Chuck’s Home World

Many people don’t realize it, but your body burns calories all the time. When you eat, your body must burn calories to get the energy and nutrients from the food you’ve eaten. Eating every three hours or so keeps your body’s furnace going. If you don’t eat and your stomach goes empty, your furnace goes into stand by mode and your burn fewer calories. Depending on your calorie budget, you should eat about 100 – 300 calories between meals… roughly every three hours or so. Make them good calories though, not a couple of doughnuts, but an apple and some nuts (or other healthy snack).

If you’re trying to control your calorie intake, you should not drink your calories. Avoid sodas and sweetened teas and other drinks. Water is your best best, or if you must, use an artificial sweetener such as Splenda. You can have 3 or 4 apples for the same amount of calories (or less) than having a regular 20 oz soda!

Instead of drinking a glass of orange juice, eat an orange. Instead of apple juice, eat an apple. You get so much more out of the fruit than just the juice.

How Can You Adjust What You Eat and Do Unless You Know It?

You need to know what you’re currently doing so you can know what you may need to change.  Even without starting a “diet” you can record what you eat (at least calories, fat, protein and carbohydrates. Knowing how many calories per serving is great, but you need to pay attention to the amount of servings you consume too.

Recording What you Eat

The only way you’re going to know what you eat is to write it all down. I mean every bit of it. It does take some discipline but you must do it. A simple piece of paper or a journal. No need to go out and by a food log book. Just a simple spiral bound one will do.  If you cook a lot, you may need some help in figuring it out. If you eat a lot of packaged food, use the nutritional information on that. Above all, you can use the internet to figure out how much you’re eating. I use Diet Pro 2005 (Google for it).

Create a column for the food, amount of protein, fats, carbs and calories.  And if you eat a package of food that contains more than a single serving – calculate it out to what you’ve eaten!

FF: Did you know that the Nutritional information on packages can err from 2% to  25%?

Recording What you Do

Besides know what you eat, you need to know how you are burning energy. One quick way is to get a pedometer and record the daily steps it shows. There are some really good ones out there that will allow you to record things onto a computer. Of course, just record the activities, even if you don’t know how much calories they’re using up. For example, if you take a 30 minutes walk, write that down.  Use your food journal to record activities too. Later, you may discover that walking a steady pace of 3.5 MPH for 30 minutes can burn 250 calories or more.

Try to be as fit as you can be, regardless of your diet. When starting off, the first thing you need to do is get fit. If you’re 5 pounds overweight or 150. Start exercising and get those muscles working. Start small and work your way up. If you lose your breath walking 150 feet, then you should walk 300 feet extra every day. The 600 and keep going. In a few week’s time you’ll be walking miles.

Of course you may need to check with your doctor to find out what kinds of exercising you may be able to do.

I have found a new nutrition and fitness show on the web that I’ve been catching up on. I’ve only watched about 8 of his shows so far (during cardio workout on the treadmill), but I’m sort of hooked. I like his approach and he has the physic that I can aspire to reach. Check it out at The Dr. Clay Show.

Dr. Clay Hyght

Dr Clay Hyght, DC, CSCS, CISSN, is a recognized authority in the areas of nutrition and exercise. Residing in Danville, CA, Dr Clay spends much of his time helping others enhance their physique through nutrition and exercise. He also treats patients, utilizing chiropractic and soft tissue therapy to optimize physical function and quality of life. His clients/patients range from competitive bodybuilders and figure competitors, to professional athletes and busy working people who simply want to look and feel better.

Not one to sit on the sidelines, Dr Clay practices what he preaches and has been competing in bodybuilding contests for over 15 years. To learn more about or to contact Dr Clay, visit his website.