BMR Follow-up

Okay - now that you've figured out your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), now what? You need to decide how many calories you want to cut and how many calories you want to burn through exercise. A few rules of thumb to guide your decisions:

1) ABSOLUTELY NEVER drop below 1200 calories a day.
2) Try to not drop below your BMR each day in your calorie intake. Instead, burn the extra calories through exercise and weight training.
3) Create an exercise plan that works for your lifestyle. Include both cardio and strength training and make sure you exercise AT LEAST 30 minutes a day (though 60 minutes is preferable for maximum results).
4) Start a food journal to track what you eat. You can find some online journal-type sites that will track your calorie intake for you OR you can just buy a small notebook and record everything you eat and start to keep track that way.
5) Go back to our rule from one of the first Mommy 15 posts -- look at where you are now and slowly cut out 250 calories a day from what you are eating (up until you reach your BMR calorie needs, then focus on exercise) and 250 through exercise. Once again, ONCE YOU REACH YOUR BMR IN CALORIE INTAKE, FOCUS ON LOSING WEIGHT THROUGH EXERCISE. If you do more than a 30-minute workout, you may need to add in a few calories to give your body enough energy via calories to keep up with the demands you are placing on it.
6) ABOVE ALL - Listen to your body! Track what you are eating and note how you are feeling from week to week. If you are getting the calories you need but still feel sluggish, consider the foods you are choosing to make up your daily calorie intake. Go back to the Food Guide Pyramid and see where you are slacking in the basic foods you need to function at maximum efficiency.

Remember -- SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE!!!!

Got Milk?

I don't know if my post title is breaking copyright laws or something, but I found some information on milk that I wanted to pass along to you.

You may have heard that milk actually contributes to weight loss. Well, I think I may have found some sound reasoning as to why that is. The following is an excerpt from an article on fluids and weight loss at shapeup.org:

Milk is important because milk is a "floo-id" which means that it is treated like a food (rather than a fluid) when you drink it and it is satiating. For this reason, milk has a special role to play in your weight management efforts. Milk also promotes bone health and it is important for lowering blood pressure.

We live in a country where people do not drink enough milk. Yet, because of advances in medicine and pharmacology, we are living longer and longer. That is why more and more people above the age of 60 have poor bone health and nearly all women (and many men) have osteoporosis in their last decade of life. To make matters worse, when people diet, they tend to drink even less milk.

A large, very important study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing how important it is to consume 3 servings of milk and other dairy products each day in addition to a diet rich in grains, fruits and vegetables.² Such a diet was successful in lowering blood pressure in both normal people and in people who are prone to high blood pressure (which is most of us as we grow older). This type of dairy-rich diet also lowers blood pressure in people taking medication for high blood pressure, a finding that took researchers by surprise.

So - if your body recognizes and processes milk as a "food" instead of an empty fluid, you will feel full longer; it becomes a filling food instead of a liquid that simply passes through your body, leaving nothing but the added calories behind. Plus all that other good calcium-boosting information like strong bones and things. Minor benefit, right? ;-D

HOWEVER, the trick is in making smart choices with your dairy products. The basic rule, whether pregnant, breast-feeding, dieting, or just maintaining your weight as you are, is to drink LOW and NON-FAT milk and choose LOW and NON-FAT DAIRY products. Shapeup.org (which I thought was a FANTASTIC site that I never knew existed until yesterday) used cream as an example to show how higher-fat creams (and milk would be included in that) pack on the calories.

For weight management, the big issue is not to eliminate dairy, but to eliminate the fat in dairy - because fat is where the calories are. Cream is really over the top, even light cream is 29 calories per tablespoon. Here are the facts:

• Light cream is 464 calories per cup
• Medium cream is 592 calories per cup
• Heavy cream is a whopping 832 calories per cup (!)

Compared to those numbers, when you consider that skim milk is a mere 85 calories per cup, you realize how extravagant cream really is. Besides the calories, cream is loaded with saturated fat. All that fat is not good for your heart. Who needs cream in the 21st century when almost none of us are physically active on a regular basis? We say, skip it -- unless it is a really special occasion, like a birthday or a holiday, in which case, even we may indulge a little.

Adding dairy to breakfast, lunch, and dinner will give you your "three a day" that your body needs. If you are breastfeeding, you need five a day, so be sure (wherever possible) to cut out the fat. It adds up a lot faster than you think.

Take cheese, for example. A regular piece of cheese has about 110 calories and 9 grams of fat PER ONE OUNCE serving. ONE ounce. Low-fat cheese brings you down the scale to about 80 calories and six grams of fat PER ONE OUNCE SERVING. Fat-free -- well, I've never actually seen fat-free cheese in our grocery stores here, but I have seen what they call "light" mozarella cheesesticks, and those have 50 calories and 2.5 grams of fat PER ONE OUNCE serving.

Milk is very similar. 2% milk has 122 calories and 5 grams of fat PER ONE CUP serving. 1% milk brings you down to 102 calories and 2 grams of fat PER ONE CUP serving. Skim milk brings you down to 83 calories and no fat PER ONE CUP SERVING.

