Dr. Kallie Health and Fitness Series Make it Simple Creating a lifestyle change and sticking with it MUST be made simple. Drastic changes are proven to unsuccessful for years upon years. Last week I brought the Macro information to you and pushed the importance of calorie deficit. Above is a great picture that speaks volumes for describing "calorie deficit". Once you do the math and figure out your baseline for calories, then follow that up with macro and calorie counting you start to make the simple connections of how to lose weight if that is your goal. I hope many of the readers have experimented with this already, and found the WOW factor. I have yet to meet someone that truly counts their calories and isn't a little shocked with the amount of calories they consume in a day. We are bombarded with hidden calories everywhere and it's incredibly easy to pass right on by your calorie cutoff. I would like to give you a little bit of perspective that will hopefully go a long way. These are everyday examples that I think a lot of you will relate to or know of someone almost instantly. One of my favorite examples is the "runner". There are so many "runners" that try so hard to lose weight and don't even shift the scale a single ounce. There are two huge reasons for this: they are still eating more calories then they are burning, and secondly, their body is not being challenged by the same ol' runs every day. I'll touch on this a lot more when we dive into workouts, but knowledge that our bodies are incredibly intelligent and will QUICKLY become adapted to repetitive workouts is a major key. We have the most intelligent systems on the planet. Our bodies learn quickly to try and become the most energy efficient they can be in the shortest amount of time. If you start running a mile today, that mile becomes easier to run a week from today, even more in a month, etc. When you get into the physiology of it all, our bodies learn to transport nutrients faster to the needed areas of our bodies to get the energy delivered. After a few weeks +, our heart isn't as stressed and works with more ease with its conditioning, which also decreased the amount of energy needed. There is not a significant decrease in energy needed, so we have to go back to the first point. Too many calories are still being consumed to not create a deficit. There is this false idea in many peoples minds that, "omg, I just ran 3 miles, I need to refuel and EAT." Yes, you do need to eat, obviously, but what and how much are you eating? The mentality of I can eat whatever I want because I ran or lifted weights hard, maybe did some crossfit, or all of it, is the WRONG mentality. The following picture is one of my favorites. How to view food: I would love to see this plastered up everywhere you can buy food. Please read it daily as you begin this process of a lifestyle change. How often have you given up on an entire day because you didn't have the willpower to stop eating the cookies? Or maybe you feel like you just can't make any changes because you don't deserve to, so you'll just keep eating out of control and constantly convince yourself that you are happy with the way you are right now. Are you happy when climbing a flight of stairs makes you winded? I didn't think so, and nor should you be. You need to make the realization that food is not for pure comfort, a reward, or a punishment. Food does not need to control your life. Food is a necessary tool to our survival, but like being irresponsible with drugs, alcohol, sex, whatever, it can literally be lethally dangerous. One of the coolest things I have learned about my own body is it's own response to eating healthier and working out. When you deliberately put workouts into your day, you start to make healthier choices for meals and snacks. After cleansing out the unhealthy foods from your diet and sticking to your workout plans, you'll easily notice your cravings starting to shift. The body starts to crave good fuels, you sleep better, your energy levels change increase. The subconscious connections of knowing that you need to stay below a certain amount of calories, plus your knowledge of healthy calories all starts to tie together. When you are coming down from your workout "high" and start to feel REALLY hungry, 4 ounces of grilled chicken breast and huge bundles of fresh veggies to fill your tummy sounds a whole lot better than a candy bar. The pictures above represent vastly different portions of food. One key is learning to control portions and still living life, making this less drastic and able to be a lifestyle, you can still have treats! You just can't have them all day and every day. I'll be the first to admit, I LOVE donuts, I love caramel sticky rolls, I love chocolate, I don't eat these things regularly. Except maybe chocolate, but I keep my chocolate portion tiny so I can still enjoy it without over indulging. If I decide that I am going out for breakfast and going to have a caramel roll, then I know that I need to eat super clean and small the rest of the day, plus throw in a pretty good workout. I don't just throw in the towel for the day and say to heck with it all today. Keep things simple with the