First of all, what exactly is organic food?  Here’s the Wikipedia definition:

Organic foods are foods that are produced using methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives.

Sounds great!  Many of the chemicals used in modern farming have been shown to cause cancer – and even if you wash your produce carefully, some of the toxins may have already soaked in.  To top it off, all those pesticides and fertilizers leach into the soil and can end up in your drinking water – and most public water supplies don’t get tested for them!   Pesticides have even been linked to the disappearance of honeybees across the country.

But without pesticides and fertilizers, how do farmers manage to grow anything?  I can’t even plant a few tomatoes in my backyard without losing most of the crop to bugs and groundhogs.  Not to mention without fertilizer the plants look sickly and sparse.  So how do organic farmers manage to cultivate entire fields without the use of modern chemicals?

Turns out, there are numerous ways to control pests and enrich the soil, without the use of harsh chemicals.  Companion planting, introducing beneficial organisms, spraying plants with natural oils – check out this list and you’ll see just how many options there are!

Organic food is good for your health, and organic farming methods are good for the environment.  But unless you’ve grown the food yourself, you have to take it on faith that the supplier hasn’t used anything toxic to increase crop yields, right?  Not really – turns out the USDA (and similar organizations around the world) have strict requirements for all food sold as “organic” in the United States - and producers can’t slap a USDA Organic label on anything until they’ve gone through a rigorous certification process.

But the certification process is expensive, and it can be hard for organic farmers to compete with modern methods which are cheap and easily applied.  All of this means that organic food can often be more expensive than conventional choices, and in this economy it can be hard to justify the extra cost.  Fortunately, the organic industry has created The Dirty Dozen, a list of the 12 foods most likely to have high concentrations of pesticides when produced by conventional farming methods, to help you make the most of your money.

We’ve talked a lot about organic produce – but you can also buy organic meats, poultry, and a whole host of other items.  The USDA guidelines apply to these foods as well, and we’ll talk more about them in upcoming blog posts.  In the meantime, why not take some time to check out the organic choices at your local supermarket – or better yet, find a local organic farm near you and ask them about their farming methods!

In theory, the answer is yes.  Weight loss is simply calories in versus calories out.  However, in order for your body to function properly and to have the energy to be active so you CAN burn those extra calories, the quality of the calorie does matter.   I had a personal trainer that was also an aspiring body builder.  He constantly talked about how important nutrition was in order to sculpt the body that you want.  There IS a difference in how your body processes 100 calories from lean meat versus a 100 calorie pack of Oreos.

If you are going to lose weight by decreasing your caloric intake, you want to take in the most nutritious food possible.  You need to get all of the nutrients your body needs in that smaller volume of food.  Also, it is important to keep in mind that our lifestyles have changed much more quickly than our genes.  We are still genetically wired to process foods like our ancestors.  This means, that our bodies are not used to taking in high volumes of foods high in saturated fat, salt, and sugar or highly processed foods.  Did you ever notice that you are still not satisfied after eating an unhealthy snack?  Your body is not necessarily craving calories.  It could be craving nutrients.

It is also important to remember that we are constantly fighting are primordial instincts.  We may crave salty or sugary snacks because thousands of years ago, salt and sugar were necessary, but rare and difficult to find.   Our natural instinct is to eat salt and sugar when it was available. Today, things have changed. Salt and sugar are everywhere, so we have to make the conscious effort to not give into every salty and sugary craving.  On a side note, the same thing goes for exercising.  One reason why we may have to force ourselves to exercise is because our natural instinct is to take advantage of rest when we can.  When we were constantly foraging or hunting for food and fighting for survival, the ability to relax was a luxury.  Again, today things have changed and we constantly have to fight the urge to rest and exercise instead.

A little more about eating like our ancestors- Back when we were cave-dwelling divas, we ate lean meat, fish, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and eggs.  Genetically, we evolved to process these foods efficiently because they were the most readily available.  Dairy, salt, and sugar were extremely limited so our body doesn’t process them as efficiently.  Back then, the meat we ate was extremely lean.  For example, if we hunted down an antelope for dinner, it was approximately 16% fat, as well as high in omega-3′s and healthier poly-unsaturated fat.  The corn fed beef that we are eating now is approximately 30% fat, with much of it being less healthy saturated fat.  It may be a better choice to pick a lean meat, such as chicken or bison, over a fattier meat because we can process it better.  

