multipliers: if you are fairly inactive (2 or less actual workouts per week) multiply by 10. If you are moderately active (3-4 good workouts per week) multiply by 15. If you are very active (workout pretty much every day) multiply by 20. I will use my own numbers as an example
185 X 10= 1850 calories. That means, if I est more than 1850 calories a day, I will gain weight. If I eat exactly 1850 calories a day I will stay at 185 pounds and if I eat less than 1850 calories a day I will lose weight.
Next I need to figure out how many calories to cut. The article says most people have success with a 20-30% calorie deficit. I decided to shoot in the middle for a 25% deficit. To calculate for a 25% deficit, I multiply my calories by .75 (the difference between 100 percent and 25 percent)
Ex: 1850 X .75=1387.5, which I will round down to 1387. So in order to lose weight, I should aim to take in about 1387 calories. It now makes sense why my interim doctor told me to go on a 1400 calorie a day diet.
Now, if you really want to customize (and I kind of do) here's the way he recommends you split those calories up. First off, 1 gram of protein has 4 calories, 1 gram of carbs also has 4 calories, and 1 gram of fat has 9 calories.
He recommends you take in about a gram of protein for each pound you weigh. There is dispute about ratios men vs women should intake so do your research and customize it for your taste. For ease of showing how to calculate this, I will stick to 1 gram/pound of body weight.
So my weight of 185 means I should aim for 185 grams of protein per day. 185 g of protein X 4 (the number of calories in each gram of protein) =740 calories that should come from protein each day.
Next for fats, the author recommends keeping your fat consumption to 20-30% of your total calories. Since I have high cholesterol I am going to calculate it on the low end. Use you deficit calories to calculate. 1387 X .20 = 277 calories from fat. To figure out how many grams that would be, divide by 9 (since there are 9 calories per gram) 277÷9= 30.8g of fat per day.
Carbs will be the remaining calories. I have allocated 740 calories to protein and 277 calories to fat which adds up to 1017 calories. My calorie allowance of 1387-1017 leaves me with 370 calories for carbs. Dividing by 4 (the number of calories in 1 g of carbs) equals 92.5g of carbs per day.
I honestly dont know where any of my numbers fall and with this system of calculating I'm pretty interested, if not even excited, to find out. The nice thing about knowing these formulas is that you can tweak things to fit your needs. If you aren't losing you can rework the numbers with a 30% deficit, or if you are drained because you went from a couch potato to a very active person you can recalculate how many calories you need to take in to keep things functioning properly. I personally dont know if someone inactive like me needs almost 200 g of protein a day so I may alter that number but maybe I already get that much and I just have no idea that I get that. It's a lot for the liver to process I think, but i need to do more research.
So along with tracking I am considering getting up early to work out. I will try it this week and see how it feels. I want to make my bloodwork sparkle next year. I also want to avoid having more bad feelings like I did this weekend, caused by eating sugary stuff my body didn't need and put up a protest against.
So this feels like a refresh and mentally and physically I think it's long overdue.
So, one of the things I wanted to do this weekend was to find some screen shots I took from an online article. At the time I snapped these, it was an article Google had recommended and it claimed to be free-to-view for a limited time. The tag line was something like 'I designed my own version of Weight Watchers and lost 100 pounds'. I would give credit to the person who was teaching this stuff if I had taken a screen shot of it but sadly I did not. I believe he is a personal trainer or nutrition coach and if I remember correctly he was selling his program. I took a fraction of the information away but after looking at the info again today I think I have all the most crucial stuff. Looking at it put me in a better mindset and got me very interested in tracking my food to see where I am at. So now I will share what I learned from his article.
In order to lose weight, you have to create a calorie deficit. First you have to know how many calories per day will maintain your current weight. He calls the TDEE which I think stands for Total Daily Energy Efficiency ??? At any rate to figure this out, you take your current weight and multiply by one of the 3 following multipliers: if you are fairly inactive (2 or less actual workouts per week) multiply by 10. If you are moderately active (3-4 good workouts per week) multiply by 15. If you are very active (workout pretty much every day) multiply by 20. I will use my own numbers as an example
185 X 10= 1850 calories. That means, if I est more than 1850 calories a day, I will gain weight. If I eat exactly 1850 calories a day I will stay at 185 pounds and if I eat less than 1850 calories a day I will lose weight.
Next I need to figure out how many calories to cut. The article says most people have success with a 20-30% calorie deficit. I decided to shoot in the middle for a 25% deficit. To calculate for a 25% deficit, I multiply my calories by .75 (the difference between 100 percent and 25 percent)
Ex: 1850 X .75=1387.5, which I will round down to 1387. So in order to lose weight, I should aim to take in about 1387 calories. It now makes sense why my interim doctor told me to go on a 1400 calorie a day diet.
Now, if you really want to customize (and I kind of do) here's the way he recommends you split those calories up. First off, 1 gram of protein has 4 calories, 1 gram of carbs also has 4 calories, and 1 gram of fat has 9 calories.
He recommends you take in about a gram of protein for each pound you weigh. There is dispute about ratios men vs women should intake so do your research and customize it for your taste. For ease of showing how to calculate this, I will stick to 1 gram/pound of body weight.
So my weight of 185 means I should aim for 185 grams of protein per day. 185 g of protein X 4 (the number of calories in each gram of protein) =740 calories that should come from protein each day.
Next for fats, the author recommends keeping your fat consumption to 20-30% of your total calories. Since I have high cholesterol I am going to calculate it on the low end. Use you deficit calories to calculate. 1387 X .20 = 277 calories from fat. To figure out how many grams that would be, divide by 9 (since there are 9 calories per gram) 277÷9= 30.8g of fat per day.
Carbs will be the remaining calories. I have allocated 740 calories to protein and 277 calories to fat which adds up to 1017 calories. My calorie allowance of 1387-1017 leaves me with 370 calories for carbs. Dividing by 4 (the number of calories in 1 g of carbs) equals 92.5g of carbs per day.
I honestly dont know where any of my numbers fall and with this system of calculating I'm pretty interested, if not even excited, to find out. The nice thing about knowing these formulas is that you can tweak things to fit your needs. If you aren't losing you can rework the numbers with a 30% deficit, or if you are drained because you went from a couch potato to a very active person you can recalculate how many calories you need to take in to keep things functioning properly. I personally dont know if someone inactive like me needs almost 200 g of protein a day so I may alter that number but maybe I already get that much and I just have no idea that I get that. It's a lot for the liver to process I think, but i need to do more research.
So along with tracking I am considering getting up early to work out. I will try it this week and see how it feels. I want to make my bloodwork sparkle next year. I also want to avoid having more bad feelings like I did this weekend, caused by eating sugary stuff my body didn't need and put up a protest against.
So this feels like a refresh and mentally and physically I think it's long overdue.
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