One Mother Rambling Through Life

Rantings, Ravings, Strange thoughts, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a lot of ME!

Tempting as it may be to not journal everything we eat... Like those Milk Duds that we swiped from the Halloween candy stash or the Reeses Bell from the leftover stocking stuffer candy it is important that we hold ourselves accountable and journal it all.

So what is accountability? Dictionary.com defines it as "the state of being accountable, liable, or answerable." We are accountable for a lot of things in our life. It is pretty difficult because being accountable is also admitting that we did something. So stop those rationalizing brains from over thinking and thinking away the need to hold ourselves accountable. We are the best people to do that for ourselves so we must start at this point. And I am no super person when it comes to this because I hate recording the cobbler or cake when I have it because I think the computer will judge me... Dang ole computer always looking at me sideways when I eat! Oh well. One of my all time favorite quotes about accountability is this one by M.Armstrong "The ancient Romans had a tradition: whenever one of their engineers constructed an arch, as the capstone was hoisted into place, the engineer assumed accountability for his work in the most profound way possible: he stood under the arch." So we need to stand under out arches of food. Unless we hold ourselves accountable we will make no change whatsoever.




So get on CalorieStory or Livestrong DailyPlate. Buy a notebook that you keep with you. Write a blog about it. But journal what you have eaten. This is not even a D-word move but more of a... I know I will eat less junk if I have to write it down but unless I hold myself to writing it down it will not affect how I eat at all move. I am with you writing away even when I hate to.



An upside to the journal! You will get a better idea of when you are most tempted to eat junk by reviewing you old logs and seeing where it is you ate junk the most. Not that junk is not okay on the occasion but there are times of day where I know that I will be tempted to eat junk that I can try to fill with something else to distract myself from that temptation.




So we all look at the bathroom scale with horror especially during a D-word.... Even fitness pros tell you that the scale is deceiving and that daily weigh ins aren't necessary because of the body's normal fluctuation daily. So what do we do?? I am more of a fan of a weekly or bi-weekly weigh in. This gives a chance for loss but without the stress of the fluctuation of up to 5lbs give you stress.



Today's tip is about meal planning. Remember to use your resources! On Livestrong.com there are some pretty excellent recipes that have healthy alternatives. But what about when you have ingredients or need to search for a specific part of the meal?? My recommendation for this is AllRecipes.com and its advanced search option where you can search for a dinner side that is low-fat, low-cal, gluten free etc and so on! Also you can search for the ingredients that you have on hand in that same search. Another alternative without as many bells and whistles is at supercook.com and it allows an ingredient search. I prefer AllRecipes because they have a vast amount of recipes. The recipes have nutrition information and you can print them with that information on the recipe making it for easy figuring later. Plus scroll on down the recipe and there is feedback from other users who have made the recipe, ratings, and notes about things that you could try differently.


I guess the biggest tip for today is that good for you is not tasteless and when you use your resources you can find some excellent things that won't cost a lot of CALORIES!


A few tricks to increasing Calories burned daily... These are pretty simple and i am sure you have heard them all...

1) Drink plenty of water. Throw out that 8 glass a day rule with the 2,000 a day rule. Both are pretty worthless in the end.
CalculatorsLive Daily Water requirements calculator has a great calculator that figures out how much water you shoudl drink daily based on activity level as well as weight. Drinking water is intended to replace what is lost daily. This helps clean out your system and aids in healthy body weight. And just like the Calories depending on the person the amount of water your boday needs varies. Another calculator can be found at CSGnetwork.com as the Human Water Requirement Calculator. That Calculator figures based on weight as well as exercise but it is a little more accurate since exercise is in minutes and not statements. But what sets this calculator apart is that it also includes climate since the temperature outside changes the amount of water needed. So use what you like but remember to drink you water.




2) Hoof it. Walk it. Skip it. Move. Instead of hoping in the car to travel where possible walk. At my job I usually walk to lunch at the dining hall and drive to where my clients live. I could easily walk but tend to be lazy and drive. It is faster and increases how long I can stay with the kiddos so weighed out it is worth the loss of movement. But it is pretty easy to walk or take the stairs when possible. Simple.




3) Forget the desk chair. Sitting on a balance ball, exercise ball, fitness ball could increase your dailt Calories burned by up to 350 Calories daily. This is an easy task. Yes you will look funny. But since I have been doing I think I have experienced more curious people and less what an idot people. I like it. It helps with balance and from fitness gurus it keeps your muscles activated helping with caloric burn. I like it. Simple solution for a few more calories. But remember to bring your air pump or you will eventually be sitting on the gound with a armrests.




4) Trick your mind with a smaller plate. I am a member of the clean plate club. We go way back! If there was a platinum membership I would be there. I have a lot of trouble not eating everything on my plate even when I know it is too much. So I eat it all and regret later. What the people who get the big bucks have said is that a smaller plate and a larger plate when filled will both satify the person who is eating because we are looking at the empty plate and not the amount. Weird. If it works for you then do it.




