Fit Communications

Shortly before my mom died July 13, I had decided to undertake the "100 push-ups" challenge that I’ve been reading about on other blogs.

Nothing is normal after a death, as you know. So although I made it to the gym a few times in the last two weeks, it was only a few times. I didn’t throw my food plan out the window entirely, but I missed a lot of meals (something that I can assure you never happens when my appetite is normal) and ate many more carbs than is usual for me.

I love carbs, and for me they’re absolutely necessary to sustain weight and cardio workouts. But typically I eat about 40 to 50 percent carbs, 30 percent protein, and 20 to 30 percent fat.

In the last couple of weeks I was probably consuming 60 to 70 percent carbs. For some reason, that’s all that appealed to me. Comfort food, maybe? Note that with a few exceptions I wasn’t eating sugar–but I couldn’t get enough bread.

In any case, yesterday I began counting calories and tracking activity again.

And then my friend Toni threw down the gauntlet on her blog, Living al Dente:

I must confess that until today I was not able to follow through with the push up challenge I wrote about a while back. Let’s just say I got distracted and we’ll leave it at that.

I decided today that I could not put it off any longer and immediately got down on the floor to see what I could accomplish. I am more than pleased to announce that I was able to do two. That is 2, people, as in more than one.

Mary, you’re on. Let’s hear how you’re doing. Can you beat that? (Yes, my body building friend, I’ll bet you can.)

And now that I’m pumped with excitement over my achievement, I will proceed to ye olde treadmill and begin my workout for the day.

When her post popped up in my RSS feed, I immediately dropped to the floor to see how many I could get. I was at work, but it was about 6 o’clock, and most people had gone home for the day. Besides, people at my workplace expect the unexpected to occur in my office.

Was it wrong of me to brag a little in my response to Toni’s post?

Probably so. Here’s some of what I said in response, in a comment on her blog:

My tally also begins with the number 2.

But it ends in zero.

Yup, I got 20. Full-length push-ups, of course–not the weenie kind.

It just about killed me, but I did it.

Toni, hope you have a nice day.

Mary

I should add that I was able to get 20 only because I’ve recently been bench-pressing in earnest. And it will take extreme effort to get to 100. But I have begun.

Now I guess I’d better read the training program and see where I need to go from here.

Don’t you love it when your views are vindicated by an objective third party?

I’m feeling smugly content because sciencedaily.com (love that site–because I’m all about scientific verification) posted a report today confirming that people who keep track of their food intake lose twice as much "weight" than those who don’t. (By "weight," I’m presuming the researchers mean "fat." That’s the only weight we want to lose.)

Here’s the blurb:

ScienceDaily (2008-07-08) — Study of nearly 1,700 participants shows that keeping a food diary can double a person’s weight loss. The study found that the best predictors of weight loss were how frequently food diaries were kept and how many support sessions the participants attended. Those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records.

This sounds like quite a well-crafted study. I recommend you read the full article.

Here’s the second installment of my list of quick and nutritious foods for those in a hurry.

6. Baked potatoes. Does this surprise you? If you have a bag of potatoes and a microwave handy. the lowly potato definitely becomes a convenience food. Grab the food scrubber and give the potato a going-over under running water. Poke a few holes in it with a fork or sharp knife. Wrap it in a paper towel, toss it in the micro, and within a couple of minutes, you have a nutritious source of carbs and vitamins. Because I count calories, I weigh food to make sure of the quantity. A typical 200-gram potato (about 7 ounces) has about 154 calories, 4 grams of protein, 4 grams of fiber, 35 grams of carbohydrate, and less than 1 gram of fat. It’s a decent source of vitamin C and B vitamins as well. Make sure you eat the skin: that’s where a lot of the vitamins are hiding. As always, I’m using the USDA National Nutrient Database for calorie and nutrient counts.

Some of you are highly evolved persons who cook every day, carefully plan your five to six small daily meals, and pack the lot into a cooler before you leave the house in the morning. All I can say is, I admire you. Someday I may get that organized. Or maybe not.

I don’t cook much, I sort of kind of plan my daily meals, and on good days I throw several items in a plastic bag and lurch out the door. It helps that I keep frequently consumed foods in the fridge at work. I do track calories and grams of carbohydrate and protein daily, using a Google spreadsheet. But given the rather laissez-faire manner in which my planning occurs, I really appreciate certain foods that make my life easier.

Here’s part one of my can’t-live-without foods:

I’m trying to remember when fat-free cheese was introduced. Surely it was during the fat-phobic 1980s.

It was horrible stuff.

