You can easily quantify how much you weigh or how much money you make. Some goals that maximize your potential are not as easy as they seem to quantify. For example, ‘I want to be in good shape’, but putting a pin in for an outcome is hard. Because of those challenges, we decided to take a different approach to how we viewed success, blocks, and missteps via habits.

How This Idea Came About?

It was simple. We were looking for new hobbies during the winter when the weather wasn’t conducive to our regular sports and traveling. Being frugal and conscious of waste, we didn’t want to do things to keep busy. We had a few conversations back and forth about things we wanted to do, but we were worried about cost and space. 

In one of those conversations, we realized we didn’t want another hobby to do another ‘thing. ‘ There had to be more to it than simply entertaining ourselves. Those activities aren’t bad, but we have enough of them. It had to be something that created value in our lives. 

Value Add was Key

The idea of creating value stuck. Value was the key to unlocking a more philosophical approach to all our activities. As we refined this idea, we saw larger implications of that approach. Value was tangible even if it wasn’t easily quantifiable. As with any investment, we wanted to understand how we would be rewarded so we could rank our activities. If you spend time doing something, you want to be rewarded by it in return. The better the return, the larger the reward.

We decided to start ranking our activities by value. Did we get the same value out of watching a movie that we did out of going to the gym? What was the investment for each time? How did the outcomes of doing the activity benefit us? We started to realize that not all activities benefit us. Some activities we found valuable, but they were more maintenance than fun hobbies. 

Out of this, the three habits were born. So what are they?

The Three Habits of Us All

There are three habits all of us have. That is not a judgment because what you value and do is up to you. We only label them to help us define ourselves. The habits are:

• Creation: Habits that create something.
• Stability: Habits that maintain our current state.
• Waste: Habits that have negative sides to them.

Let’s get to defining them.

Habits of Creation

These things we do add value to our lives by creating new things for ourselves. If you garden and grow vegetables to eat, then gardening is a habit of creation for you. You will usually gain something from sitting on the couch and reading a book. That makes reading a habit of creation for you. You practice a creation habit whenever you seek an opportunity to advance a goal. 

Habits of Stability

We must follow these habits, but may not enjoy them or create something new. For example, cleaning the house every week is necessary, but may not add additional value to your life. Another example may be going grocery shopping, which is required to eat. Essentially, any time you perform maintenance or routine tasks necessary to support your life, you practice a habit of stability. 

Habits of Waste

Habits of waste are things we do that create waste. When you go out to eat, only eat half and throw the rest away; you waste food and money. If you have a gym membership, go three times a week, and never push yourself, you get nothing for your time and money. That is what we would call creating waste. Sounds a bit preachy, right?

We’re not Preaching! It is—not—about preaching. It is about honestly identifying areas where we waste our time. Why? Because those areas don’t add value, they still cost us and keep us from doing things we value more. They are, however, sometimes necessary as a tradeoff.

Let’s examine when they are necessary.

You may need to eat out if you are busy working all week, spend your entire Saturday doing yard work, or take the kids to soccer practice. It may be that the only option to eat out is somewhere that serves a larger portion size than you want. Could you have made dinner? Sure! But in this case, you are spending so much of your time with habits of creation that you need to balance them with some waste to stay productive and possibly sane. 

That’s How We Use Them

We use these to review a week or even a year to gauge how things are going. Did we spend more time in habits that created waste, or did we spend more time in habits of creation? Are we balancing the three? When we plan a week and look at the tasks ahead of us, what is the ratio of each outcome of our actions? 

TL;DR: Are we making headway, staying stable, or stuck in a destructive pattern? 

This also applies to longer-term goals. Not all goals are quantifiable or quickly reachable, and life is not linear. Just because we want to do something doesn’t mean something won’t block our path. Things like health, family, and economics are external forces that can hinder our short-term progress. We don’t always control those events but can control how we react. 

The Negative Cycle That These Avoid

The biggest challenge for many of us is recognizing progress. Learning and growing can be frustrating and even painful processes. Many times, to succeed, you must know by failure. When focused on the short term, those failures can lead us to feelings of negativity. We are wired for negativity, and that wiring protects us in the short term. To succeed and grow, we need mechanisms to rewire us to see opportunities. Canonizing these three habits can help us with that rewiring. 

When we try and fail, it is easy for us to assume we learned nothing. Worse yet, there are times in life when we can lose track of our gains due to the duration or challenges of our goals. I will never be an Iron Chef; however, I did learn to cook and do meal planning. It was not a linear progression of learning. There were times I filled the house with acrid smoke, and we ended up going out for fast food.

I was, and always will, be learning. That failure and the lessons learned from it could have been wasteful. In these cases, my ‘Habit of Creation’ is to note what went wrong, why, and how to avoid it the next time. In that act, we take something that was a waste and make it something that creates learning. 

Progress Indicators

Because life and learning aren’t linear, it isn’t always easy to know if we are succeeding in our goals. When we review progress on our goals, we look at what is trending. Seeing more of the week or month with more Creation than Waste indicates that we are progressing, even if we have another year or more to accomplish our goals. This is what some would call ‘working a plan’. 

If life forces a pause due to financial, medical, or other external forces, we may see an uptick in our Stability over Creation. That is still a positive outcome over waste. Sometimes, we might have to wait and see what little we can do alone. For example, economic downturns are not something you, as an individual, can do anything about. What is important is that you can keep a positive mental picture by being able to see what you are doing to stabilize yourself and reduce waste.

Our Check In

We keep a log occasionally, especially when unsure of our progress. Every week, we take 15 minutes to write out 2-3 of each habit we have acted on. For example, we might have done research that turned into a blog post. Out of that research came learning. Maybe we planted a garden but underestimated the time needed to do that activity, so we ate out. Out of that, maybe there was a mix of waste and creation. 

Over time, we want to see a more create-than-waste trend. If we know no stability, we probably let some things go that we shouldn’t. While we don’t love doing maintenance work, sometimes we must stop and change our lawn mower’s oil. Maintenance doesn’t stop there. It may also mean doing a portfolio tune-up to ensure your financial goals are met. Stability comes in many shapes and sizes. 

Wrapping Up

We discussed three types of habits to help guide our definition of progress. By canonizing tasks into Habits of Creation, Stability, and Waste, we can help measure our progress. We can use these as a reality check when we feel we aren’t making progress or learning. It is easy to get discouraged without feedback on successes. These tools can help us define success and overcome that problem to stay focused and positive, or make changes so that we can be.

The post How To Build A Road To Better Habits 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.

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.

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.

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.