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.

We travel a lot on weekends. For us, it was normal to eat home-prepared meals all week, and then eat out on the road. That was a simple tradeoff for us. We couldn’t or didn’t want to maintain a specific schedule or may have no way to heat something we made on the road. Let’s face it, road food was also a treat.

We also tracked our weight every week. If you are traveling, scales weren’t always in the picture for weekends. What we noticed would be Friday we would be at weight X. On Monday morning we would be up 2-4 lbs. By Tuesday or Wednesday, we will be back at X. Maddening to see what happens every week. When we decided to start tracking our calories, we started to see an obvious trend. 

On the weekends our calorie intake went up. Yay! We found our smoking gun. It turns out not so much. Since we know the 1000-calorie rule has lost favor, we knew weight gain wasn’t that instantaneous. Ok, maybe you would gain a couple of ounces but not up to 4 lbs from having some extra calories over a weekend.   

The Bigger Picture

It would be easy to simply place the gain on the additional food. We did that at first and tried lowering our calorie intake because math is math. After a bit of time with no changes, we saw no differences. We decided there had to be more at work than just food. After thinking about it we realized our weekly routine was drastically different from our weekend routine.  Some things we noticed the differences and changes:

• Water intake was lower.
• Physical exertion was higher.
• We drank more alcohol on weekends. 
• Sleep patterns were disrupted. 
• We ate food that was higher in fat and salt. 
• As physical exertion increased so did hunger which pushed our calorie intake higher.
• A completely sedentary pattern of traveling for 3-5 hours either via car, plane, etc.

How this happens is pretty easy and it isn’t always obvious. Let’s say we get up early for a raft trip. We spend a day in hot weather and probably don’t drink as much water as we should to compensate. For food, we bring some salty snacks like jerky or nuts that can survive the warm day. Getting in and out of the boat, going down the river, etc. uses muscles in ways we don’t usually use them. That’s just the day. 

After the trip, we stop at the local restaurant and wolf down a huge burger to compensate for the light eating day. That night we would sit out late on the deck have an extra glass of wine or beer and reminisce about the day. The next day we would be starving as our bodies are now repairing muscle on food that probably isn’t balanced. Let’s face it, it wasn’t the kale chips we would be reaching for at that time.

We tried changing up our food to be ‘healthier’ but it didn’t help. Ordering a chicken footlong from Subway instead of a big burger didn’t help. Oddly enough, we noticed lower weekend gains when we ate fried chicken and jo-jos as an emergency meal from a gas station hot case than we did trying to eat healthy choices. For us, it still was about controlling portion size and finding hidden calories such as are in sports drinks.

As we monitored our weight bumps, we would occasionally see the opposite result. There were weekends when we would have the exact opposite result. We would start the weekend high, and then, magically, find our weight the same or lower after the weekend. As we dug through our data we found the weekends we stayed with smaller portions, we had less dramatic fluctuations. There was more to it, however.

At first, we thought it was the extra calories which included more salt and fat. We also theorized it was due to additional calories. Sometimes we thought it was the extra physical exertion putting our bodies in ‘threat’ mode to store calories.  In some ways, we felt these were all contributors however not any one of these on their own seemed like a true ‘smoking gun’ to point at as a cause.

Want an Answer?

We do too and we have a theory but no simple answer. While not doctors or dieticians we were pretty sure it wasn’t simply the calories we ate. We did some experimentation and research and found a correlation between keeping our calorie intake moderated to what we have during the week and the weekend. Shocker, correct? Not really. It didn’t tell the full story and we still had some fairly large swings in weight despite modifying our eating habits.

We noticed we could eat more and still not have our weekend ‘bump’ sometimes. On those weekends we consumed extra fiber and made sure we consumed water. Hotter weather and alcohol seem to also contribute to the bump. The paradox was we were expending more calories, eating only a little more, and gaining 2-4 lbs. It didn’t make sense. 

