Important: While this facial scrub is made with largely natural ingredients, allergic reactions are always possible. Facial skin, especially around the eyes, is sensitive.

• Test a small area of skin in a less sensitive area, such as your arm, before applying it to your face.
• Avoid direct contact with the eyes or the mouth
• Those with nut allergies should use extra caution, as coconut oil is a primary ingredient

We originally used this scrub occasionally to treat irritated, very dry skin, serving as both an exfoliant and a moisturizer. Over time, one of us began using it daily with great results. Because coconut oil is the base, it can help or worsen acne depending on skin type and use. We do include castor oil and honey to help balance it. As with most skincare, results depend on context, since skin is highly personal. Let your skin’s response guide how often you use this scrub.

Let’s get to the ingredients

Here is what you will need:

• Dark Brown Sugar – 1 cup
• Coconut Oil – ½ cup
• Sea Salt – 1 tbsp
• Castor Oil -1 tbsp
• Vitamin E oil -1 tsp
• Arrowroot Powder – ½ tsp
• Dried Comfrey – ½ cup
• Honey – 1 tbsp
• Essential Oils – 30 drops +/-

The Why Breakdown

Each ingredient in this scrub serves a specific purpose. Some benefits are supported by research, others by long-standing traditional use. For us, the deciding factor is simple: it works.

Dark brown sugar provides gentle exfoliation, helping remove dead skin without being overly abrasive.

Sea salt adds exfoliating grit and helps reduce spoilage due to its natural preservative properties.

Coconut oil moisturizes and helps restore the skin barrier, making it especially useful for dry, irritated skin.

Castor oil balances coconut oil, offering anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties.

Vitamin E oil helps prevent moisture loss, softens skin, and supports skin repair.

Honey helps draw moisture into the skin and offers anti-inflammatory and antibacterial benefits.

Comfrey helps soothe and soften skin and supports hydration.

Arrowroot powder reduces the greasy feel of the scrub and helps improve overall texture.

Essential oils add scent and provide aromatherapy benefits, depending on the oils selected.

We recommend using organic and all-natural sources to ensure they maintain their full strength. The reality is, though, that it can get cost-prohibitive for some. We have written a couple of articles about what organic means and what it doesn’t. If you need to cut costs, do so; we have at times as well and haven’t noticed a significant difference.

Essential Oils

Essential oils let you customize this scrub for your intended use. For a morning scrub, brighter scents like eucalyptus, lemongrass, and tea tree work well. For evening use, softer options such as chamomile, rose, and lavender are more calming.

Use caution when selecting oils. Some essential oils, including cinnamon, clove, and peppermint, can irritate sensitive skin and are unsafe if they come into contact with the eyes. If you are unsure about an oil, check a reliable reference before adding it to the mix.

The how

So, how do you make this? It is easy

1. Gather up all ingredients, including the essential oils
2. Place in a food processor
3. Pulse for 30 seconds
4. Scrape down sides
5. Pulse again for 30 seconds.

At this point, check it. It is very easy to overblend. To ensure this works correctly, keep blending to a minimum to preserve the grit of the sugar and salt. It should feel gritty like coarse sand. You may need to repeat steps 4 and 5 a couple more times.

Place this in a jar or other sealable container. Since brown sugar, honey, and salt are hygroscopic, they degrade by absorbing moisture from the air. You know what air in a bathroom has in it? Water! Keep it sealed to extend its shelf life.

Using it

When you want to use it, open the container, take out a teaspoonful, and use it as you would any other facial scrub. It is that simple.

A Side Note

If you are concerned about coconut oil, you could substitute an alternative oil, such as olive oil. In that case, we would recommend adding more arrowroot to the mix. Why is this needed? Coconut oil is firm enough at room temperature to retain its shape, whereas olive oil does not. Additional arrowroot or other thickener would be needed to solidify the mixture and prevent separation. We have not tried this ourselves but it would be a good experiment to try.

Wrapping Up

You know how to create your own facial scrub and tune it to your needs. While the ‘green goo’ isn’t the prettiest, it is highly effective and made with ingredients that are generally low-cost and have known health benefits. In addition, it is easy to make, smells good, and can make a decent homemade gift.

The post How To Make A Great Facial Scrub first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

The medical, health, and fitness communities rely on data to determine a person’s peak health and optimal weight. To make things easier to find, we highlighted some of the most essential tools and formulas and pointed you to resources for digging deeper.

That said, anyone who’s spent time in health and fitness knows that trends come and go. Further, these tools and formulas focus on large populations, not always matching an individual’s goals. New theories, tools, and approaches constantly emerge, so we must continually revisit and refine what we know.

Disclaimer

Before diving in, here are the axioms that drive our statement that each tool is a single lens on where you are in meeting your goals, not who you are. 

• Each human being is a different living, breathing organism. 
• Every health organization and government must try to set standards that are the broadest for all people. 