One final thought: Grass-fed beef is lower in overall fat and saturated fat than corn fed beef.  Cows aren’t genetically programmed to eat corn and they get fat.  What happens to us when we eat food we aren’t genetically programmed to eat???

Looking for more?  Here are a few interesting articles about the source of calories:

http://www.oprah.com/health/Should-We-Eat-a-Paleolithic-Diet

 http://www.jeffthejock.com/  Nutrition- The True Key to a Great Body

But first, a couple of announcements:

1. We are moving to a monthly meeting schedule, the second Tuesday of each month.  The next meeting will be on October 11, at 6pm.
2. The new meeting location will be the Plymouth Meeting Whole Foods, in the cafe area.  We gave it a try last night and there was lots of space.  Everyone is encouraged to come 15 minutes early to pick up a healthy snack to enjoy during the meeting.

And now, on to the main event – how many calories should you eat if you want to lose weight?

This was an interesting topic to research, and there’s a lot of conflicting information out there.   My mom always said you should eat 1200 calories a day to lose weight.  Yikes!  That’s not much food at all.  Some folks swear by  cutting out carbs, or fat, or sugar, or alcohol…the list goes on and on.  It’s tough to sort out the truth.

Honestly, though, it’s really just simple math – calories in, calories out.  Although many experts believe that not all calories are created equal, they all seem to agree you need to eat fewer calories than you burn in order to lose weight.  So here’s my best attempt at explaining the math:

A pound of fat = 3500 calories of stored energy.  To lose a pound of fat, you need to create a deficit of 3500 calories between what you burn and what you eat.  To lose a pound in a week, you need to create a daily deficit of 500 calories (7 days x 500 calories = 3500).  For some people it is easier to cut back by 500 calories, and for others it’s easier to burn off an extra 500.  Many people fall somewhere in between.

To get started, you need to determine how many calories you burn on an average day at your current weight.  To start with, everyone burns a certain amount of calories just to exist - this is called your Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR.  Essentially, it’s the amount of calories your body would need to maintain your weight if you were in a coma.  Estimations differ on what that is, but there are calculators on the web to approximate your BMR based on age, height, weight, sex and body fat percentage: http://health.discovery.com/centers/heart/basal/basal.html

Be careful with this information, however – eating below this level can throw your body into starvation mode and cause your metabolism to slow down!  Some experts say you should never eat less than 20% above your BMR to avoid this effect.

Once you know your BMR, you can estimate the number of calories you burn on an average day by accounting for your basic activity level.  This link: http://nutritiondata.self.com/tools/calories-burned will help you with that.  One thing to note is that most people overestimate their activity levels.  If you’re an office worker, your activity level is likely to be sedentary, even if you do 30 minutes of cardio every single day.

OK – now what?  You know how much you’d burn in a coma, and how much you burn on an average day based on your normal activity level.  If you get some additional exercise, you can add it on top of your standard calorie burn – but be careful with using the numbers on your treadmill or heart rate monitor!  These values usually grossly overestimate what you burn, and they don’t account for the calories you’d be burning just by existing.  For example – a 150 pound woman might burns about 1 calorie per minute when completely sedentary.  That same woman would burn about 200 calories walking a very brisk pace for 30 minutes.  But she needs to subtract the 30 calories she’d burn if she weren’t walking – so the net is only 170 calories burned.

Let’s try an example, and determine a target daily count based on a hypothetical current weight & activity level, and how much we want to lose each week.  Using the first link above, a 160 pound woman, 5’5”, 35 years old, who holds an office job would have a BMR of 1484 calories per day.  If we apply the 20% rule to that, she would never want to eat below 1484 + 20% which is 1781 calories per day.  Using the second link, and choosing a sedentary lifestyle with 30 minutes of low impact cardio per day, her average daily calorie burn is about 2211 calories per day.  So to lose a pound a week, she could eat 2211-500 calories per day, or 1711.  But that’s a little below her BMR + 20%!  Instead of going too low on calories, she could bump up her daily workouts by 10 minutes or increase the intensity to create her target deficit.