Your GI Tract

Our GI tract is responsible for moving everything we eat and drink from inlet to outlet so to speak. Most of us have heard it takes anywhere from 6-24 hours to process our food. We know this to be true since we get hungry sometimes fairly soon after we eat a meal. If you have ever had food poisoning or the 24-hour flu, you know symptoms show up rather quickly. Those numbers are both less than a weekend correct? Yes, but what we think of as digestion is only part of the process. 

For some people, the full food ride from the fork to the bathroom can take between 14 and 73 hours according to Healthline.  That means whatever you have eaten may stay with you for up to 3 days. Like any machine, when we are operating routinely, with known inputs, we expect known outputs. If we change that routine on the weekend by increasing load (eating more) while decreasing lubrication (water and fiber) we can’t expect the routine processing times. 

That is our Empirical Theory

Let’s play our raft adventure back and see how this can happen. In our example, hotter temps and lower water intake can increase digestion time. Having salty snacks that are low in fiber, high fat, and protein can cause digestion to take longer. The use of alcohol can cause dehydration as well. All of this can slow digestion. We then add more calories in the form of a burger and fries than we are used to processing. All of that can cause our GI Tract to come under additional pressure and slow down. 

If you are carrying extra weight on Monday and Tuesday after a weekend binge this is one plausible cause. As we started to see this pattern we became more focused on how to stay hydrated and eat more appropriately when on the road or out doing our sports. We tried to keep as much of our routine, well, routine as we could. Most importantly, we learned to keep hydrated and get more fiber to help mitigate the ‘weekend bump’.

This is still an ongoing experiment for us. When we can come up with more concrete findings we plan on updating this post. Until we do, do your experiments and research. At worst, you will find what is causing you that weekend weight gain in your situation.

Ewww…gross

We are biological creatures with biological processes. It is neither gross nor pretty. What we are talking about is something that is part of being human, animal, and most other living organisms. Digestion is simply the breakdown and separation of food into what we need and what we don’t. Sometimes, you have to simply be ok talking about it so you can understand its effects on us. 

Wrapping up

We talked about how the GI Tract is impacted by changes in routines. We have also drawn an empirical correlation between GI Tract health, changes in routine, and weekend weight gain. In the articles we have linked, there are many steps on how to avoid the ‘bump’ so we won’t re-iterate them. While there is no quick answer, this post has given some insight into one possible cause of our weekend weight gain. Do your research to decide if that is what is affecting you. 

The post Do We Really Get Big On The Weekend 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.

Cooking Only Once in a While was Wastefull

We have always cooked our meals in some fashion or another. When younger it was simply a necessity. As time went by, it was more about food as fun. This change led us to attempt impractical recipes and to a lot of waste of ingredients. Even using one of my favorite magazines, Cooks Illustrated, we had a lot of wasted ingredients. We started to find we had a ¼ jar of this and ½ a jar of that left over from recipes. The more we saw of this, the less practical cooking ourselves became. As a result, if we wanted something special we went out. 

Both wastefully cooking at home and eating out had the same effects on us. They both blew up our calorie budget. Each was also costing us a lot of money. The latter one we will dig into more in another post. As I said in the earlier post the portion problem was such an epiphany, this is why. 

Cooking a Few more Portions Saves Time and Money

We decided to re-learn how to cook and plan. Why? We realized it takes roughly the same time to produce 10 servings of something as it does two. It’s that simple. We would go on to realize once we got good at it, it took about the same time to go out for a meal.

Don’t think it was easy giving up eating at restaurants. Eating out was another dopamine hit for us. It is for many people. Most people will also feel that they can’t cook or make restaurant-quality food. We learned the opposite. I can make a decent bowl of ramen and also can make some mean corn dogs. It took a while to get there but, hopefully, we can shorten the journey for some.

Would You Pay for a Horse You Can’t Ride?

We also started to look at this through a completely different lens. In our case, we were paying for calories we didn’t want. Most of us realize there is a cost to calories. We associate that cost with weight gain or loss. What most don’t equate is the cost of those calories you pay for but don’t eat. 

When you buy food at a restaurant you are paying a premium for the calories. The reason it is a premium is that the food is created for you by others. Would you pay for someone to paint your house and your deck if you didn’t have a deck? Of course not! Then why pay for food you aren’t going to eat?