Also, we aren’t here to judge these openly. We aim to discuss what each is attempting to ascertain, how it tracks it, and how it provides insight into your personal goals. Now on to the tools!

Body Mass and Composition

So, like us, you are curious and want to understand your body weight and makeup. These tools help answer questions like “Am I heavy for my size?” or “How much of my weight is muscle, fat, or bone?” They do this by measuring parts of your body and comparing them.

• BMI or Body Mass Index Calculator: A calculator for adults to gauge if they are over-/or underweight. 

• Skin Fold Test: This test uses calipers to measure specific skin folds to determine a person’s muscle-to-fat ratio.

• WHR or Waist to Hip Ratio Test: Another body composition test that relies on a difference in the circumference of someone’s waist relative to their hips. 

• Dunk or Hydrostatic Weighing Test: This test uses your buoyancy to determine your body composition. It uses Archimedes’ principle to make its determination.   

Calorie Intake and Consumption

• BMR or Base Metabolic Rate: A calculator that estimates the total number of calories your body burns daily at rest. Rest means eating, sleeping, and performing normal respiration and blood pumping. 

• TDEE or Total Daily Energy Expenditure: This formula is roughly BMR with activity added. That being said, activity is also not a standard because it is based on you and your current state of conditioning or fitness. 

• DRI or Daily Required Intake: DRI is BMR calories broken down into fats, proteins, carbohydrates, macronutrients, etc., according to the USDA MyPlate.gov standard. 

But Wait, There’s More!

We didn’t get into activity calculations, such as the RPE (Rate or Perceived Energy) Scale for perceived exertion, nor Bone Density scans, such as DEXA (sometimes called DXA), to determine body composition. Why? We wanted to focus on those most available to the average person just looking for basic guidance, like we were. 

An Important Point To Note

Remember that post on serving size we wrote? Yes, take a look at your BMR and TDEE. You may find that you are not what the USDA terms the ‘average’ person who needs x calories daily. This is where most problems with weight management start for people. Once you have done some research, you will find your number.

Wrapping Up;

This post collects a variety of tools commonly used to guide weight and health management. Each can be helpful, but each has pros and cons. We aren’t here to decide what’s right for you, but if you choose to use them, remember to research them. None of these tools is an authority on you unless you fall into the exact ‘average’ they are targeting. Instead, see them as valuable tools, helping you shape and refine your approach to your goals.

The post The Truth About Fitness Calculators first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

This is a post on a health-related topic. We are not medical or other trained health professionals. The information presented here is what learned about ourselves on our journey. Your journey is different and it is best to consult your doctor or other medical professional before making a change. Please see our disclaimer at Before Making Lifestyle Changes before making any changes to diet, activity, etc.

As with many health topics, this one proved to be subjective. We will divide recovery into three categories to provide a frame of reference.

• During workout recovery, this relates to the amount of time between sets. This is based on personal workout styles, physical health, age, etc. 
• Immediate post-workout recovery, which includes things like post-workout eating and rest.
• Intra-workout rest is defined as the amount of time between workout periods required to allow us to heal the damage done.

We found the first two so specific to a person’s goals, health, sport, etc., that they should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. While there are similarities across all recovery for all sports, they are such generalizations we didn’t find them helpful. Here is why there isn’t an easy button for those two items:

• Those two things are the uniqueness of the person and their goals. 
• All sports and fitness goals have different training paradigms. 

The Bodybuilder vs The Sprinter

To explain why we say that, let’s talk about two types of athletes: bodybuilders and sprinters. These two athletes’ goals will have similar but different approaches to training. Bodybuilders will use bulking/cutting cycles and heavy lifting to increase lean muscle mass. A sprinter is attempting to increase power and stamina in their legs while maintaining a lighter overall body. The during-workout and immediate post-recovery routines will be similar but not the same. 

This is why we are not covering those two specific topics in detail. However, this write-up addresses many of those points. 

The Wrong Answers

The biggest challenge we found in addressing this was the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy of unavoidable degeneration at age. After 30, we know we start losing muscle as part of aging. Most people are advised on how to stem that loss rather than how to address growing muscles. That turns muscle loss into a reality when it doesn’t have to be. You can gain muscles as you age. That doesn’t mean you will be able to grow 22-inch biceps if you are just getting started at 50, but it is more of a numbers game that requires a separate post.

That doesn’t mean you can push your body like you are younger and growing. This is where the idea of increased recovery time comes in. As we age, we have injuries to contend with, sleep challenges, stressors, etc., that compound these recovery times. You can still improve your strength and mobility but must do so via proper recovery.  

Building vs Remodeling

A good example of how we handle aging and recovery is similar to building vs. remodeling a house. If you are building a home from scratch, you lay out plans, start construction, and continue until finished. It is very straightforward. Let’s consider adding a new addition to an existing house that is still occupied. 