Let's look at yogurt, another popular dairy fill-in. Plain whole yogurt has 149 calories and 8 grams of fat PER ONE CUP serving. Plain, low-fat yogurt has 154 calories and 4 grams of fat PER ONE CUP serving. Plain, fat-free yogurt has 137 calories PER ONE CUP serving.

So - let's add it all up. Choosing low-fat over regular (one milk, one cheese, and one yogurt a day) gives you 336 calories and 12 grams of fat instead of 381 calories and 22 grams of fat. Skim and non-fat products bring you down to 270 calories and 2.5 grams of fat (in the cheese, since we don't have non-fat in my area). That's 120 calories and almost 20 grams of fat if you switch from regular to skim/non-fat! WOW!!! The fat difference alone makes my arteries feel a little less cluttered just from reading all of this great information!

How do you switch? One day at a time! Try cutting back for a month, even, if you need more time. Slowly switch out your regular for low-fat and then your low-fat for non-fat. In the long run, it will help you in more ways than you think. Just one more tid-bit from shapeup.org:

A large, very important study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing how important it is to consume 3 servings of milk and other dairy products each day in addition to a diet rich in grains, fruits and vegetables.² Such a diet was successful in lowering blood pressure in both normal people and in people who are prone to high blood pressure (which is most of us as we grow older). This type of dairy-rich diet also lowers blood pressure in people taking medication for high blood pressure, a finding that took researchers by surprise.

They don't say it here, but I don't imagine those people in the study were consuming the extra 20 grams of fat a day and getting those kinds of amazing reductions in their blood pressure, do you? Hmmm . . . . food for thought.

What is YOUR Metabolic Rate?

Okay -- so I have been reading up a lot this last week on METABOLISM!!! Why? Well, cuz I'm kind of a dummy when it comes to all of these health terms I hear all the time and wanted to know what it is all about -- since it IS what everyone talks about when they are talking about weight loss. Then I thought maybe YOU all might want to know something about it as well, and maybe I even found something that you may have wondered about.

For this first post, let me just say that metabolism is essentially the rate at which your body processes and uses food (calories). Pretty simple, right? So if they say you have a slower metabolism, what they mean is that your body doesn't need as much food (as many calories) to sustain itself as the "average" (whatever THAT means) person. If you have a faster metabolism, then you need a few extra calories to meet your body's needs.

So, if you want to lose weight (or keep yourself from gaining weight as you get older, since your metabolism slows about 5% a decade after age 40) - you need to KNOW HOW MANY CALORIES YOUR BODY NEEDS TO SUSTAIN ITSELF. This is your METABOLIC RATE - how many calories you burn without doing ANYTHING at all. That's right -- if you were to just lay around all day long or sleep all day long (yeah. right. MOMS!!!!), the number of calories you would use for that is your BASAL METABOLIC RATE.

Once you figure out what your BASAL METABOLIC RATE is, you can look at how you need to tweak it in order to LOSE weight or MAINTAIN your weight if you are getting a little older or find yourself less "active" (which is ironic and nearly impossible for moms, right?).

So, I have looked at quite a few different calculators online and gotten a few different results. There are two basic formulas used to calculate your metabolic rate, though the one that is presumed to be the most accurate is the Mifflin-St Jeor equation (which is more reliable than the Harris-Benedict equation, or so "they" say).

Here is the formula. Grab a pen/pencil and paper and a calculator and figure out what YOUR METABOLIC RATE is:

1) Take your weight in pounds, divide it by 2.2 and multiply that number by 9.99.
2) Take your height in inches, multiply it by 2.54 and multiply that number by 6.25.
3) Multiply your age by 4.92.
4) If you are female, add the answer for number one and the answer for number two, subtract the answer for number three and subtract 161. TADA!!! There you have it!
If you are male, add the answer for number one and the answer for number two, subtract the answer for number three and add five. TADA!!!! You're set!

My next post will be about what to do with your metabolic rate once you know it. But for today -- just have fun figuring out what it is and feeling just a tad bit smarter the next time you hear people throw around tidbits about metabolism and metabolic rate! And I'm going to go back to using my babies' naptime to figure out a few more things I can share with you to make sure you ARE just a little bit smarter and more confident about how YOUR body works!

TURKEY TETRAZZINI BAKE

1/2 pound whole-wheat spaghetti (cooked)
3 cups (about 1 pound) cubed cooked, skinless turkey breast
2 (10 3/4) cans reduced-fat cream of mushroom soup
1 cup low-fat milk
1/2 cup grated Romano or Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 cup plain dried bread crumbs
1 Tbl. unsalted butter, melted

1) Combine turkey, soup, cheese, garlic powder, cumin, and pepper in saucepan. Cook over medium heat until well-heated. Add spaghetti noodles and mix well.

2) Spray 7x11 inch baking dish with non-stick spray (or use a 2-quart baking dish - like Pyrex) and put mixture in it.

3) Combine bread crumbs and melted butter in a small bowl; sprinkle over spaghetti mixture.

4) Preheat oven to 375 degrees and place casserole in it. Bake until the top is golden, 20-25 minutes.

Serves 8.

Note: Serve with steamed green beans or broccoli! Mmmmmm!

Nutrition per serving (1 cup): 261 calories, 5 g fat, 1 g fiber, 22 g protein