At the Core of the Issue was Waste

We started to identify both of these issues. Ultimately our calorie budget made us use restaurants as little as possible. We recognized that the cost of the calories we were wasting was very high. As a result, we started to think we should invest our money in ourselves. We decided to get some decent kitchen equipment and start to cook at home more consistently.

Truth be told, it wasn’t just the calories or unpredictable portion sizes of restaurants. We learned quickly that counting calories was a pain. What made it worse was never knowing what was in the food. How much butter was in those mashed potatoes? Was that 4 or 5 ounces of fries? Not only was counting calories becoming more tedious, but it was also becoming completely unreliable.

Our Solution Was Imitating MREs and TV Dinners…Sort Of

Loving or hating the military is up to you. We feel we can learn from anyone. The one thing the military knows is logistics and the importance of food. The MRE or Meal Ready to Eat was the US evolution of food rations. It is designed to be stored for a long time and then used in the field. It has a description of everything in it nutrition-wise. What a brilliant idea for counting calories! Supposedly not too bad tasting as well? You know what, they weren’t too far from a civilian TV dinner either.

Now I’ve never had an MRE but I will make a huge assumption my food was better than a standard MRE. I know what I cook is way better than the TV dinners. We know the idea of an MRE doesn’t sound great to some. To be clear, we weren’t out to re-create them, we only wanted to use the concept.

We started creating our meals and storing them. This was a great way for us to create portions we wanted. We froze most things. The microwave was elevated in importance in our daily routine. They were easy to take to work. We also could put the dish in an app and not have to enter a guess for what we were eating. Because we made it ourselves, we could create it as a meal in our apps, and calorie counting became as easy as selecting it.

Wrapping Up

We had begun solving the problems of waste, and portion size, and making counting calories easier. This led to performing meal planning and learning a system for it. We will discuss how we worked through that in a post that follows.

Hopefully, at the end of this post, you can understand some of the challenges of eating out. It becomes an issue of control of calories and waste. While our previous post details come of the ways to work in eating out, overall, it wasn’t sustainable on a daily or even a few times a week. By re-learning to cook and package our meals we gained back money, time, and predictability. All of this helped us stay on track for our goals.

The post Cooking Simple For Better Control first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

We used to like going out to eat. It was convenient, it was fun and it was entertainment. We also travel by car often which requires either carrying pre-made food or eating out. We generally opted for eating out. Over time we learned this was problematic for our calorie budget. In this post, we will talk about the problem we faced and some tricks to deal with it.

As our life became busy we learned to depend on eating out more and more. Being only two of us, it didn’t seem that expensive. It also made sense with our on-the-go lifestyle. As we started to look at our calorie needs, things changed. While our goals were primarily weight loss, the same problem occurs for people adding weight. We started to realize that portion sizes and ingredients are completely unpredictable. 

Restaurants are Business Competing for Your Dollar

The draw of a restaurant is not just about food. A restaurant is an experience. It is a place where we hang out with friends. We go there to have something unique we may not be able to make at home. We may need a place on the road to grab something. It may also be a place to flaunt some extra cash or reward someone. It’s part of our culture in the US and around the world. 

A restaurant is a business. To keep its customers happy it must provide great service, good food, and most importantly; value. Value is subjective. What many people see as value is quantity; how much did I get for my money? Don’t believe me? Ask yourself why menus have sizes and quantities on items like steaks and prawns and not broccoli. They aren’t there for accounting purposes. The reason they are there is so you know the cost of the additional spend on protein.

  Restaurants have been in their own arms race around portion size for years. We have been somewhat trained to want more. You can read about things like Big Mac vs Whopper here. According to the History Channel, Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas also invented 3 sizes of hamburgers just to get people to buy the middle size more often than the small one which increased his revenue. 

Cool Story, so What?

  Why is this a problem for people on a calorie budget? 

• We found portion sizes were completely unpredictable. 
• Understanding the calories of the meal was hard since we didn’t know how it was made

  Coming from families that chastised people for wasting food, we also ran into the problem of not feeling good about leaving food on the table. We will discuss this in another post as a different problem to be addressed. The point is the usual advice you receive is to save half for later. When traveling it wasn’t possible to take home leftovers due to spoilage dangers of being in the zone too long.