You start with a plan, but as soon as you dig in, you may find sections of plumbing that need to be redone to come up to code. Certain sections of that house will be off-limits when construction occurs. You may find dry rot or even asbestos that requires special handling. That is the reality of not only remodeling but working out at a later age. You have to account for it because if you don’t, you can get injured. This is why recovery matters. 

Recovery Times

We found that recovery time is directly related to the intensity of the workout. For most people, the rest period is 1-3 days, depending on many factors, including fitness level and age. For people over 50, it is common to see 2-3 days between training to prevent injury. This is due to everything from reduced healing capacity to diminished protein synthesis. All of that can lead to overtraining, no matter your age. Conversely, atrophy and muscle loss become a reality if you never push yourself. 

Instead of offering opinions, we will point you to different options to explore. Recovery turns out to be a complicated personal thing. Many people have already written volumes on this. We wanted to put the context here to reduce the noise.

•  One extreme is Bodybuilding’s take on recovery.
• The other extreme is Second Wind Movement’s Guide to Recovery
• Good RX’s write-up on recovery is somewhere between the two.

Wrapping Up

As with all things health, workout recovery times are personal. In this post, we have given reasons for this and some useful links to material on why. In our opinion, the biggest challenge we have as we age is misinformation. Another is not being realistic about overcoming age-based challenges while recognizing we need to do them in new ways, which can lead to overtraining. Somewhere between these two is the correct answer for you. 

The post Your Muscle Recovery Need Is Unique first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Separating Fact and Fiction Takes Clarifications

In an earlier post, we talked about the big three and why fat was important for the Body. If that is so, why does fat have such a bad rap? As with everything, the devil is in the details. Not all fats are good, bad, or created equal. 

Let’s start with a quick 411 on the  major types of fats

• Monounsaturated
• Polyunsaturated
• Saturated
• Trans Fats

What we found challenging was understanding what was in what. In another post, we talked about where calories hide in items like nuts. Of course, this led us to stop eating nuts since they have so much fat. Oh wait, salmon has fat as does olive oil. There goes the salmon and pesto dishes. The home-fried chicken was right out! Not so much. 

We are not going to try to explain as these fats have been studied extensively. We have linked to several really smart folks who can explain their chemistry and their impact on your body and health. All we want to do is give people a heads up of where to look why you need them and why ‘low-fat’ doesn’t always mean good for you. According to many such as Harvard Health and the USDA, you need fat as part of your DRI we mentioned in another post. Here’s the TL;DR: we walked away with:

Trans Fats Are Out

Let’s get Trans Fats out of the way first. There are two types; non-artificial and artificial. There are natural sources of trans fats that come from unaltered saturated fat. These are not the ones we have heard of as being bad for you. According to experts, while it may be best to avoid them they don’t have the same impact on our health as artificial trans fats. 

Artificial trans fats are a non-starter in terms of being good for us to the point they have been banned in some shape or form in some countries like the US. Trans fats are also known by their other name which is PHO or partially hydrogenated oils. PHO is created by putting vegetable oil through a chemical and heating process to keep the fat solid at room temperature.  Originally thought to be better than regular fats, that opinion has changed. You can make your own decisions on trans fat but they are now specifically called out on nutrition labels to help us avoid them. 

Unsaturated Fats Are Good

All fats contain the same calories per serving. It is not that one is ‘less’ fatty than the other.  Monounsaturated and Polyunsaturated fats are triglycerides your body needs. They can be grossly generalized as fats that stay liquid at room temperature. Think nuts, vegetables, and olive oil as well as fish. If the fat comes from something that grows in the ground or it swims, the fat from it is fat your body needs. The exception to this generalization is the oil of fruit of tropical plants such as coconut or palm. 

Saturated Fats Are Problematic

Saturated fats tend to come from meat, dairy, or tropical plants and are generally solid at room temperature. The labeling of unhealthy saturated fats is due to their impact on cholesterol levels. Of course, they are plentiful in some of our favorite foods like red meat, cheeses, and baked goods. 

We found some evidence that newer studies are challenging the opinion that saturated fats are 100% bad for everyone. Cholesterol, and its impact on the body, maybe as much genetics as it is the food we eat. In any case, we still want to know how much we can have since they come at a high risk-to-reward ratio.    

According to the American Heart Association, the guideline is only 6% of the fats you eat should be saturated. As usual, many health professionals disagree and we have seen as high as 10%. Let’s take the harder road and go for 6% for the sake of an example. For someone on a 2,000-calorie-a-day calorie budget that is 120 calories from saturated fat or 13 grams.  At first glance that is a terrifying number. That is about a single slice of cheddar cheese, right? 

Let’s Do Some Math

This is where we feel things get sideways. No, it is not a single slice. We need to revisit our nutrition label and do some math. Bear with me as we get nerdy with numbers and a word problem. 