A few weeks ago while grocery shopping, I saw Kraft shredded fat-free cheddar cheese. I thought I’d give it a try as a way to add a little protein and not many calories to my typical breakfast. Most mornings I scramble one whole egg and several ounces of Egg Beaters, spiced up with chopped onions and green peppers, garnished with a tablespoon of salsa before serving. One ounce of fat-free cheddar adds 45 calories and 9 grams of protein–not a bad way to increase the protein content of breakfast.

Unlike the dreadful stuff I remember from years ago, this cheese actually melts, and the taste is fine.

Try saying that headline really fast about 10 times.

Seriously, Sally writes a regular column, "The Lean Plate Club," for The Washington Post, and in the most recent edition she compares various sugar substitutes. She looks at safety, calorie content, whether the substance in question can be used for baking, and, ahem, other factors (example: erythritol, a sugar alcohol "can can cause gas and loose bowels").

Her conclusion: "If you’re looking for sweetness with fewer calories, try sucralose or Whey Low, which seem to have flavor with few risks."

Raise your hand if you’ve ever read an article in a women’s fitness magazine that recommended a daily weight-loss diet that provides around 1,300 calories. Yeah, I thought you had.

This afternoon I paged through the latest Oxygen magazine—or maybe it was Oxygen’s annual glutes special—and found sample menus for such a diet. Keep in mind that Oxygen promotes intense physical activity—both weights and cardio. Keep in mind that these far-too restrictive diets are often said to be the food plans followed by female fitness athletes.

That is simply impossible unless the women in question are anorexic.

Here’s an old post, resurrected because I need it and my fitness buddy needs it.

I know I sound like a broken record when I rave on about Tom Venuto’s e-book book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. But at the moment I’m especially gung-ho about Tom because I’m liking the zig-zag calorie rotation he describes in chapter 6 of the book. For one thing, it makes the whole calorie-counting thing more interesting and tolerable.

Here’s how it goes:

First you figure out your basal metabolic rate–how many calories you need just to sustain life. If you know your lean body mass (LBM), the Katch-McArdle formula is best and works for both men and women:

BMR - 370 + (21.6 x lean mass in kilograms)

Hint: divide your LBM in pounds by 2.2 to get kilograms.

If you don’t know your LBM, use the Harris-Benedict formula, based on body weight:

Men: BMR - 66 + (13.7 x body weight in kg) + (5 x height in centimeters) - (6.8 x age in years)

Women: BMR - 655 + (9.6 x body weight in kg) + (1.8 x height in centimeters) - (4.7 x age in years)

Once you’ve got an estimate of your baseline calories, below which you should never go when counting calories, multiply the number by an activity factor:

Sedentary: use 1.2
Lightly active: use 1.375
Moderately active: use 1.55
Very active: use 1.725
Extremely active: use 1.9

So, given my LBM of 109 pounds (49.5 kg), my BMR, using the Katch-McArdle formula is 1,440 calories.

I use the activity factor 1.55. Multiplying it by 1,440, I get 2,232 calories per day.

I suspect I probably burn a few more than that, but I’m being conservative.

Okay, so what’s the zig-zag rotation all about? The idea is to spend three days on a moderately reduced-calorie diet (15 to 20 percent below maintenance), then one day at maintenance level.

Why zig-zag? To prevent the body from reducing metabolic rate in response to reduced intake. By eating at maintenance level a couple of days a week, so Tom says, you help prevent the body from thinking you’re starving. The other plus, of course, is that not every day is a restricted day. Nice.

The key reason to zig-zag is that it works. In 30-plus years of caring about this sort of thing, the ZZ is the fastest, most-effective, most muscle-preserving method of fat loss I’ve ever seen.

And I’ve seen it work wonders for people I know as well. Usually women who tell me, “Well, I’m eating right, but nothing is happening.” Sad but true: if nothing is happening, you need to change the equation. Alter the food plan. Increase the activity. Try the ZZ.

Gulp. It’s been 10 months since I posted. What does that tell you?

Never mind. Don’t answer that.

Well, I’m back, needing calorie counting more than ever. I’m still in favor of using the spreadsheet function of Google docs. I just need to, um, use it.

Easter was great . . . and fattening.

The music season has been busy, busy this year, so I’ve spent much more time wearing my singer hat than my exercise-buff hat. (See my sites for Harmonia Vocal Quartet and the Pope Benedict XVI Schola.)

As I have written here before, the body is responsive. As soon as the exercise habit and the caloric reduction begin, changes start to occur.

Giving myself a pep talk, see?