It was More than the Calories We were Wasting

As an aside, remember you are paying for a restaurant experience. That includes the server, food, experience, etc. As a result, you are also paying a premium for the calories you are eating. We don’t buy a gallon of milk if we only need a pint. Why? We don’t want to throw our money away on things we don’t use. Ask yourself then, why would you pay for the extra calories you don’t need? 

Hidden in this little epiphany that we were paying for calories sparked some very large changes for us in our lives. It became something more fundamental than weight. We will discuss this in another post but do ponder what your costs are here.  

Some Tips to Help

 The answer you expect when discussing calorie goals and eating out is the normal draconian battle cry Stop Eating Out! That just isn’t sustainable for most in our society. We had to account for our eating out occasionally. Here is how we approached it.

• Review the restaurant online and look at the pictures people took. You can get a good idea of the portion sizes from those pictures.
• While you are seated glance around at plate sizes. The portions will match the plate size. 
• Wait to order until you see someone’s meal delivered. You will get an idea of portion sizes from what you see brought from the kitchen.
• Ask the server for the sizes. Some servers will simply tell you the plate can feed two. 
• Read the menu. When you order a burger realize that portion size follows patty size. There will be a difference in overall plate size of a ¼ lb hamburger and a ½ lb burger.
• Control portion sizes through appetizers. There have been a few times we have decided to split some wings and mozzarella sticks over a full-blown entree.
• Split the plate with someone. This allows you to control how much you are getting. 
• Ask them to leave off or replace a side. I don’t need buttered bread with my hashbrowns. 
• Make only one meal when ordering a combo at a restaurant. We often share a side of fries and drinks at the local fast food and roadside burger joints. 
• Ask for a take-out container immediately if something is too big. This gives you a chance to split the plate for later.
• Leave food on the table if needed. While we both hate doing this, our other goals come first.

But I Want to Gain

This post only seemingly addresses portion sizes that are too large. For people trying to add weight, this may not be a problem. A basic search of Google will show that 100g of home-prepared fries are about half the calories of 100g of restaurant fries. The reality is, you don’t know until you look it up or try to log it in a food app. 100 grams is roughly 3.5 ounces which generally doesn’t cover those portions at many restaurants. Make that 7 oz of fries and cup of gravy such as an order of Poutine and you may hit 800 calories.

We are not nutritionists or medical professionals and don’t feel right discussing nutrition with other people. Still, we think most people would agree that those calories aren’t exactly balanced and you may want to make a different choice.

This post didn’t fully address the problem of travel and restaurants. We will discuss where fast food, food trucks, and gas station hot cases can help when on the road. We have found there is a time and place for them.

The portion problem is real for a lot of us. This post should have given you some tools on how to eat out but maintain a calorie budget. You don’t need to stop eating out. By doing some planning and observations, you can help maintain your goals more easily. Simply being cognizant of the portion problem will help you.

The post Practical Ways To Use Restaurants first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Portion or Serving Size, which is the correct way to discuss what you eat? We use portion size because there is an established convention of serving and serving size. Portions are a way to capture what we eat, not the serving size. We discuss why serving size is based on a different calorie per day intake than is currently used here.

Why is it so Small?

I have a frozen lasagna I like. I also love a certain brand of pot pie. Both of these items were in the frozen food aisle at our local grocery store. As we became more conscious of our goals with our calories, we started reading labels. As we alluded to in an earlier post, they weren’t what they seemed to be. Becoming more curious we started some experiments.

We bought and cooked one of the lasagnas. We then proceeded to portion it out based on what the company called a serving size. It was tiny when compared to what we were used to eating. It was also tiny compared to what I was used to at my favorite restaurants. We had the same issue with the pot pie. 

You Can’t Eat That Junk Then Right…Maybe?

That means we stopped eating it, correct? Not the lasagna. The lasagna serving size was simple to adjust the portion size by cutting it differently. It did make the pot pie a non-starter as it wasn’t sharable. This led us to another understanding. The nutrition label changes based on how much you eat. If you aren’t eating the recommended serving size, you aren’t getting what is on that label. 