5) Slow down the scarf fest. The faster you eat the more you will eat and you might eat more than you need to. The easy solution would be to simply slow down. But when I am shoveling it in it is easier said than done. So what is the solution. Here is a rule to follow to force some slow down. After each bite put your fork/spoon down. After three bites take a sip of water and repeat. With this you pretty much have no choice but to slow down with all of this up and down of the fork.




So that was just a couple of quick tips. Take em, Leave em, or Laugh at em but thats what I got so enjoy!


Soooooo "Calories"... Hmm? What can be said about Calories that does not end with screaming and running to the hills. From the dawn of man we have been obsessing about Calories... Wait not that is not right. More recent than that but it often feels like it has been a never ending OCD (esp for the more feminine crew) forever! Take me back to basics Captain!

Dictionary.com lists the definition of "Calorie" as: "cal·o·rie   /ˈkæləri/ Show Spelled [kal-uh-ree] Show IPA –noun
1. Thermodynamics .
a. Also called gram calorie, small calorie. an amount of heat exactly equal to 4.1840 joules. Abbreviation: cal
b. ( usually initial capital letter ) kilocalorie. Abbreviation: Cal
2. Physiology .
a. a unit equal to the kilocalorie, used to express the heat output of an organism and the fuel or energy value of food.
b. a quantity of food capable of producing such an amount of energy."
Oh my gosh?!?! Did any of you understand that cause this is not basic enough for me let me see what else I can find...


Word Tutor has it defined as "A unit for measuring the energy that food supplies to the body."

Of course there are a couple from Urbandictionary.com that are pretty interesting: "1.The thing that makes food yuumy. The more there are the yummier it will be. Its just the law.
2. Super bad and stuff."

Whatever definition you prefer it comes down to the science that we should only have soooo many of these per day and that depends on many many many factors! If you are shorter you need less than when you are taller. If you are fatter you need less than super model stick girl down the street that you loath each morning as she runs past scarfing that bagel that you are not allowed to have. If you have an active job you need more than the paper pusher. If you are one of those people who has energy to work out after work you need more than those of us that think passing out is the best decision after work.

If those rules weren't enough to make your head spin there is also the fact that there are good calories and bad calories. Generally in the four letter D-word world the bad calories are dubbed empty calories (which are generally yummy and fit with the UrbanDictionary defninition). These are like soda, chips, candy, processed foods, etc etc to the ends of the world and whatever color of M&M that is currently rumored to cause cancer... These are foods that we are told by people more degrees than us who know that Nicolas Clement discovered them in 1824 (Thanks Wikopedia, I hope it is accurate) that make us hungry sooner and help with that fat gain along with their evil pals TRANS-FATS and COMPLEX CARBS. (insert screams) Way way way too much to know and my brain processes that I am hungry and need to search for food.

So we know that the basic model D-word is based on a 2,000 calorie intake daily. At this if you are the correct body type, age, activity level etc you should maintain a steady weight. But since we already know that 2,000 does not fit all throw that out the window... Literally write "2,000" on a piece of paper (preferrably red to highlight how evil it is) and throw it out the window. If you feel as strongly as I do you can spit on it, burn it, what not, but just know that thinking about the evil 2,000 base will just make you more confused. Soooo where do we start... We start with free resources online to find out just how many we need to stay where we are, loose, or if you are among the lucky few gain. My favorite resource is at Livestrong.com in their DailyPlate section. A basic Membership is free and really unless you want to be obsessive, which we are trying to get away from, it works. In that section you type in daily habits, weight loss goals, etc and it does the math for you (Thank you) and spits out a number that should be your goal that is not the evil 2,000. From there you tweak as you need. ALSO!!! You can use the Daily Plate to track foods and basically their site has just about every food on it and you will rarely find a food that has not been added.

If you want something to feed into your social media Facebook.com has a similar app called CalorieStory Food Diary. It is newer and has less foods but it is on FB for easy access. I use this in combination with Livestrong due to the limited foods on CalorieStory currently. This should change the longer it is out because people are adding foods daily. Did you catch that last part "people are adding foods daily"? That is something to remember because people are falible and well you need to watch and avoid those too good to be true man I wish it were true calorie numbers and double check on more trusted sites. CalorieStory automatically starts with 1300 daily but you can change it basically the same way with less sophisticated means. Livestrong is more detailed because it asks activity level etc whereas CalorieStory does not. Use what is out there and check both out.

So my E-V-I-L D-word journey has begun. I will enlighten when possible about my steps and if my lazy day wishing that the evil yummy super bad law measures of heat that make my head spin Calories would simplify where I could just eat works out we can all rejoice! Or I can rejoice and you can look at me like I am nuts. Either way. Here is wishing you all fat bank accounts and slim bodies... One day!
Correction from CalorieStory: User can add their own foods and calories but they are unique to the user and cannot be used gloablly by other users of the app. The crew at CalorieStory is working on adding new foods daily to beef up what is available on their end.

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