Question: How much cheddar cheese can I eat if I have a 2,000-calorie-a-day budget and want to control my saturated fat?

Additional Info Needed: According to Google a single slice of cheddar cheese averages 30% or 6 grams of saturated fat per ounce. 

Answer: Right now I could eat 3 and ⅓ ounces of cheddar cheese to meet that 6 percent goal if I had no other saturated fat in my diet that day. That is simply adding up something from 30% to 100% which is straightforward.  Crisis averted. We can even have a ⅓ lb. burger made from 80/20 beef with a slice of cheddar and stay within our goals if our calorie budget allows it. 

We Can But Should We?

But should we scarf down that cheeseburger? What about switching to home-fried chicken to avoid trans fats? Empirically what we found was that we cheated on our diet less when we ate some level of fat in our meals. We found a good middle-of-the-road approach by creating that same sense of a ‘fat’ budget like our calorie budget. While that may not work for some with specific medical conditions, it worked for us. We aren’t into taking chances so we do get our cholesterol levels tested every year to make sure our choices are staying healthy. 

Closing Thoughts

We discussed many of the high-level pros and cons of fat in our diets. Based on everything we read we we learned for our goals we shouldn’t fear fat. This post gave the evidence that we used to support the decision that our bodies need some fat. We also have provided information about some of the myths of fat through the disambiguation of the different types we learned. Based on all the learning and evidence we found, we embraced fat in our diet. Armed with this knowledge you can make your own informed decision instead of simply avoiding all fats unless otherwise directed by a health professional.

The post Our New Perception Of Fats In Diets first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

What we call the big three of diets are fat, protein, and carbohydrates. Like many people, we have tried to lower carbs and fats to lower our weight. We have also tried using extra protein, and mass gainers to add more muscle to add weight. We found the results inconclusive so we decided to learn about each of them instead of relying on pundits claims. This post will cover our learnings and why we returned to a balanced diet over any other based on our new understanding.

Let’s Start High Level

We will begin with a high-level understanding of the big three; Protein, Fat, and Carbohydrates. In other words, we don’t feel the post is going to help a super athlete tune their macronutrient balance information for performance enhancements. Instead, our goal is to use basics and simplicity to understand how to reach our goals. That means if you’re training for the next Olympic games probably need to seek a nutritionist’s help. 

Like any machine, the human body needs fuel to convert to energy. The body also needs lubricants to keep the machine operating without damage. Unlike other machines, the human body must grow and repair itself. It also has to produce its fuel. Each of our three items plays a role in that machine’s operation. 

We are taking a 10,000-foot view here on purpose. There are extensive studies on each of these elements of our diets and their impact on our personal goals. There are also extensive and egregious misunderstandings around them. These misunderstandings negatively impact our perception of balanced diets. That is another post that comes after basics.

So What do the Big Three Do

 Protein: 

• Rebuildes and grows the body.
• Acts as a chemical messenger to help the body run.
• Helps block cravings and hunger.
• Forces the body to use energy to digest it creating calorie burn.

Fat:

• Creates a calorie battery of stored energy. 
• Used to support organs and internal structures.
• Necessary for absorption of some vitamins.
• Helps regulate temperature. 

  Carbohydrates:

• Help create the fuel to run your body.
• Keeps our plumbing clean through fermentation in digestion.
• Provide and direct energy to the brain and cells.
• Preserve muscle.

We found that unless we had some specific dietary restrictions or medical conditions we needed all three. Why then do we hear about cutting carbs or low-fat diets being all the rage? With all things human, because it is not so cut and dry. It is how much, and of what type, of each of these you need to support your goals.  Let’s start with an extremely contrived example of why to store fat to kick that train of thought off. 

A Hyperbolic Example

Animals store fat for hibernation or migration. They have to actively seek out their food which requires energy so they are consuming a portion of it while trying to add weight. That fat is their calorie bank for their fast. They eat as much as they can of carbohydrates and fats until it is time to hibernate. The better their stores, the better their chances of survival. In other animals, the layer of fat they have also helps regulate their temperature. There’s a reason seals, whales, and other animals have a layer of fat for harsh conditions. They need that fat.

For most people, our food rarely runs out and we have learned how to control the climates in our homes and workplaces. We don’t need to store that extra fat that occurs in those extremes. If you want to for some personal reason, you can. Our food can be found easily and everywhere. We expend very little energy in getting it as well. For most of us, there is no need to store excess calories. Sadly no one told our body that we have evolved so we still store the excess. 

But We Need Fat and Carbohydrates Right?

But we have guidance from medical professionals we do need some fat and and carbohydrates. Why the carb-cutting diets? Why the low-fat diets? Each attempts to leverage one aspect of the trio to leverage its outcomes in the body. By limiting or increasing one of the three, the diets attempt to place you in a specific state however we found that to backfire on you.

