Monday Nutrition Tip of the Week

"How often should you work out? My answer: only on the days that you want to be productive, feel great, and improve your health! When you look at exercise not as a  chore, but as a gift that makes you happy, healthy, and productive -- everything changes!" - Chalene Johnson

 **********

Back in December I wrote about making sure you feed the fire of your metabolism so that it is always working for you. Even though it sounds counterintuitive, you must eat more and more often if you want to lose weight.* There's no arguing that not eating food is an effective method of losing weight. It's called starvation, and it's not my idea of fun. 

I came across an article from October 2006 called "Weight Loss Rules to Re-think." It's a fantastic article, and well worth reading in its entirety. One segment of the article really stuck with me because I learned something I hadn't known before. Here's the segment, and I'll tell you what I learned on the other side:

Old rule: To lose weight, go on a diet.
New rule: To lose weight, choose to eat healthy.
Many weight-loss diets call for a dramatic reduction in daily caloric intake, which tends to deprive the body of the very nutrients it needs to effectively release and process unwanted fat. But eating too little or skipping meals has another extreme downside: It puts the body in a starvation-like "fat-conservation" mode.

When you take in fewer calories than are necessary to fuel your resting metabolic rate (the base amount of caloric energy your body requires while at rest), your body simply compensates by reducing your metabolic rate. Goodbye, caloric burn.

"Your body thinks it's starving to death," explains Hyman. As a result, it not only cuts back on the energy you need to exercise and move about, it also "sets off chemical processes inside you that force you to eat more." Net result: weight gain.

You can get a very rough estimate of your resting metabolic rate, says Hyman, by multiplying your weight in pounds by 10 (if you weigh 150 pounds, for example, your resting metabolic rate would be approximately 1,500 calories per day). "If you eat less than that amount, your body will instantly perceive danger and turn on the alarm system that protects you from starvation and slows your metabolism," says Hyman.

The deprivation mindset of dieting – characterized by "just until I lose this weight" thinking – is another enemy of weight loss. It causes us to alternate between extremes of "on the diet" and "off the diet" behavior. That sets us up to have an unhealthy relationship with food that can turn weight management into a miserable, lifelong struggle. A better approach: Decide to eat healthy for life. Enjoy delicious, high-quality foods in ways that nurture your body and your senses for the long haul.

Before reading this article I did not know that you could get a rough estimate of your resting metabolic rate by multiplying your body weight by 10. If you're not eating that many calories, your body goes into starvation mode, and your metabolism s-l-o-w-s down. With free online tools like myfitnesspal.com, it's simple to count calories to find out where you stand and adjust accordingly.

The trick is to use your calorie allotment wisely. If you're eating healthy, whole foods, 1500 calories can be a lot of food. But if you waste calories on soda, on an extra doughnut, on an appetizer when you go out to dinner, your calorie count is easily shot.

So the tip of the day is to calculate your resting metabolic rate, and understand what that means in terms of the speed your metabolism is running.

* We're talking good food here, not 100-calorie packs of Oreos.

************

Workout of the Day
P90X Core Synergistics
Today was the first day of 2011 that I was hot while I worked out. The shop was about 72 degrees, which is perfect. I like to be sweaty after I work out...shows I did something!