knowledge that you are gaining and know that this is a lifestyle not a crash diet. Understanding the deficit. If you don't take the time to do the math for needed caloric intake you are going to struggle with the entire process. If you don't take the time to HONESTLY analyze what you eat in a day per your macros, you are going to struggle with the entire process. A little perspective here: 1 pound of fat is 3500 calories. If you simply ate 10 (TEN) extra calories every day for a year, you would put on a pound a year of fat. Over the course of 10 years, you have now gained 10 pounds. Maybe not significant to you, but lets look more into this math. One candy bar a day is roughly 215 calories. One candy bar a day for one month, and BOOM-that's 2 extra pounds of body fat. (3500 / 215 = 16 candy bars or one candy bar a day for 16 days) Same idea with soda, beer and other junk foods. Those calories add up quickly and get overlooked so easily. Those small snickers bars that you grab after lunch do add up over time and a shorty amount of time at that. It doesn't always have to be junk food either. Here's where that runner come back in that can't lose weight even though he/she eats healthy. The extra cheese stick, extra handful of healthy walnuts, extra banana etc, they can all still put you over your needed deficit number. I'm not going to tell you this will be straight out of the gate easy for anyone, it's a process. You might be breaking lifelong habits, it will be hard, but I do promise you this...it gets easier, you become more aware, you'll feel better, and above all is feeling happy/proud of yourself. This is not an intended battle or imprisonment. This is a step toward feeling better about yourself. Being able to keep up with friends and family on adventures like bike rides, swimming at the beach, running for a fun cause with a group. Keeping it Simple Truth! How many of you recognize this all to well. In the 1990 it was all about FAT being the main reason for weight gain and obesity. Then along came the Atkins era and carbs with the cause of all weight problems. This decade we are focused on sugar being the closest thing to a heroin addiction and making us all obese. Truth be told, fats, carbs, sugar, they aren't solely to blame. You can eat a package of gummy worms as your single meal for the day and lose weight if its below the calories you need. Now do I promote this, heck NO! I promote wholesome healthy foods that refuel us the way we are intended to use those fuels. A fun CHALLENGE (and I wholeheartedly mean challenge) is to eat only whole foods for a week straight. You will be VERY surprised how easily processed foods have slipped into our daily lives. Ultimately, eating only whole foods and staying in a caloric deficit is the picture-perfect method. Likely the hardest, but also the most beneficial. I'm not going to preach it at this moment, because right now our goal is to make attainable lifestyle changes, and to keep this simple. Next week I plan on discussing Intermittent Fasting. This is an incredible tool to use not just for weight-loss, but also for your mindset. The key to next week is to learn that it is okay to feel hungry. Let yourself get hungry by not eating around the clock. I promise you that feeling hungry won't hurt you.
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Dr. Kallie Health and Fitness Series If you have researched health, fitness, dieting, etc at all in the past couple of years, surely you have stumbled upon IIFYM. If you were like me, I was like, "what in the heck is IIFYM?" This little acronym is pretty darn helpful and makes a whole lot of sense. So what are Macros exactly? Macros is short for macronutrient. There are 4 top macro nutrients, Carbohydrates, Proteins, Fat, and Alcohol. Alcohol is not one typically listed if you look up Macronutients, but you need to know alcohol in order to figure out your caloric needs. The human body NEEDS 3 nutrients to function: fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Yes you can try to get technical and scientific on me by arguing that you don't NEED carbohydrates or fat to survive because of gluconeogenesis, glycogenolysis, etc, but I won't entertain your argument on here for the sake of others. Anyway, back to the basics... Protein Proteins are absolutely essential to the human body. They are literally the main building blocks to our cells/tissues and a large source of energy. The key to proteins is that they are the only way our bodies can get amino acids. There 9 amino acids that we need to supply our bodies with in order to survive: phenylalanine, valine, threonine, typtophan, methionine, leucine, iosleucine, lysine, and histidine. One big point I would like to make is not ALL protein needs to come from an animal source. Along with meat, dairy, fish, and eggs, there are protein sources in plants as well. Vegans acquire their protein by means of grains, legumes, and nuts. Proteins can be found in all cells of the body, especially muscle tissue. Not only is protein used for growth and maintenance, but also blood cell formation, cellular repair, hormones, immune response systems, and even basic cell membrane walls. Protein is massively