The idea is simple. The more protein you eat the more you feed your muscles. Protein also is calorie sparse so it is harder for your body to convert it to fuel. Doing so causes further calories to be burned due to the thermogenic actions needed to do so. Now picture you are trying to gain lean mass and burn fat. Don’t carbohydrates deliver energy or does protein? Can you work out efficiently without some? Don’t they help preserve muscles to keep you from cannibalizing them for energy? 

Oddly enough, cutting carbs and fat has the same net effect. The premise is that by eliminating carbs and fat your body will consume the fat it has stored over time. You are effectively reducing the amount of calories your body can turn into energy and at some point, your body will use what it stores. What it stores is not only fat but muscle. When it starts to consume that fuel, it will let you know.

You Won’t Read This in the Fine Print

This is the part that is generally not discussed in these plans. When you are hungry, your body will tell you. If it has no fuel, you may feel tired. Most of us have been hungry to the point of not being able to think at some point in our lives. Like any machine running on fumes, you can’t be working at an optimal efficiency. What happens then? You may not feel like you can function and give up as this article discusses at the end around high protein diets.

We feel this is what we learned the hard way. By keeping balance in our meals, and simply reducing portion size, we learned to manage this. Whenever we become extreme in one area, the negatives cancel out the positives. We found ourselves not being able to sustain the diet requirements. This led to the diet roller coaster problem. 

Wrapping Up

You now have the basic building blocks of diet in your back pocket. You also have some tools to help you evaluate diet choices. With these two items, you can start to question if the diet you are looking at will help you or not. We have also provided you with a set of links that will give you deeper professional advice to help you tailor these building blocks to your goals.

The post What Are The Big Three In Diets first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

When you change your activity levels you change the amount of calories your body needs. Based on your goals, you need to adjust your intake accordingly. The goal of this post is to help you understand the impact of your activity levels on your goals.

Making it Personal

If you have gone through the BMR exercise in this previous post you know physical activity impacts how many calories you need. The more active you are, the more calories you burn. When first distilling this for our own needs, much of what we found was maddeningly unhelpful information.  

I like going to the gym and lifting weights. For me, it is a stress release. It is also a lifestyle choice because I want to be able to do certain things. If I have to move a 60 lb bag or concrete, I don’t want to have to call someone. It gives me independence. This has a direct impact on my weight and my calorie needs.

I can’t stand going to the gym and walking or running on a treadmill. I do it because I have to. My partner loves running on a treadmill or outside. That is her stress release. She can outrun me and doesn’t become as winded as easily. This activity has a direct impact on her calorie needs. Though she does it, she doesn’t enjoy lifting heavy weights. She can’t carry a 60 lb bag of concrete very far.

Different People, Goals, and Abilities

 Different people, different activities, different impacts on burning calories. We also have different goals and outcomes we want for our specific lifestyles. This is not a post on weightlifting or cardiovascular care so we won’t go into that. We also recognize that both are important in holistic health. Our point is simply both are activities and both impact calories needed and therefore our weight management plans.

Activity isn’t necessarily tied to a gym. Activity can be in multiple forms such as climbing stairs or mowing the lawn. This is what we read when trying to analyze our personal activity levels for the BMR and that makes sense. What we found missing in those explanations was the personalization. 

If you lead a sedentary lifestyle and you climb 2 flights of stairs, you may be winded. A person who runs all the time may be able to climb 50 flights of stairs and not feel winded. Let’s now add one person who is shorter than the other with a smaller step. Do they both get the same physical activity from walking up those steps? 

This is the main issue; we are not all the same. What is a hard activity for one person is not the same as another. This is another reason why people can fail at managing weight; lack of information specific to them. Here is an example of what we find. It gives information for someone who’s 154 lbs. I am not 154 lbs and I don’t want to be. If I was, I doubt I would be able to carry my concrete very far! I was there once and had no muscle structure!  

Ways to Define Activity

We like the definition given here on activity level that takes into account heart rate and breathing. That is for a later post. For those starting, the talk test provides very initial ideas about what moderate and vigorous activity is. It also will give you some idea of what others see as moderate and vigorous activity. This will help give you some guidelines as to how your weight management plan is affected by your activity levels. 

Understanding what activity is to you based on your current abilities is an important piece. It will change as your body changes. You can change it as your goals change. By knowing what it means you can now do an apples-to-apples comparison for what it means to others, This allows you to make a more informed decision about how many calories you need based on BMR. 

This post gives you another tool in your weight management toolbox. You can define what you need to meet your weight management goals. You know what you need without activity and you know the impact of activity on the calories you need. The problem is becoming definable.

The post Easily Pair Your Activity To Goals first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

We feel the bathroom or similar scale has been demonized in our culture. For that reason, many people dread standing on it to see what it says.  By the end of this post, we hope you will see it as a tool and friend for weight management. Data collection drives consistency and consistency, over time, is key to weight management. 

