How Many Calories Does Your Body Need?

Food is not our enemy.  It’s a necessary part of living.  Think of your body as a machine and food as the fuel.  To keep your machine functioning in peak condition, you must fuel it with top-quality fuel.

 But the trick is just how much fuel our bodies need to keep all systems running smoothly.  Too often we over-estimate how many calories we should consume in a day.  This is especially true for women.  Turn over any box or can and take a look at the label.  The nutritional information you’ll find stamped on the back is based on a 2,000 calorie diet.  That may be great for your typical man, but women generally need far fewer calories, and excess gets stored in the body as fat.

 Use the Harris-Benedict Equation to calculate your individual caloric needs.  It may seem a tad confusing, but it’s the best way to figure your basal energy requirements (the number of calories needed to maintain your current weight without factoring in physical activity levels).  Notice that the equation is different if you are a male.  We ladies have very different caloric needs than our male friends.

If you are a woman:

655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) – (4.7 x age in years)

If you are a man:

66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) – (6.8 x age in years)

Now take the number you got by completing the above equation and multiply it by the number corresponding to your activity level.

1.2 for sedentary (little to no exercise)

1.375 for lightly active (light exercise 1 to 3 days per week)

1.55 for moderately active (moderate exercise 3 to 5 days per week)

1.7 for very active (hard exercise 6 to 7 days per week)

1.9 for extremely active (hard daily exercise or a very physically demanding job)

If you are severely math disabled you can plug in your weight, height, and age into this super-cool website and the wonders of computer technology do all the ciphering for you.

The number you now have indicates your caloric needs to maintain your current weight.  You can adjust this number to help you achieve your individual goals.

If you want to lose weight, simply subtract 500 calories per day from your number.  This should put you on track to lose about a pound per week, a very realistic goal.

If you want to gain weight, just add 250 to 300 calories per day to your number.

To maintain your current weight, just keep the number as it is.

Happy calculating!

Any questions?  Hit me up in the comments below.

Don't Deprive

The parking lot at the gym was jam packed this morning.  The cardio machines monopolized by a bunch of brand new faces.  The New Year's Resolution Makers are out in droves, bright-faced with the desire to lose weight and shed old habits.  It makes the gym seem like a three ring circus, bustling with activity. 

Unfortunately (or fortuantely, depending on your outlook), it won't last for long.  Most of those optimistic newborn, gym-goers just aren't in it for the long haul.  In fact, the average amount of time a New Year's resolution lasts is only 10 short days. (I heard that figure on the radio, so you KNOW it's true. :-/ ) 

That's because it's hard.  And often people make resolutions because that's what you're supposed to do this time of year, not because they are truly motivated to make lasting life changes.  Plus they go about the whole weightloss thing without solid guidance.  They starve themselves and feel like crap and then decide they were happier before the whole weightloss journey began.

Want to stick with it?  Try adding the adoption of good habits into your resolution list.  Instead of depriving yourself by resolving to "Eat less" or "Give up soda and cookies" try putting a positive spin to it.  Resolve to "drink at least 8 glasses of water each day" or "eat at least 5 servings of vegetables".  It just might provide the psychology you need to stick with the resolution beyond the craziness that is the gym in January. 

And as your new resolutions become good habits, add some more.  Drastic life changes are very hard to stick with long term.  Don't set yourself up for failure.  By adding good habits into your life, you'll be replacing bad ones.  Before you know it, you're on your way to a healthier you.

Be Thankful For Your Body

Women are professionals at being critical.  I think it must be planted somewhere deep within our DNA maybe between the genes that giveus our mothering instinct and chocolate cravings.  Unfortunately that critical gene tends to turn us against ourselves.  That;s right men, even though you may be tired of the nagging about picking up your dirty socks and chewing with your mouth open, we as women are far, far more critical of ourselves than we are of others.  (I know.  Hard to believe, but trust me on this.)

And where are we more critical of oursleves than in the subject of our bodies?  I don't care how fit or buff you may be, if you are a woman, you probably find something to criticize when you look in the mirror. 

My butt is too big.

My butt is too small.

I look like Jaba the Hut.

I look like a bean pole.

And of course....everything in between.

I'm terribly guilty of it, too.  After all, it's there planted in my DNA.  But in the spirit of Thanksgiving and in an attempt to combat unhealthy body image, I challenge you to take some time to make a list of all the wonderful things about your body, a list of gratitude for all that's right with you.  Don't you dare put one thing on there that is remotely negative.  This exercise is about loving your body and appreciating all it does for you.

So here is my own personal list of things about my body for which I am thankful...

1. I am thankful for my five senses.  I am blessed to have eyes that see, ears that hear, a keen sense of smell, skin to feel, and a tongue to taste all of the delicious tastes in the world (especially chocolate cupcakes!).  Not everyone is so blessed.

2.  I am thankful for strong arms.  I can still lift my youngest child and carry her upstairs to bed should she fall asleep on the couch, or heavy boxes, or beat my insanely strong dog at tug-of-war.