Phew, this is all pretty complicated to figure out!  If you’re an analytical person (like me) you love this kind of stuff.  Fortunately, for the rest of the non-geek world, there’s a straightforward and simple alternative.  First, decide on a goal weight, then figure out how many calories it would take to maintain that weight at your chosen activity level, and finally just start eating at that calorie level right now.  Eventually (it might be slow but it WILL happen) that weight will become reality.  And you’d be surprised how many calories you can eat!  A 150 pound, 5’5”, 40 year old woman with a sedentary lifestyle would burn 1926 calories per day.  Add 45 minutes of running 3x per week and that averages out to an extra 200 calories per day, bringing the daily total to 2100!  That’s a lot of food, and if you choose whole foods such as fruits, veggies, lean proteins and whole grains, it can be an incredibly satisfying way to live.

So there you have it – the lowdown on calories.  Stay tuned for the next post by Abby on different types of foods and calories!

After some brief introductions, we dove right into the meeting topic – fitting activity into a busy lifestyle.  Here’s a summary of the discussion:

We’re all busy and sometimes it can be tough to find time to exercise, even though we know it’s important!  There are lots of reasons -

• Working long hours
• Long commute
• Family time
• Getting kids to and from daycare and activities
• Work-related travel
• Keeping in touch with friends
• Other important activities

Finding time for 30 minutes to workout can be challenging enough, but if you need to drive to the gym, and wait for a machine to open up, suddenly your 30 minute workout has eaten up an hour of your day!  And sometimes finding an hour for a workout means getting up at 5am, or going to the gym at 10pm – which isn’t always easy.

The American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association agree that 30 minutes of moderate-intensity activity (equivalent to a brisk walk), 5 days per week, is enough for heart health.  And that time can be broken up into as little as 10 minute segments without losing any of the benefits!  Read on for some ideas on how to meet the minimum recommendations even when it seems like your schedule is working against you.

Travelling:

If your hotel has a gym, you’re all set!  But if it doesn’t (or if you’d prefer to work out in the privacy of your own room or outdoors) here are some suggestions that won’t add extra bulk to your suitcase:

• Pack a workout DVD in your laptop bag.  You can play it on your laptop if the hotel doesn’t have DVD players.
• Stuff a stretchy workout band (you can pick them up at Target for a few bucks) inside one of your sneakers – here’s a workout routine that you can do with one band and a desk chair: http://www.acefitness.org/getfit/rubrbndwkout.pdf
• Check with the concierge for a local map and some walking trails.  If you have a couple of hours free, walking a new city is the best way to learn about it!
• Hit the stairs!!!!!  If your hotel has more than one floor, you’ve got a serious cardio workout waiting for you just down the hall.  Warm up by walking briskly up and down the hall, then run up a few flights.  Catch your breath on whatever floor you’re on by walking briskly to one end and back, then do another few flights of stairs (if the hotel only has a couple of floors, catch your breath by walking down the stairs).  Keep this up for 30 minutes and you’ve just gotten a great workout!
• Go to the local mall and power walk while you window-shop.

Too much to do around the house to get in a workout?  Do both!

• You can easily make cleaning activities aerobic – run up a flight of stairs every couple minutes between tasks, push the vacuum cleaner while doing walking lunges, see how fast you can run around the bed while changing the sheets, wash the windows without a stepladder (i.e., jump in the air to get the very top parts), do squats while folding laundry…you get the picture.  If you have kids, make a game of it!  You’ll have a clean house, tired kids, and your workout will be complete!
• Cut the lawn, weed the garden, rake leaves, shovel snow.  All of these activities require strength and cardio fitness and qualify as a great workout!
• Walk the dog – he needs exercise as much as you do!
• Wash & vacuum the car…by hand