In the case of the lasagna, we simply did some math and adjusted to our meal size. Their serving size was about 330 calories. We wanted 500 per meal. That was 1.5 times their serving size. That meant everything on the label went up by 50%. If there were 20g of protein per serving, our 500-calorie portion had 30g. If it had 1000 grams of sodium, that went up to 1,500 grams for our portion size. 

Recipes Have Serving Sizes Too

We also started looking at the recipes we were cooking. Most recipes online have the number of servings they make, the calories in them, and a rough nutrition breakdown.  We got downright geeky about it and started to weigh our portions for a while. Think that is a little too far? It was one of the most important exercises we ever did to get an idea of what we were eating.

If you are staying on a calorie budget, spend 2 or 3 weeks weighing portions. Knowing what 4 oz of chicken or beef looks like is important. Love eating mashed potatoes? Weigh out a portion of them to see what it looks like. Gravy is calorie dense so it is best to know what ½ cup of gravy looks like. 

No matter if you are losing, gaining, or trying to maintain your weight it is very difficult without knowing portion size. Because we aren’t selling a new diet or a miracle pill we won’t say it is easy. It is a pain in the backside to do this. Once you do it you will never look at food shows, restaurants, and even what you make the same. 

Go Forth and Feed!

Once you understand portion sizes, the calories, and the nutrition in them, you are empowered to control your eating. You can now make more informed choices. Want a protein boost, you know what that looks like on your plate. Carb loading for an event, you know how much pasta that is. At a company party, you have an idea of the difference between the tuna sandwich and the roast beef sandwich.

In this post, we covered how to start understanding portion sizes. We have also covered why understanding them is so important to weight management. Lastly, we have covered how nutrition is based on portion size and why changing that size changes the nutritional value of that meal. You should now feel empowered to make decisions based on your needs.

The post Serving Size Is Not The Best Guide first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

We are constantly bombarded with pseudo-facts and misinformation. As consumers, we care about product tradeoffs so we can make informed decisions. The domain of food is challenging as we can’t compare two items, even with the same name, in terms of calories. In this post, we will give you some ideas on how to compare disparate but similar items. 

First, Were Sticking to Calories

This post does not pick on any company or food choice. Our purpose is to raise awareness of the disparity of claims and perceptions of serving sizes versus what is actually on nutritional data or labels. As a result, we leave debating the nutritional value of any type of food to others. Whether you choose fast or organic vegan or anything in between is up to you.

Incongruencies of Agency Goals

First, let’s note a difference. Nutrition labels use the FDA 2,000 calories a day which was the old standard of measuring the amount of calories the average adult needs. That is the overall generalization for how much the average person needs to consume a day. The USDA is now using MyPlate. You may recognize it to be similar to the BMR work we discussed. The plan also moves away from the food pyramid to what is considered a visualization of what should be on our plates. The issue is the calories don’t match.

Because this is not a post on nutrition, it doesn’t help or hurt what we are going to discuss. We bring it up as another point of how people are set up to fail through packaging. When you read a label and it says serving size containing x, y, and z you expect it to be accurate. If there is 30% of your daily protein in the serving, it should be 30%. If your calorie intake needs to be 2,400 calories, not 2,000, then it is only 24% of your needed protein.

The more we learned, the less trust we had in labels and experts. There were simply too many incongruencies across all of them. All the incongruencies pointed to the same problem. It is about you as a person and your goals and you have to be an informed consumer.

A Serving May Only be Part of a Package

Serving size is where many hidden calories lie. You will see a package advertising that says only 100 or 150 calories per serving. But what is the serving size? Bags of chips, crackers, and individually packed items are usually the foods you see this on. In one package of Milton crackers we like, the serving size was only 2 crackers for 70 calories.  Comparing this with Gardetos we also like, it was 150 calories for a 1/2 cup.

