Calories made easy

In our post “Calorie Counting Made Easy,” we talked about how to count calories and how to find out how many calories your body needs. 

Now that you know what you “need” and what you are eating each day, you can see how those relate and affect your weight.  Need 2,500 and eat 2,500?  No change to body weight.  Remember, a pound of body fat equals 3,500 calories, so it takes a cut of 500 calories a day (3,500 divided by 7)  to lose a pound per week.  Need 2,500 per day and eat 2,000 each day?  You would be losing a pound that week. 

At Fantasy Healthball, we always stress the need for exercise in addition to a healthy diet.  So, if you wanted to lose a pound a week as in the above example, we’d suggest you cut maybe 250 calories a day and exercise for the other 250.  Or lose weight over a longer period of time.  For some, simply improving food choices throughout the day can reduce calorie intake significantly. 

Calorie counting can change the way you look at food.  The act of writing down what you put in your mouth, although a little burdensome for some people, can open your eyes to a healthier way of thinking.  Once you know the number of calories you need, and how many you average, it may make you look at food differently.  You may look at a candy bar, for example, and think “wow, that is 280 calories, is that really worth 280 calories, or maybe I should have an orange (also very sweet, but only 60 calories) instead.”  Jelly (raspberry filled) doughnut, 350 calories.  Piece of coconut crème pie, 450 calories. 

Sometimes people “sneak” a snack.  They eat a candy bar or some other candies quickly as if to minimize the act.  But when you are calorie counting, the fact you know you will have to write it down and add it up may change your mind about eating it in the first place!  At a restaurant staring down at your giant serving of spaghetti and sausage?  Put half in the “to go” container to eat the next day and you’ve just cut your calories in half for that serving.  Skip or reduce the parmesan cheese and you saved yourself some more.  Drop us a comment or email to tell us how this is working for you!  — Jim Ballard

Fantasy Football Season Over?

So as I’ve mentioned here many times, Jeff has been playing fantasy football since George Halas was his starting wide receiver, but 2008 was my first year.  Of course, I found it to be very addictive and a great way to keep me to my health goals while simultaneously playing Fantasy Healthball.  As a rookie,  I made plenty of rookie mistakes like starting players who ended up sitting out at the last minute with an injury.  It also took me a long time to figure out that my Yahoo! league was generous awarding kick and punt return points.  I noticed my competition with a defensive back that got one tackle but 20 points!  A-ha, the defensive back is also the kick returner!  Anyway, I got a lot smarter as the year went on. 

My league, a total points league rather than head to head, had twelve teams and I stayed the same or moved up each week.  I went from something like 12th to 9th to 8th to 6th to 5th to 4th and stayed in fourth for several weeks.  I ended up finishing fourth in the league which I was pretty proud of for my first year.   Congrats to “Go Bengals Go” who won our league.  My greatest “unknown” find was Joshua Cribbs who seems to play every position for the Clevelend Browns.  In my league, Cribbs scored plenty of points.  Unfortunately, my big name QB, Carson Palmer, was out pretty much all season with an injury but I discovered “unknown” Tyler Thigpen and Thiggy is my new hero.    

From now on, I’m playing in head to head leagues which is more common and much more compatible with Fantasy Healthball.   Jeff was in a head to head league and will write about his experience.  As I was in a fantasy football points league, for Fantasy Healthball purposes I competed each week against the average score.  That was fun, but not as fun as it would have been to go up head to head against a weekly opponent, which I’ll highly recommend from now on and I’ll certainly do in the 2009 NFL season. 

In Fantasy Healthball, I finished 15-1, a great season by any measure.  And I sure worked my butt off (literally and figuratively, of course!) to finish with that record.  I lost about 10 pounds of body fat through the season and still feel in the best shape of my life at 40 years old.  This morning, I rode my mountain bike up about a 2,250 foot elevation in a short period of time, something I COULD NOT have done before I started playing Fantasy Healthball.

We hope you had similar results.  Send us an email or comment on our blog to let us know.  Meanwhile, Jeff and I will be playing the NFL.com playoff challenge to continue our Healthball season.  — Jim Ballard

Calories Made Easy – How Many Calories Do I need?

<Update:  There is still plenty of time to get into the Fantasy Healthball action for 2009.  If you like what you read here, check out our website.  You can take on the NFL pros and use your passion for football to get passion for great health.  Tell your friends and Read more here…>

If you are the quantitative type, you can calculate an estimate of how many calories you need per day and then how many you need to cut to lose a particular amount of weight over time.  An easy way to do this is to use an on-line calculator.  Just type “Daily Calorie Need calculator” into your search engine and you’ll have your choice of thousands, or click on one of these:  American Cancer Society to 24-Hour Fitness centers to the Mayo Clinic.

As an example, let’s say Leroy is a 40-year old, 200-pound man who is 5”11.”  Leroy has a light activity level as he has a desk job and doesn’t exercise much.  He would need around 2,500 calories per day (when we say “need,” we mean how much would be needed to maintain current body weight).  Since a pound of body fat equals 3,500 calories, he’d have to cut 500 calories a day to lose a pound per week.  So if Leroy wants to lose a pound a week, he could cut his calories back to 2,000 a day.  Leroy could also chose a healthier route such as only cutting his calories back to 2,250 but also exercising to burn the other 250. 

A second example, Juanita, is a 25-year old, 130-pound woman who is 5’4.”  Juanita has a moderate activity level because she likes to jog a few times a week.  She would need about 2,000 calories per day.  Again, a pound of body fat equals 3,500 calories, so it takes a cut of 500 calories a day to lose a pound per week.  If Juanita wants to lose a pound a week, she could cut her calories to 1,500 a day.  A better plan for Juanita might be to cut her calories to 1,750 per day and work in swimming on days that she doesn’t jog for the other 250. 

But maybe a pound a week isn’t Juanita’s goal.  Perhaps she only wants to drop five pounds for her wedding in six months.  Using the same information above, she would only need to cut a little under 100 calories a day, cutting her total calories to just under 1,900 per day.  She’d drop the weight over a longer period of time and be in the shape she wants to be for her wedding.

Our Fantasy Healthball challenge for you is to track the calories you eat for a week.  Okay, let’s make it even more simple.  Track them for a day.  Compare that against your daily need from an on-line calculator.  Does your calorie lifestyle point towards gaining, losing, or maintaining weight?  If it is gaining beyond what is healthy for you, check out our Exercise section for ways to drop some of those unwanted calories.  — Jim Ballard