Stuck at work all day without a break?  Try these ideas: 

http://www.standupandeat.org/index.aspx?id=workingworkout

www.squeezeitin.com

Family time

• Make an obstacle course in the backyard – here are some great ideas using household items: http://simplekids.net/make-your-own-backyard-obstacle-course/
• Play tag with the kids!
• If your family loves video games, think about getting a Wii.  The first time I played Wii tennis with my husband for a half-hour, I was sore for 2 days afterwards!  The Wii Fit adds even more activities and gives you the opportunity to track your progress.
• Teenagers want to go shopping?  Drop them at the mall and then power walk either indoors or out while they shop!
• Waiting to pick someone up from school, or watching a soccer game? Keep a pair of walking shoes in the trunk of your car. You may be able to walk while waiting to drive children home from their activities.
• Active family activities.  Make a list of ideas with your family, then post it on the fridge for when someone says ‘I’m BORED’.  Here’s a few thoughts to get you started:

Go bowling - Plant a garden - Go roller skating - Go ice skating - Rent a canoe - Go for a swim - Rent bikes - Take a hike - Go camping - Pedal a paddleboat - Go square dancing - Rake leaves - Scavenger hunt in your yard - Jump rope - Play Frisbee - See who can hula hoop the longest - Play tag - Create a family dance routine - Build a snowman or snow fort - Have a snowball fight! - Visit an amusement park or zoo - Walk the dog, your neighbor’s dog or a pound dog

Keeping in touch with friends:

• Local girlfriends?  Schedule workouts together instead of (or before) girl’s night
• Long distance pals?  Walk while you talk on the phone – either around the neighborhood, backyard, or pacing around the house.  Better yet – schedule your phone chat so you can both go for a walk at the same time!

Get the picture?  A big part of fitting activity into a busy life is to make it a lifestyle – if you think of ways to stay on your feet & stay moving while you’re doing other things you’ll find it’s easy to keep moving and use your body while you’re getting other things done.

And the quote of the week is from the SqueezeItIn.com website:

Let life be your workout!

Our next meeting is Tuesday, August 30th at 6pm – hope to see you there!

 Goal Setting:

When setting goals, you want to think about both your long term and short term goals.  Another way to think of goal setting is defining where you want to go and how you’re going to get there.

First, let’s talk about long term goals.  Most importantly, long term goals should be realistic.  TV shows like the Biggest Loser, although inspiring, can lead you to have unrealistic expectations as to the amount of weight you can lose or how quickly you can lose it.  It can be really frustrating when you see someone on the Biggest Loser lose 20 or 30 lbs in one week and you only lose one!  But, keep in mind that the BL contestants are on a TV show.  They over eat salty foods prior to the first weigh in, they have 24-7 medical staff, they have no job or children to care for while on the show, and they are constantly being followed by cameras.  Reality TV doesn’t really reflect reality.  Your goals have to make sense for your abilities and your life style.

One of the most important thing when setting a long term goal is to state it out loud.  If you tell a friend or relative (or fellow Diva!) about your goal, they can help hold you accountable.  They can also help remind you of your goal in those times when you may inadvertently revert back to your old habits. 

Long term goals don’t always have to be about the number on the scale.  There are other types of goals that you can strive for as well- fitting into your favorite pair of jeans again or completing your first 5K, for example.  The most important thing is that you are working towards something tangible and achievable.

In addition to long term goals, it is also important to set short term goals as well.  Short term goals should support your long term goal.  You should pick something that you can achieve every day.  This may be skipping dessert after dinner for one week or not drinking that glass of wine with dinner on weeknights.  Short term goals should be realistic too!  It probably isn’t realistic to eliminate something from your diet (I will never eat chocolate again!).  Instead, you can simply reduce the amount you consume (I will only eat chocolate once a week as a special treat).   And remember- just because you set a short term goal, doesn’t mean that you can’t change it later on.  Maybe you want to try a new healthy habit each week- some changes you may like and be able to incorporate into your everyday life and some you may not.  It’s ok!  The important thing is that you tried something new.  You’re not a failure if you decided that a short term goal isn’t working for you.  What’s important is that you pick a new short term goal to help support your long term goal. 

Here are some examples of short term goals- only drink water with meals for one week (no soda, no juice, etc.), exercise before work twice a week, take the stairs instead of the elevator twice a day, try whole wheat pasta in three new recipes, or write down a successful food moment every day. 

What are some of your long term and short term goals?  We would love to hear them at the next Divas meeting or feel free to post on the forum!

Final thought:

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” ~Anonymous

And if you have time, make sure you read Philippa’s (aka Skinny Latte) story – she’s downright inspirational!