You may ask why does that matter and what point are we making? By logging our calories we quickly learned our expectations of portion sizes were way off. When we buy a small bag of chips, rarely do we eat half and leave the rest for another day. I don’t think I have ever eaten just 2 crackers. As the Lay’s potatoes chip commercial used to claim ‘I bet you can’t eat just one’. We found truth in that statement.

What you Drink Impacts your Calories

Similarly, let’s talk about alcohol. We like to drink beer so we budget it into our calories. Calories from beer are based on the alcohol content of that beer. When we choose a can of Coors Light or Bud Light, that is roughly 100-120 calories per can. If we go out to a pub or restaurant and have a pint of something like an IPA that may jump to 300 or more.  If I enjoy 3 IPAs by the fire some Saturday night that could be 900 calories. Realizing that you can choose which is best for your calorie budget. 

Reading the Tea Leaves of Menus

You may ask, why a meal at a restaurant may range from 600-1200 calories. The reason is that it includes all the possible combinations of sizes, sides, sauces, or drink choices. Let’s look at two well-known chains. Both of them do a great job of having nutrition labels available but they also both can be confusing. Understanding the total calories of what you have eaten is challenging.

Breaking it Down

By Ingredients

  A Subway Chicken Bacon Ranch 6” on multi-grain bread in 530 calories. Let’s add Pepper Jack cheese and some Creamy Sriracha dressing to it. That bumps the 6” to  620 calories. Bread is all within 10-20 calories of each other so we can have it on anything we like with it. Eat the whole thing like I used to? That would be roughly 1240 calories excluding drinks, chips, cookies, or anything else. Great if you have the budget for it, bad if you don’t.

By Meal Choices

 In contrast, a McDonald’s Big Mac, Medium Fries, and Medium Coke weigh in at roughly 1130 calories when you include ketchup. Switch that to small fries and Diet Coke and we are at 830 calories. That is 210 more than the Subway 6” but less than the 410 less than the 12”. What this starts to show is how important portion size is in setting a calorie budget. We will touch on that in a later post as well.

But They are Consistent

 While fast food has been villainized by many, the reality is, their whole goal is consistency. What you order at one restaurant will be the same as another calorie-wise. Consistency is an advantage of eating these places which we will discuss in another post. In terms of nutrition and taste, well, those are not the subject of this blog. Our goal is strictly around weight management for now. 

But We Only Eat ‘Healthy’ Food

Of course, we are all health conscious so many turn away from processed foods. We want fruit juice and a healthy snack like pistachios instead of all this booze and fast food. Maybe we can add in half a cup of  2% cottage cheese. Based on calories sourced through Google, a cup of OJ is roughly 140 calories. We also found a cup of pistachios is roughly 690 and the cottage cheese is 100 calories. At 930 calories that is about on par with our Big Mac Meal. Whether it is healthier or a better choice is up to others.

Learning this made me grumpy because I love nuts. Pistachios, walnuts, almonds, peanuts (yes, not a true nut, but close enough). I could go eat them all day. To meet my personal goals I had to change how many I ate. I didn’t stop eating them, just the amount and frequency. An aside to think about. Candy bars were marketed as a meal replacement during the Depression. Nutritionally maybe not but you can see it from a pure calorie point of view. Mr. Goodbar, which contained peanuts was marketed as a cheap ‘protein-rich’ meal.

One more for you salad enthusiasts.  A Caesar salad with 4 oz of grilled chicken and a roll can come in at a hefty 760 calories. The salad can be as high as 470 calories, the chicken 170, and a roll of roughly 120. Add butter to that roll and we are in the range of a Big Mac Meal.

Don’t Take Anything at Face Value

The takeaway here is to trust nothing. There is a lot of misinformation out there. Managing your weight is more about understanding what calories come from what. You are the person empowered to make changes in your eating habits. Just because someone says it’s only 100 calories per serving or is ‘healthy’ doesn’t mean it is what you think it is. 

 The realization of where these hidden calories were was ultimately life-changing for us. It was frustrating to learn we had been wrong in our approach to our calorie budget. It is this type of information that allows us to stay on track through informed decisions. That is why we feel it is so important to share these types of things with others.

The post The Surprise Ways Calories Can Hide 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.