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Chose your energy model to get healthy weight
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What if you count your calories like you count your money?
Maintaining, losing or gaining weight seems to be on the minds of most Americans each day. How can we not think about this when most ads are making empty promises just to get your hard earned dollar?
The Center of Disease Control reports 68% of Americans are currently overweight. Science Daily suggests in their study that by 2030, the percentage of overweight individuals will rise to an alarming 86%.
No wonder the topic of weight – good or bad – seems to be a conscious and unconscious ‘weigh’ of life. Health officials wonder how this wide spread problem can be controlled and ‘they’ wonder ‘why isn’t ‘someone’ doing something about it?’
That ‘someone’ starts within each of us. If only our society understood how the condition of being overweight is the root of all future health problems. As a society, we have not grasped the concept that life choices we make today directly affect not only our future but our entire family’s future.
The majority of our society’s problem is that people don’t really comprehend how getting fat is slowly creeping up on them. Getting people to understand the simple energy equations in how they choose to live is only half of the solution. The other half is getting people active with their exercise program or movement patterns. Even though most people have tried many forms of yo-yo dieting, the majority of people experienced food deprivation and frustration. Thus, demonstrating how DIEts are not always the answer.
Identifying Energy Models from food are the basis of all weight loss. If food is fuel for our bodies, then understand that the energy our body needs comes from calories. It’s recognizing how many calories we should be eating and become consciously aware of what we eat. There are good calories and bad calories. Sodas and sweet coffee drinks are empty calories. They give us energy but they also pack on the pounds!
Let’s first establish how many calories you should be taking in each day. Calculate it here.
Now, calculate everything you ate and drank today and figure out if you are within your calorie intake of energy! Enter it here. Are you at a surplus or a deficit?
The USDA has defined 3 Energy Models that outline how a person can maintain, lose or gain weight. Which model best suits you?
To Maintain Weight means: Energy In = Energy Out. Understand that your weight will stay the same when the calories you eat and drink equal the calories you burn.
To Lose Weight means: Energy In < Energy Out or Calories burned > calories eaten. Understand that you will lose weight when the calories you eat and drink are less than the calories you burn. The calories you burn must be greater than the calories you eat.
To Gain Weight means: Energy In > Energy Out. Understand that you will gain weight when the calories you eat and drink are greater than the calories you burn.
Comprehension of these models mean nothing without action. While including some form of exercise into your daily routine is necessary, you must also figure out if you are you at a calorie deficit? A calorie deficit is the difference between what you burn and what you eat. If you eat 2,000 calories and burn 2,500 today, your calorie deficit is 500. It is important because the size of your calorie deficit will determine how much weight you lose each week. Creating a calorie deficit forces your body to use stored energy which will cause the weight loss. Five hundred is the calorie deficit you need to create each day in order to lose one pound per week. This means that you need to burn 500 calories more than you eat everyday for a week to lose one pound.
Or are you on a calorie surplus? A surplus means you are eating more calories than you are taking in either by accident or on purpose with the effect of gaining weight. If you are taking in a lot of calories but are sedentary and do not exercise, you will get fat. Your body will take the extra energy from food and store it as fat in your midsection, thighs, arms and hips. Your body fat percentage will increase which puts you at a higher risk of cancers, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure just for starters!
If you eat 2000 calories a day and work off 2000 calories that same day- you will stay at the same weight. If you consume 4000 calories and your body only burns 1000 calories then this is stored as fat. Keep these principles in mind while you plan your menus and exercise program.
As a society, we are very conscious about how much money we put into our bank and how much money we spend everyday. What if we could condition our health practices like we do our personal banking? We count our money – why can’t we count our calories to ensure a quality ‘weigh’ of life?
Calorie or financial deficits all affect our life value. Creating a health spread sheet will show a profit or loss for each day. Now, maybe we can stop treating our body like we have another one in the bank!
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