3. I am thankful that my internal organs know what to do without me having to think about it.  Can you imagine if you had to consciously think about your heart beating or breathing or digesting.  There wouldn't be much time to think about anything else.

4. I'm thankful for my hips.  They are wider now than before I had children, but they have made a handy little seat for babies and toddlers. 

5. I'm thankful for legs that can run. I know that I have the ability to run should my life (or the life of one of my children) depended on it. 

6. I'm thankful for my feet, feet that can walk, and kick, and balance in tree pose, and all the other marvelous things that feet can do.

7. I'm thankful for my toes for my feet would be almost useless without them.  Plus they are handing for wiggling into cool summer grass, picking up dirty socks from the floor without bending over, and petting the dog while my hands are busy with holding a good book.

8. I'm thankful for my hands that are so incredibly intricate.  Hands are fascinating things.  I can type this blog entry, play the piano, tie a shoe, tickle my children, stir cookie dough, the list could go on forever.

9. I'm thankful that I can bend and squat and twist without pain.

10. I'm thankful that I can breathe deeply.  My mother was recently diagnosed with COPD.  She has trouble breathing at all and needs to carry an inhaler with her everywhere.  I'll take some extra deep breaths for her.

Indian Gym Names

Wouldn't life be so much easier if we all had names like North America's native Indians?  If everyone's name had some sort of meaning about who the person is?  If immediately upon meeting someone you knew something about that person's character, strengths, or interests?  It would probably make remembering people's names a whole heck of a lot easier, too.  No more Toms or Amys or Steves. 

Keith and I have a practice of giving our fellow gym members their own gym names.  This is, of course not meant to be disrespectful to the native people of our country.  It's just easier for us.  There's no possible way we can remember EVERYONE'S names, so each person having their own special name makes it easier for each of us to know immediately who we are talking about.  It's a matter of convenience really.

There's Backwards Elliptical Girl, known as such because she prefers to use the eliptical trainer backwards.  Shaves His Legs Guy and Sir Sweats-a-Lot are pretty self-explanatory.  Strolls on the treadmill is reserved for the woman who barely walks on (you guessed it) the treadmill.  Weighs Herself Everday is so dubbed because, well she weighs herself everyday.  You get the picture.

Today I got to wondering what all of those people chugging away on the cardio machines and hammering out reps on the free weights think of me.  What kind of impression do I make on my fellow tribe members?  What special Indian gym name would they plant on me?

I hope it would be something cool and positive.  Maybe Really Consistent Workout Girl or Killer Triceps Chick.  It's not so much that I want to impress everyone, but more that I want to be an example.  I want to leave a positive impression of myself in a fitness sense in both results and work ethic.  I hope I'm seen as friendly and hardworking and knowledgable.  I hope people look at me and can find some aspect they might (gasp) admire or (double gasp) emulate.  I guess I want to be a role model.

So what do you think your Indian gym name would be?  Would it be something positive that reflects your consistency and determination and commitment?  Or would it be something like Only Comes Every Tuesday?  Or Signs Up Every January Because of a New Year's Resolution?  Or Never Tries Anything Different?

How do you want to be remembered?

Pole Dancing For Fitness

A friend of mine recently posted this video on his Facebook page.  I believe his comment was, "Wow."

After watching the video that was exactly what I thought, too, though probably not for the same reason. 

Let's be perfectly honest, these women are BUFF.  The moves they perform require an incredible (and I mean INCREDIBLE) amount of upper body and core strength, serious flexibility and they do it all while wearing shoes that are anything but sensible.  I truly am in awe.

I'd never really thought much about what physical ability it must take to be a truly good pole dancer.  It's the kind of stuff usually left to the dank recesses of sleazy strip clubs.  That's not generally the place I go looking for athletes.  But these women are definitely athletes.

Thankfully for those of us not prone to the strip club scene, it seems that pole dancing is making it's way out of the hazy red light districts and into mainstream gyms and health clubs.  Pole dancing for fitness?  That's right.  Pole dancing as a fitness craze is gaining in popularity, and not just for nubile barely-legal women either, but for soccer moms and middle aged women, too.  They are heading to their local gyms (although not quite so scantily clad as the women in the above video) to get a good workout and maybe even feel a little sexy and sultry.

There are pole dancing fitness videos and instructors across the country.  Remeber KT Coates, the woman who made the bodybuilding championship finals just weeks after giving birth? Yup.  She's a pole dancing fitness instructor.  Pole dancing is one way she got rid of her pregnancy weight gain.

But wait!  Isn't this just a way to maintain the women as objects perspective that we women have fought so hard to conquer?  Women are not just sex objects to be ogled. 

There is one thing about pole dancing that you just can't deny.  Physically it is an awesome workout, building both strength and flexibility.  It's hard to deny that a pole could potentially get you in some pretty serious shape.  And just because you use a pole to help attain your fitness goals doesn't mean you have to flaunt your feminine wiles in high heels and a g-string. 

So what do you think?  Great workout opportunity or just another way sex creeps into every aspect of our culture?