Choosing your fuel

I'll be spending the next few posts talking about diet. Not diet like, "Hey, I'm going on a low-carb diet," but like diet as in all the foods you eat. First, let's understand that although eating is one of life's pleasures, it's main purpose it to provide fuel for your body and the chemicals, minerals, and building blocks your body needs to grow, repair itself, and fight foreign invaders(like bacteria, viruses, and cancerous growth, not the undocumented lawn care specialist type.) If you are restricting you calories, it will be important to pay more attention to the types of food you are eating so that you continue to get the nutrition you need. With a little awareness about what you are eating, you will probably end up getting better nutrition on fewer calories than you were getting before you started trying to lose weight.

Since weight loss is about calories consumed vs calories used, it is possible to lose weight eating nothing but potato chips, ice cream, and sugar packets, as long as the calories from these foods are less than your burn calories. But by eating like this, you would receive almost none of the nutrition your body needs.

Therefore, when you are restricting yourself to a limited amount of calories, you need to make these calories count. That means each calorie should come with a macro or micro nutrient. Empty calories are those that are accompanied by little or no nutrition. An extreme example would be a spoonful of sugar. Though it would provide you with energy(calories), it has absolutely no nutrition. So if you ate or drank 300 calories worth of sugar, that 300 would count against your total for the day. If the total you decided to eat each day was 1800, you would be left with only 1500 calories worth of food and drink from which to get your RDA (recommended daily allowance) of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and macro nutrients. Of course it would be silly to eat a dozen spoonfuls of sugar, but that it exactly what you are doing when you drink a couple of sugared colas. It makes no difference if you eat a sugar packet, or add a sugar packet to your coffee. The calories are still there, and they are still empty.

There is some benefit to sugar. Have you ever tried to eat a bowl full of plain oatmeal? A little sugar goes a long way to helping make it palatable. Oatmeal is a fantastic breakfast, and it is part of my normal breakfast 19 out of 20 days. But I would recommend putting some Splenda in it, or just learning to choke it down. My normal breakfast includes a bowl (a measured single serving) of oatmeal with two packs of Splenda and some cinnamon sprinkled in.

The philosophy we will be developing for our diet while losing weight is to have a diet that is sustainable for life. You can lose weight on a bean sprout "diet" or a low carb "diet", but they are not sustainable for the next 20 years. Now that I am done losing weight, there is nothing different about how I eat now and how I ate while I was losing weight, except I eat more of it(more calories).

Back on my breakfast example, oatmeal was one of about 3 or 4 things I would eat for breakfast while losing weight. Today I still eat oatmeal, but since I no longer need to limit myself to 1800 calories a day, I often add a banana or glass of skim milk. Still the nutritious way I taught myself to eat, but I add another 100 calories to the meal with the banana. The banana also helps me add some electrolytes and fiber.

Next we'll be focusing on the 5 food groups you should be making all your food choices from. Until then, why not go take your family for a 30 minute walk?

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