Another unhealthy facet of geek culture has just snuck up on me. Everyone is talking about that documentary, Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. Tis the season of getting outside and taking in some rays. Well, it is for some people. For me there was a division between indoor years and outdoor years. Transitions, life changes, departures all can lead to change. In this case some good, some excellent and some bad.
Holy crap, I’ve aged. My metabolism slowed down, the a number of calories I use each day has decreased dramatically, directly proportionally to the number of hours I spend online. To my horror and surprise I had ballooned out to a Jessica Simpson, (Love the shoe line!) and there ain’t no baby in there unless it’s a Pomeranian.
Thank Steve Jobs, there’s an App for that. I had never counted calories before. Ice cream, cake, steak none of that stuff ever stuck. Mainly because I used to do more yoga, hiking and dance. Using an App that I found on the LiveStrong.com website called Tap and Track which was abut 2.99 at the Apple App store, loosing weight has become a simple equation.
I had been doing some things right. Such as food combining, and irregular use of the Breville juicer for fruit or veggie juices. I picked up a few tips from Dr. Oz even though I am not fond of allopaths. Made smoothies, and had all ready changed to mostly liquid meals for breakfast and lunch, along with fruits or salads. I switch out several evening meals a week for plant based or fish. I still did stretches and gardening.
But inevitably the more sedentary lifestyle of geekdom had taken it’s toll. I’ve been learning quite a bit from studying my food intake with this App. I am discovering that although I eat low fat meals, the snacks that I like had blown the good habits right out of the water. By inputing everything I have each day, I can see exactly what I need to do in real time in order to come in under my calorie ceiling for the day.
It will take into account weight loss and calorie goals. It tells you the information about thousands of foods. It has grocery store and restaurant food items. It will also calculate the calories, fat, fiber and other numbers from your own recipes that you input. It is a very handy tool.
Even better, I can input my exercise, such as the number of hours of hiking, yoga, gardening or walking, and see if I can budget in more low calorie, non fat foods that day. It has taken out the guesswork. If I want to splurge, or keep to a steady nutrition regime, the App is a great guide for me as a beginning dieter.
I do like some activities outdoors. Most of them are low impact, and I had previously wondered if any of it was doing any good. Now I know that the duration of the activity, and the intensity adds up to loosing the calories. Not only gardening, but active house cleaning can be a form of exercise. It looks like as long as a person is standing up and doing any sort of movement, you are going at around at two or three miles per hour. Even at a geeky pace, the longer one snails about, something is being accomplished. Photo Credit Fuji Apple Apples.