important to life, just how much of it do you need? As an energy source, 1 gram of protein equals 4kcal. One of the largest nutritional debates is how many grams a person needs per day according to their weight. Depending upon the source, you will see anywhere from 0.37g per pound of body weight (RDA value) all the way up to 2g per pound of body weight. Here's my opinion and experience: if you are very sedentary, you can lean on the lower side of the protein scale, 0.37-0.8g per pound of your body weight. If you are active at your job and/or workout moderately 3-6 days a week, then adjust that factor up to 0.8-1.2g per lb of body weight. I personally workout hard 5-6 days a week, so I eat 1.0-1.2g of protein for my "lean" body weight each day. (LEAN: the weight I carry not accounting for excess body fat) My Protein at full weight: 135 Range 0.8-1.2 = 108g-162g My Protein at Guesstimated lean body mass: 125 Range 0.8-1.2 = 100g-150g As you can see, this is a pretty big spread from 100g - 162g. A difference of 248 calories per day since protein is 4kcal/g. When you are trying to create a deficit, be careful when structuring these macros. I like to look more at my "lean" aka goal weight numbers rather then my current weight. This will help create your total calorie deficit as well without sacrificing too much protein. When you get more comfortable with daily macro counting, you can start to adjust these numbers in you head each day. For instance, I am naturally going to increase my protein consumption on days which I workout really hard, typically leg days for me. When I have a hard leg day, I know to increase protein because my body needs the fuel, but more importantly the repairing tools. My opinion again, dropping below 1gram/lbs of body weight for an athlete runs the risk of strength and muscle loss. Fats Fat is IMPORTANT! Contrary to the 80's and 90's, eating fat does not go straight to your belly or your butt. Healthy fats are a necessity to surviving. Besides cushioning our organs and keeping us warm, they are needed for brain development, controlling inflammation, blood clotting, and hormone synthesis to name a few things. Most importantly, our bodies cannot absorb 4 major vitamins without fat: vitamins A, D, E, and K. These are known as fat soluble vitamins. The fatty acids called Linoleic and Linolenic acids are essential because our bodies can not make them or work without them. Moderation of fat and eating the healthier fats are key to your health and fitness. It's very important to try your best at consuming the polyunsaturated fats which give us our essential fatty acids. Optimally one should try their best to consume Omega 3's and Omega 6's at a ratio of 2:1, but it is very difficult to say the least. Sources of Omega 3's: cold water fish, tuna, cod liver, halibut, herring, mackerel, trout, salmon, and sardines. Sources of Omega 6's: sunflower seeds, seed oils, corn, pumpkin seeds, nuts, meat, and dairy products. Calculating Fat grams: The calories per gram of fat are different then that of protein and carbohydrates. There are 9 calories per gram of fat. It is suggested that humans consume roughly 20%-35% of their daily calories from fat for optimal health. example: a 2000 calorie diet x .20(20%) = 400calories - Divide that 400 calories by 9 (calories per gram of fat) = 44g I like working with ranges, because lets be real about being "macro perfect" - not likely nor should be "perfect". Remember to allow fluctuation because this is a lifestyle not a strict diet. SO 1200cal/day x .20 = 240 / 9 = 26g fat/day 1200 x .35 =420/9=46g 26-46g 1500cal/day x .20 = 300 / 9 = 33g fat/ day 1500 x .35=525/9=58g 33-58g 2000cal/day x .20 = 400 / 9 = 44g fat/day 2000 x .35=700/9=77g 44-77g 2200cal/day x .20 = 440 / 9 = 48gfat/day 2200 x .35=770/9=85g 48-85g 2500cal/day x .20 = 500 / 9 = 55gfat/day 2500 x .35 =875/9=97g 55-97g Personally, I typically try to stay on the lower end of the fat gram range. I just would rather have more carbohydrates and proteins then fats. Now, I'll get into flexible macros later, but I may have a high fat day, which then I would choose to go lower carb that same day. More on that for another time. Carbohydrates Are carbohydrates a necessity? The latest and currently most popular dieting question. NO, they are not a necessity, but they are hugely important. Carbohydrates are a fuel, not an important building block like protein. Like I said earlier, we can go scientific about the need or lack there of in regards to carbohydrates because of our bodies AMAZING ability to breakdown proteins and fats (fatty acids) into glucose for fuel since glucose is needed for our muscles, heart, and brain function. Remember, lifestyle change here, not crazy fad crash dieting. About carbohydrates...the bad reputation carbohydrates are getting is because of the immense amount of bad carbs floating in front of us each and every day. The REFINED carbohydrates. I cannot stress this enough, REFINED foods of any sort are going to have negative effects. Staying away from refined foods may be the biggest challenge to everyone. The three types of carbohydrates are as follows, sugar (simple), starch (complex), and fiber(complex).