Addressing the Elephant in the Room

 First, let’s address the stigma of stepping on the scale. Weight is a number. The scale tells us what that number is. That number is not a judgment of you. That number is data about what you weigh at that moment in time. If that number is not what you want, there are tools to change it. If that number is what you want, there are tools to maintain it. 

 When we started our journey we had ideas of what we wanted in terms of physical fitness. Physical fitness meant weighing what we should as well as the ability to do certain things. We expected knowing what we should weigh would be easy and it was anything but. We found over and over that even medical professionals don’t 100% agree on what is over or underweight for someone. It felt impossible to find an answer that fit us. We will revisit this in another post to give a better explanation but for now, we can focus on weight as it is a tangible goal.

Consistency is Key

 We couldn’t can’t manage our weight without using a scale consistently. By consistently we mean every day or two, same(ish) time, sam(ish) clothes, or better yet before you dress. There is a lot of debate on whether to do this every day or every 3 days or even only twice a week. Eventually, we settled on every day based on the challenges we saw with hydration and weight. We learned our best chance for accuracy came from weighing ourselves every day, consistently You may choose a different cadence.  To recognize noise vs reality daily weigh-ins became our choice of cadence.

The scale is a tool but the real power of it comes in taking notes. In our previous post on calories, we discussed phone apps to help. Using the same apps we used for calories made the job of taking notes easy. More importantly, because they were the same app, we could look at calories and weight and learn the connections between them. We also understand weight is a private thing for many and some people worry about others using their information. If you’re not comfortable using an app, use a spreadsheet or even a journal to track your data instead.  

What to Expect

  As you record your weight you should notice two things:

• Fluctuations between days. 
• An overall trend across days.

Fluctuations between days happen as your body and life are dynamic. Depending on water intake, food eaten, stress levels, and other environmental variables your weight fluctuates daily. We have seen spikes up and down of up to 4 lbs between days. It’s interesting feedback and something to drive a question of why but it is also just noise that occurs. 

The overall trend is the important piece. This trend is what is truly happening. Monitoring weight to attain goals is very similar to monitoring blood pressure. You can ask yourself, is the trend the same weight, increased weight, or decreased weight? Does the trend align with your personal goals? If it is, then you know what you are doing is working, and if not you know you need to make a change.

If your goals aren’t being met, don’t be upset and give up. Data is data. The human body isn’t simple. What works for one person may not work for another. You aren’t doing something wrong. Take the data as a way to have an honest moment with yourself. We will continue to explore other ways to attack these problems. 

Try to See the Scale as a Tool

We hope that you find a new friend in your weight management journey. By forming good habits around its use and collecting data, you become empowered. You know what is happening and you can decide to, or not to, take action based on the data it provides. Through being consistent in its use you will learn about yourself, your needs, and your body.   

The post Why It’s Safe To Step On The Scale first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

We all know water is vital to life and health. In this post, we discuss our water needs and why it helps us manage our weight goals. After reading this post, we believe you will understand the need to be consistent with your water intake to help you meet your goals.

We’re Talking Management Not Diet

First, this is not a blog on diet or nutrition. Because there are several places you can learn how water affects or does not affect weight loss, we won’t discuss those specifics here. We would rather you take from this post that water is an integral part of making your goals attainable. We learned that being consistent with water helps keep our weight management consistent.

When approaching your goals through data you need to keep your water intake stable. For example, if you exercise you will also use water faster than if you don’t. When you exert yourself that water needs to be replenished. Not everyone may realize the same happens with digestion. Without proper hydration, your digestive processes may not be consistent. Because we are not experts, we will defer better-informed sources on the subjects.

• How Much Water To Drink Based On Your Weight
• Drinking Water Helps Weight Loss
• Why Water Is Important

Why is Consistency Important?

In our journey, we found water intake is important to properly understand weight management. As we learned in science class the human body is composed of 60% water. The water is stored in our blood, fat, digestive tract, skin, brain, etc. of our body. If you have been dehydrated you know there are signs that things are going wrong. You feel thirsty, lethargic, have cramps, or have a hard time getting food to, well, move along. As a result, we found if we weren’t consistent, our weight jumped around a lot more.

As an exercise, let’s do some water math. If you are 200 lbs. and are composed of 60% water, 120 lbs. of your weight is derived from water. What would happen if you go camping with friends and forget to pack enough water? Adding to the scenario, you do a little hiking on a hot day. You would expect the outcome would be that you become a little dehydrated but surely survivable. Becoming mildly dehydrated drops your water content to 58%. The delta between 60% and 58% is 2% resulting in 2.4 lbs. of water weight lost. All of that is fine but it does make for noisy and unreliable results tracking.

Don’t Believe Us?

Manipulating water intake in some sports is a way competitors use dehydration to drop 5%-10% of their body weight for a match. The technique is known as water cutting. What they use is intentional extreme dehydration over missing a few glasses but at its’ core, the principles are the same.

