Nutrition: The MyFitnessPal App is a great place to log your calorie intake & workouts. It has a vast number of food choices and the number of calories in them. It will give you your calorie intake needed each day to achieve your goals and will log the calories you eat and deduct them from the amount of calories you are allowed. My Fitness Pal is way for us to monitor your food choices and calories if needed. Because you can connect with friends they or I can encourage you to make healthy choices.
It takes approximately 3500 calories to gain or lose 1 lb. Therefore if you want to lose 2lbs a week (recommended), you would need to reduced your caloric intake by 500 calories a day (500*7=3500) and burn 500 calories a day through exercise.
A good rule of thumb is: fruits, veggies, nuts, and whole grains. If it doesn't fall in one of these categories, don't put it in your mouth. You can include lean meats; however, you can get plenty of protein through beans, nuts, and egg whites.
Pay attention to mindless eating: eating while-in the car, in front of the tv, standing at the counter, pantry, or fridge, socializing with others, and while working. Make sure you are aware of what and how much you are eating and listen to your body tell you when it is full.
When you start to want food, assess whether you are hungry, emotional, craving or being triggered by an outside source. If you are not physically hungry find something else to do in place of eat (exercise is a great substitute). If you are hungry, assess on a scale of 1-10 how hungry you are. Try not to eat until you are around a 6-8, and do not wait until a 9-10 b/c you are already in starvation mode and will tend to overeat & store.
Make sure you eat every 3-4 hours. It takes about that long to digest your previous meal. You want to continuously burn food and give your body nutrition, this will keep your metabolism up. If you do not eat for a longer period of time, your body will go into starvation mode, In starvation mode, your body will shut down, metabolism will drop, and you will feel tired & irritable because your body is trying to function and you have not given it the energy source to do so. Since the metabolism has dropped you will not burn the same amount of calories and your body will store everything it can the next time you eat. This is because it will not know when you will eat again. Eating small amounts every 3-4 hours keeps the metabolism up, gives your body the energy it needs to function, will keep you feeling better & more likely to exercise, and will ultimately help you lose weight.
Training: Exercise 6-7 times a week to lose weight, 3-4 times a week to maintain weight, and anything less typically you will gain depending on eating habits.
A good rule of thumb for exercise is: "Mix-it-up" The more you vary your workouts the better results you will achieve . Your body adapts quickly to the demands you place on it; therefore everytime you work out it becomes more efficient and will not burn the same amount of calories. Even if it is going up a bigger hill, adding resistance, going faster, you must find a way to increase your intensity so that your heart rate will stay up. Since the body doesn't know what to expect each time you work out, it will have to "gear up" and be ready for whatever you throw at it and this will raise your metabolism and expend more calories.
Resistance training is an excellent way to lose weight, build lean mass, increase bone density, and become stronger. Resistance training breaks the muscle down which makes the body have to repair it. When it is repaired, it is stronger. It normally takes 24-48 hrs for the body to repair. During that time your metabolism is increased and this can produce faster weight loss. Also the more lean mass you have, the more calories you burn, so increasing your lean mass helps you lose weight and then maintain it in the future .
For specific questions, email us at cmsyer@hotmail.com OR sonialrangel@hotmail.com