FYI: when you see "net Carbs" this means the fiber and sugar alcohols have been subtracted. Here is a little. explanation:
This brings us to our last calculation. Since Carbohydrates are less of a "necessity", we make up the remainder of our caloric intake with them. I'm hoping that everyone had a chance to figure out your Basal Metobolic rate and then figure our your daily caloric needs via any of the hundreds of online calculators. Remember these are just guidelines for you to follow and adjustments can be made daily to accommodate your activity levels. I'm going to go ahead and use a basic 2000 calorie diet for the next calculation with my weight. I can give you a range also following this calculation. This is all just to tie together your knowledge base and where these numbers come from. It's likely you already have the numbers from an app that did it for you. My weight at 135 and 2000 calorie diet. I choose 1 gram of protein per pound of my weight according to my activity level. Then multiply that by the amount of calories per gram of protein. 135lbs x 1g protein = 135g protein x 4cal = 540 calories from Protein Next is fat: 2000calories/day x .20 (20% daily fat intake of macros) = 400 calories (44g) Lastly its time to calculate your carbs: if I allow 2000 calories a day and subtract the fat and protein calories, I am left with calories from Carbohydrates. I can take the calories from the carbs and divide them by 4 since there are 4 calories in each gram of a carbohydrate. That will give me my grams of carbohydrates. 540 + 400 = 940 2000 - 940 = 1060 calories from carbs / 4 = 265g of carbs My Macros: 2000 Calorie Day Protein: 135g Fats: 44g Carbs: 265g I do want to point out that I personally will make this number fluctuate a lot with where my training is at during the week and where my goals are headed. My proteins will never be adjusted lower, only high depending upon demand and recovery. I will drop my calories for the day down to about 1500 if I am not working out or trying to make a deficit. Those numbers look like this: Protein: 540 calories Fat: 1500cal/day x .20 = 300calories (33g) Carbs: 1500-540 - 300 = 660calories / 4 = 165g 1500 Calorie Day Protein: 135g Fat: 33g Carbs 165g *Alcohol is calculated at 7 calories per gram. Please adjust accordingly. It is not a fat, carb, or protein. The calories add up faster with the high caloric value, and don't forget to add in calories for your cocktail mixers. Sometimes those sugary mixers really mess with your deficit creating abilities. I'll leave you with a little "cheat sheet" that I like. Dr. Kallie Wegmann Dr. Kallie Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Welcome back and happy kickoff to summer! Now that Memorial Day has passed, we are in full summer mode. Pretty sure most of our nation was under a slight heat wave this weekend, so I'm guessing swimsuits came out and many of you were soaking up the sun and cooling off in the water. I hope everyone took some time to think about where they are in their fitness journey, and maybe even wrote down some goals. Goals are good, I like goals, they give us a destination to work toward. With that being said, what I want to help teach you is not truly about setting goals and achieving them, but building a knowledgeable foundation to make changes to your lifestyle. So often goals are met, then what???? Many people struggle MAINTAINING their hard work, and I don't think I would be too far off to say the getting the weight off and getting in shape is sometimes the easy part, the hard part is staying in shape. It is honestly a lifelong process that you need to understand and be very patient with for yourself. As much as everyone would LOVE to just drop 10, 20, 30, 50 pounds in a few weeks, it's not only terribly unhealthy, but seldom does it teach you the basics. So I'm going to be straight to the point and simple here. Regardless of what all of those weight-loss salesmen, or social media ads tell you. so you buy into their latest and greatest new trend, there is 1 single and simple rule to drop weight... ENERGY IN < ENERGY OUT Energy in has to be less than energy out. You need to physically consume (eat) less calories in food than the amount of calories you burn in a day. The MILLION dollar rule that is about as simple as it can get. I don't care if you are into Keto dieting, Paleo, low carb, carb cycle, intermittent fasting, whatever...it's all under the same rule. Your body is not going to lose a single pound if you do not create a deficit. So that part is pretty darn simple, the rest gets a little more in depth with a little chemistry and math. I am certainly happy to discuss the different dieting methods, because they do have their place. They are all helpful tools to implement into your lifestyle and help you determine what works best for you. Every single human body is a little bit different, so your personal preference may be completely different than your best friend or even spouse. Now you have the basic rule, (calories in must be less than calories burned) so the next step is figuring out your basic caloric needs BMR (basal metabolic rate). This is the lowest amount of calories your body needs to maintain vital functions. There are numerous websites that have calculators to figure this out for you. If you enjoy a little mathematical challenge, feel free to use the following: Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years) Men: BMR = 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years) Important Point: Often times people think this number stays the