DO NOT TRY WATER CUTTING INTENTIONALLY TO LOSE WEIGHT ON YOUR OWN. IT IS DANGEROUS. PEOPLE HAVE DIED USING THIS TECHNIQUE.

When tracking our daily progress, hydration is a real problem we face with weight management. Our home scale won’t be able to distinguish what that 2.4 lbs. is. The reverse may happen if you over-hydrate afterwards. You may see a spike in weight gain. We had to learn to form good habits so we didn’t ride this rollercoaster.

Forming Good Water Habits

Eliminating the variable of water’s impact on weight is fairly easy; be consistent. Here are some simple steps to make that happen:

• Understand your water needs based on your body, exertion levels, and ambient temperatures.
• Find a container to hold that much water ( or a known quantity ).
• Divide the amount of water by some meaningful amount so it can be consumed during waking hours.
• Set a timer or reminder on your smartphone, kitchen timer, or other audible device.
• Every time the timer goes off, pour the amount of water you divided the day into a glass and drink it.

If this seems prescriptive and rigid it’s because at first, it is! Why?

This is building muscle memory and good habits. Habits are formed by repeating the same thing again and again over time. You’re making a positive life change here by forming this new habit but it takes repetition to stick.

Having the container helps because it is a visual record of how you are meeting your goals over the day. The goal here is consistency over time.

All Liquids Are Not Equal

One gotcha here worth talking about. Not all liquid is created equal. 24 oz of lemonade is not the same hydration as 24 oz of water. Lemonade, soda, and other liquids have other ingredients in them such as sugars, pulp, salts, etc. that don’t hydrate the same as water. It doesn’t mean don’t drink them but they may or may not bring other things to the party. We will discuss this more in a post on hidden calories.

Also, hydration needs for exercise, heat, digestion, etc. may cause the need for some daily changes to the amount you need. If you are doing a 10-mile hike in 80 F weather, you are going to need more water. Drink it. This point is to be consistent as much as possible but needs may spike from time to time.

Eliminating variables like water levels in your weight management journey helps you understand what your body is doing better. It makes your weigh-ins, which we will talk about later, more accurate and helpful.

You now have another tool for managing your weight should you choose to use it. Consistently drinking the water your body requires will make understanding what is impacting your weight easier. With most things, the goal is to create good habits so you recognize when you are deviating from them.

The post How To Be Consistent With Water first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

You need to understand calories to manage your weight. If you want to manage your weight it means you have to know what your caloric intake is every day. Does that sound daunting or just simply annoying? It is both annoying and at first daunting but it does get easier over time. By the end of this post, we would like you to feel it is necessary and somewhat easy to do.

Making it Easier Through Technology

We found using calorie-counting applications is the easiest and most painless way to do this. While people have legitimate privacy concerns with sharing data, let’s put this in perspective. If you binge eat a quart of triple chocolate ice cream one day, and someone finds out, who cares? I once ate a pound of peanut butter while watching a late-night movie. Not my finest moment but who cares what happened other than me and my doctor?

The Primary Thing to Look for in Phone Apps Is:

• The amount of data they have on food items.
• An ability to scan a barcode or use a picture to log.
• The ability to show the nutritional breakdown of calories.
• Prompts, reminders, and other ways to keep you honest.
• Has the ability to change the serving size.
• Allows you to create your entries.
• A way to tie it in with other wearable technology such as a step or heart rate monitor.

There are many apps out there. We have had success with MyFitnessPal and Lose It. You should seek what works for you based on your needs, phone, and weight management goals. You need to identify what you want the app to do as they vary significantly in price. Before setting one up or buying one, make sure you do your research.

What to Log and Why

When Logging There are Some Tenants to Live By:

• Log what you eat right after you eat it to be accurate.
• Log everything even if it is small like the two teaspoons of sugar in your coffee.
• When there are multiple listings for something, choose the average.
• Have a couple of brews planned for the evening? Log them and build them in before you have them.
• Don’t try to log things such as fats your home meal was cooked unless it was an ingredient in the recipe.

After two weeks of logging, we learned exactly how our calorie intake lined up with our goals. If you can do it for 30 days it becomes a life-changing habit. Why make such a claim? We are lied to by labels, portion sizes, and add-ons that we don’t realize have a high impact on our calorie intake.

You will Probably See Some Surprises

We all want to eat healthy. Many of us will choose a salad as an entree for that reason. There is a misconception that salads are low-calorie or calorie-free. Unfortunately, that is not always true. Dressing, cheese, and nuts all are calorie-dense. Let’s compare a national brand of Ranch vs Oil and vinegar. For a serving size of two tablespoons, the Ranch is 130 calories while the oil and vinegar is 160.

