Nutrition 101

Now I am not a nutritionist but I have read a lot of things about eating more healthy and would like to share them with who I can. The first thing that we have to realize is eating healthy is not a DIET, it is a LIFESTYLE CHANGE. Once we can understand this it will make our habits a little easier to get rid of.

1. Make the decision that you want a healthy body and do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal. Our bodies are very simple. In order to maintain weight you will burn the same amount of calories per day that you consume. For the average person it is about 2000 calories per day. So you can eat 2000 per day to maintain the weight that you are at.

2. Eat calories that count. When you are eating more vegetables and fruits instead of chips and dips, you will feel more full and satisfied and also have more energy.

3. If you are wanting to lose weight you need to either eat less calories per day that your body is naturally burning OR eat the same and add more aerobic activity OR eat a little less and add more aerobic activity at least 3-4 times per week.

4. Try to workout at the same time each day. The body is most happy when working along with a routine. When you work out at the same time each day and form these good habits, your body will feel better and happier. You will eventually look forward to these workouts and when you have to miss a workout it will be really hard to do so.

These are just some things that I have found work best. Now to get started we all need to become aware of what is going into our mouths and why we are consuming it. I would like you to create a FOOD DIARY. It is possible that we all have habits that we don't even know we have. In Runner's World it says that "Food diaries are very eye-opening when people are trying to get a handle on their eating."-Leslie Bonci, R.D. That's true whether you're trying to lose weight or better understand your eating habits.

LOG THE DETAILS- Bonci has clients create six columns in their food logs: the food, the amount (including calories), the time it was consumed, how many mintutes it took to consume, where it was eaten, and reason for eating it. "Being detail-oriented is reall important for people trying to change habits," she says. Everything-EVEN SMALL BITES-counts.

GO LONG ENOUGH- A five-day diary is long enough, but be sure to include a weekend in the food diary. Many times people become a little more lax on the weekend.

LOOK FOR CLUES- Common mistakes diaries turn up include: unconscious snacking; consuming too many packaged foods; eating too much at night; ingesting too much salt; consuming empty calories in liquid form; eating things fast because we are too tired or hurried to prepare the healthier foods; and all the little extra calories we add to things that really do not need to be there (butter, mayo, high calorie dressings).

Let's just all put together a Food Diary and try to figure out our good habits of eating as well as our bad. Once we have found out our habits look for the ones that you want to keep and the ones you want to get rid of and make a schedule of eating at the beginning of each week and stick to the schedule. Like I said before the body is happiest when following a routine. When I did this I found that when I eat too many carbs first thing in the morning it made my insulin level raise and I started craving more and snacking more. If I chose to eat more protein first thing (boiled egg or omelet) I was more satisfied for longer.

I want everyone to imagine putting 20 lbs. of rocks in a backpack and then putting that backpack on your back before every run. Do you think it would be harder or easier to run with that extra weight on? Now just imagine if you could get rid of that extra weight, it would make our every day life easier to move around and not put as much strain on our hearts as well as our knees and joints. Let's try to get rid of our backpacks of extra rocks.

SUDDEN IMPACT- 4 easy ways to eat better-today:

1. Start serving dinner on smaller plates; 2. Eat a snack an hour or two before every run (workout), this will help give you more energy and you can work out harder; 3. Take a multivitamin; 4. Eat dairy twice a day (our bodies can only absorb about 500 miligrams of calcium at a time (roughly 1 cup of yogurt) so space your dairy throughout the day)