same throughout there weight-loss. This is not the case at all. As you can see, it is dependent on your current weight. You need to recalculate this number frequently because the number will continue to decrease as it takes less energy for your body to function at a lighter weight. My example: 655 + (4.35 x135) + (4.7 x 67) - (4.7 x 39) 655 + (587.25) + (314.9) - (183.3) 655 + (718.85) = 1374 calories/day If I were to literally sit on the couch all day and do nothing, I would only need to eat 1374 calories from food to keep my body functioning without having to use stored energy (fat) to survive. To put this another way, I still will not lose weight if I drop my calories to 1374/day if I'm not moving at all during the day. This number is a pretty big shock to some, as it needs to be. One of the biggest fallacies is to think you are active simply because you get out of bed, do a few chores here and there, go to and from work or school, etc. You are actually NOT expending that much more energy then the BMR number. Personally I can't imagine eating only 1374 calories a day, I would feel completely starved and very HANGRY. This is where the first steps to become more active come into play "exercise", and eating healthy whole foods. The more calories you burn, the more calories you are going to be allowed to consume and still stay under your projected calories needed in a day. The eating healthy whole foods is SO important. The biggest factor to me is you can simply just eat SO MUCH MORE food when its healthy and a whole food. I'm going to get much more in depth with macro counting and food choices, plus dieting styles soon because it all ties in together and again, helps your knowledge foundation. Side note #1: I do not judge any diet type as being better for you or not. I believe each is a tool for personal preference. The trick is finding what works best for you and can turn into a lifestyle and not just a fad diet. I know Keto is the latest "greatest" weight-loss method and I am absolutely "pro" keto if it helps you and is sustainable. I do believe it has its place and I could write a completely new blog about just Keto, but I'll try to keep this a short version. Like low carb, you have very low to now carbohydrates, boom-bye bye glucose. No more carbs and glucose in your body, good bye water retention from the body holding onto those glucose molecules. No more sugars to burn, and the body turns to fat. Anyone that tells you you can eat as much fat as you want and still lose weight is full of horse poo. Yes, you are going to quickly drop water retention weight, but your body is not going to dip into its fat storage if you have too much readily available. Like I started out with, you STILL have to create a deficit. Side note #2: This is just a personal note from me to you. One of the best investments I have made with my fitness lifestyle is a fitbit. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT! I really thought they were a waste for so long, but I don't regret this purchase at all. There are a lot of different smart/fitness watches out there by now I'm sure, so if you are remotely interesting in one then make sure to research what might work best for you. I chose to go with the Fitbit Ionic because of all of the features. Yes, I budgeted for it since it's a bit expensive, but worth every penny to me. Obviously it is a watch and step counter, but it also fully links to my phone for updates from my email, texts, calls, calendar, and weather alerts. The watch now has apps to GPS locate all of your walks/runs, biking, hiking, skiing, etc. Mine is water resistance for water sports, plus has a heart rate monitor, sleep monitoring, exercise goals, music downloads, and SO MUCH MORE. Lastly, and almost my favorite, is the calorie counter. You can open the fitbit app on your smartphone, input all of your information and get help with your nutritional goals while it keeps track of your calories left for each day. The database for food is great and its always right there with you. I'm pretty sure the Fitbit Blaze and Versa are very similar to mine also. If you can budget for it, I don't think you will be disappointed in the purchase. I've learned so much about my own habits from it, plus it keeps me VERY motivated to keep moving throughout the day to rack up those steps. You might be very surprised how few steps you take in a day if you don't make movement a priority. Before I leave you for the week, I'm going to give you something to work with again. Next week we are going to get into counting Macros and the many different ways to configure your macros. In order to make this useful, you need to keep track of EVERYTHING you eat. I'm not asking that you count for the next 7 days, maybe try 2 weekdays and 1 weekend day and write everything down. There are tons of apps on smartphones now that will help you count all of your calories and even macro divide them for you. My Fitness Pal, Loseit, fitbit, and many more that can assist you. Please don't cheat yourself and be diligent about writing everything down. If you snuck a bit of a muffin or cookie, you need to count it. Remember, this isn't a punishment at all, it's laying the foundation for your new healthy lifestyle. Stay tuned to the next few blogs as I go a little bit further in depth with the different types of dieting/eating habits to help you build that educational foundation. I'm already proud of the steps you are taking and happy to be in this journey with you. Till next week... |
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