What about those McNuggets? I love McDonalds! When you order a 10-piece McNuggets it is only 410 calories. You also add 3 BBQ sauces and a large lemonade to complete the meal. Those items don’t come without calories. 3 BBQ sauces are 135 calories, and the lemonade is 250. Your meal is now 795 calories. Often this is the case with calorie hidden add-ons and we don’t think about it such as fry sauce. You can find more information here.

With Honesty Comes Actionable Data

We will talk later more about this subject of where hidden calories are. The point of logging everything is to make you aware of what you are eating. The devil is in the details. We never realized how much this was happening until we forced ourselves to go through this exercise. That being said, this is about math and not a nutritional analysis. 795 calories is simply 795 calories. It isn’t wrong or right, it’s calories. You may want them, you may not.

Starting to count your calories gives you the power to understand yourself, what you eat, and where hidden gotchas are. Through the simple ( though annoying at first ) task of logging your food, you become empowered. This will lead to understanding how your goals are met or not met by something you finally control; caloric intake.

Where we have landed is that you now have a tool that helps you manage your weight. It isn’t easy. You have to have some level of discipline to do it. It requires being honest with yourself. Up until now, it was easy to fail in managing your weight. Advertising, portion sizes, labels, and hidden calories all conspire against us.

The post Honesty Goes Great With Calories first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Many of us want control over our weight. Some people want to lose weight. Other people want to gain weight. When we reach our target weight all of us want to maintain that weight. In this post, we will explore one of the most simple concepts in weight management. What we want you to walk away with is an understanding of a couple of really easy concepts to keep in mind the next time you think about your weight goals and meal planning

Consider the Following Traditional Axioms

The formula to gain weight is (Ci > Cn) * t == Wg. If you continually ingest (Ci) more calories than your body needs (Cn), over time (t), your body will store some of those. That is how you gain weight (Wg).

The formula to lose weight is (Ci < Cn) * t == Wl. If you continually ingest (Ci) fewer calories than your body needs (Cn), over time (t), your body will use what it stores to supplement those calories. That is how you lose weight (Wl).

The formula to maintain your current weight is (Ci == Cn) * t == Wm. If you continually ingest (Ci) the same calories that your body needs (Cn), over time (t), your body will remain in balance. That is how you maintain your weight (Wm).

That’s a VERY Broad Generalization

Those statements are very broad and sweeping. In reality, there are many factors to calculate how and why we gain or lose weight. We can’t start with all the nuances though. It is the nuances that take time to understand as they are based on your body and goals, not anyone else’s. This is also why so many people struggle with weight management.

Also, these axioms do not hold 100% true when applied to single forms of nutrition. Getting all of your daily 2,000 calories from bread is not going to have the same outcomes as eating 2,000 calories from fish. Here we need to make some assumptions at the beginning of our journey. These calories come from balanced sources including proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.

We will revisit these nuances later in our journey because they are important. Right now there are so many they will become distractions.

Your Understanding of Yourself Is Key

Understanding what our bodies need in terms of calories to manage our weight is key. Everyone is so different with different lifestyles, body sizes, and genetics. You may be a male competitive gamer in your teens that incurs long periods of sitting. At the opposite end of the spectrum, may be competitive bodybuilding women over 50. You may drive a truck for a living. Someone else’s vocation may be a logger. Everyone requires something different calorie-wise.

Where to start then with the axioms? Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR. BMR is a calculation based on height, weight, gender assigned at birth, and activity level. The calories it calculates are what your body needs to survive (pump blood, breathe, etc.) plus the calories you need for the amount of physical activity you do.

How to Use the BMR

You must decide how to manage your intake to get the gains you want. For me, and my timelines, to reduce my weight I started with reducing by 1000 calories a day from roughly 2700 to 1700 to drop a pound a week. That turned into a roller-coaster ride of false starts and stops. It wasn’t sustainable. I would find out later that this was more about not being truly honest with what my intake and exercise levels were.

In the spirit of honesty that we learned the hard way, here is a link to what activity is and isn’t.

The key is time and consistency. You should keep a daily log of what you eat calorie-wise. You should pick a realistic amount under/over your BMR + adjusted calorie needs for activity. Too little and you won’t see enough change. Too much and it won’t be sustainable. This also means weighing yourself regularly.

Learn to Experiment

One thing we feel is an important thing to make this work for you. Think of it as an experiment, not something that is one-and-done. You gather data and look at it. There is no failure. If something isn’t working, change one thing, and re-evaluate in a week. Did that change help? If not, that is simply more data, not a failure. Experiment, collect data, evaluate, learn, and experiment again until something changes. In that change, you will see what works for you.

At this point, you have the tools to understand how to gain, lose, or maintain your weight. These equations were the spark of a bigger journey and life change for us. They were the realization that some of the most complicated things could be simplified and distilled.

After many years of trial and error, we started making powerful connections to other parts of our lives we could simplify through some basic research, understanding, and taking actionable steps based on the outcomes we wanted.

The post Managing Weight Is Easy Math first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.