MyNetDiary Blog

Four Keys to Losing Weight While Injured

Let’s face it, sometimes injuries happen, especially if we’re new to regular exercise or stepping up our training routine. And though they can be a setback to our exercise regimen, they don’t have to be a setback to our weight loss goal. Here are four keys for keeping our waistline down while an injury lays us up.

1. Assess your injury. Talk with your doctor about the severity of your injury. Is it a mild sprain, a pulled muscle, or something worse? Your doctor can go over your restrictions on movement and help you find out what you can do, instead of leaving you to imagine all the things you can’t do. Perhaps talk with a rehabilitation specialist about a few exercises you can do to help the healing process.

2. Place extra attention on your diet. As we well know, to lose a pound of fat we need to lose 3,500 calories. We lose these calories through consuming fewer calories than our RDI (Reference Daily Intake) and burning them with exercise.

If your exercise routine is limited or stopped while you’re injured, then it follows that your diet will take over a larger share of the workload. We recommend you track your calorie intake diligently while you’re exercising less. With that, make sure your daily activity level is set to your new lifestyle (i.e. Sedentary or Low Active), as an injury can make you less active than your previous everyday life. This will help MyNetDiary calculate an accurate calorie goal for you.

Also, you will likely have to scale back your weight loss goal during an injury. If you were on course to lose two pounds a week, you’ll likely do better to only aim to lose one pound (or less) a week. The important part is that you either lose weight or maintain, and not give up and start gaining back what you’ve already lost.

3. Stay connected. Perhaps you were part of a weekly running group, or you had an exercise buddy at the gym. Don’t shy away from those with whom you’ve been active because suddenly you’re not. If your injuries require a lengthy recovery periods (i.e. months), perhaps you could volunteer at race days to support your friends or take the time to write notes of encouragement to those on the same journey as you are. Consider your role temporarily changed from “player” to “mascot”. Helping others will help you.

4. Worry about today, not tomorrow. Don’t set arbitrary deadlines to be back to full health. You can set goals for yourself, like increasing your endurance and strength, but deadlines can set you back, mentally, if you don’t hit them when you thought you should. Worry about what you can do today to continue losing weight. Even if your injury is similar to one you had in the past, the recovery period can be different, so don’t make a timetable based on the past. If you come back too quickly from an injury you only risk injuring yourself again. Take it day by day. 

Important Tips for Calories Tracking Using MyNetDiary

If you are new to MyNetDiary or to calories tracking in general, then please read these tips for ensuring a safe and effective tracking experience.  

MyNetDiary Articles

MyNetDiary has a library of articles on nutrition, weight, and exercise on the main website in the Diet Articles section under the Weight Loss tab. If I had to pick one article to read then it would be “The Dreaded Weight Plateau” since it addresses why we don’t lose weight at the rate we expect, as well as why we plateau. But if you can, please read all of the articles – they are very helpful.

MyNetDiary Blog

MyNetDiary is fortunate to have two writers on staff, a dietitian (me) and a professional health writer. We also occasionally have guest writers who are experts in their field. Take advantage of our twice-weekly posts to learn more about nutrition, weight, exercise, health, and disease prevention.  If I had to pick one post that you should definitely read to use MyNetDiary more effectively, then it would be “Setting a Healthy Target Weight”. If you are curious, our top blog posts for 2011 are listed here.  

Target & BMR Calories

MyNetDiary is designed to give you flexibility for goal setting so we allow Target Calories for weight loss to dip below your estimated BMR calories. This is helpful in the case where a health professional estimates your caloric needs to be lower than MyNetDiary’s calculations (which uses the Institute of Medicine’s DRI equations). However, if you do not have a recommended calories level from a health care professional, then I strongly urge you to adjust your goals so that your Target Calories rise to at least meet your estimated BMR calories. You can check your BMR calories in the Details tab on the web or in My Plan in apps. To increase your Target Calories, simply decrease your weekly rate of weight loss. You can also do that by increasing your Target Weight or by entering a Target Date that is further out. Meeting BMR calories is important to lower nutritional risk, minimize loss of lean body mass, and to promote a healthy eating pattern that is permanent and sustainable while you lose weight.  

Important: to avoid overestimation of your Target Calories, set your overall activity level to “sedentary” if you plan to enter daily exercise. Do not log activities of daily living since they are already included in all activity levels. If you don’t log exercise, then choose the lowest activity level that truly captures your daily experience. See your Account tab on the web for more descriptions of activity levels.  

Community Forum

We all need inspiration, feedback, and sometimes, just a good listener so take advantage of our Community Forum. You can post on public forum threads, join existing groups or teams, or even create your own group and invite others to join you. The easiest place to browse these options is on the web version.

If you want specific help from me, the consulting dietitian, then please be sure to post your questions on “Ask a Dietitian” thread. Also, if you want me to view your data, then change your “Information Sharing” setting in your Community Profile on the web so that I can see your basic data. Identifying information is not revealed. 

FAQs Page

There is a lot of information about how MyNetDiary works on our FAQs page. As well, if you are curious as to what subscription levels offer, then view our feature comparison chart. Both pages are found on the main website before you login.  

Have questions or comments about this post?  Please feel free to comment on MyNetDiary’s Forum or Facebook page. I would love to hear from you!

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD
Consulting Dietitian for MyNetDiary

Extra Resources

Harvard School of Public Health. The Nutrition Source: How to Get to Your Healthy Weight.  

Disclaimer: Please note that we cannot provide personalized advice and that the information provided does not constitute medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, please visit a medical professional.

Living the Organized Life

The New Year always brings with it new aspirations, and for many, a renewed commitment to improving their lives. So what better time than the present to consider how living the simple, organized life can not only improve your state of mind; it can also improve your health. All it takes is a little organization and a lot of fortitude.

According to many professional organizational experts, the benefits of getting rid of clutter in one’s life are numerous. They include, but are not limited to:

• More Time - When everything has its place, you create more time in your day because you no longer have to go look for something every time you need it.
• Feeling of Accomplishment – De-cluttering your home gives you a sense of pride, replacing the sense of being overwhelmed and out of control.
• Your Home is Larger – Simply, an organized home is a larger home, giving you the space to roll out your yoga mat or pop in that new exercise DVD and get your heart rate pumping.

With these same principles in mind, taking the time to organize your life and your eating habits can also lead to weight loss, according to Peter Walsh, organizational design expert. A few years ago, Walsh spoke on Oprah Radio about how good organization and good health go hand in hand. From that interview, here are a few of his tips.

• “If you focus on the food, you will never lose weight,” says Walsh. Instead, focus on getting organized and making small lifestyle changes that will have the greatest impact.

• Just like scheduling a trip to the grocery store, schedule your time to get to the gym. Both should be equally important.

• Stop eating takeout. Not only is most fast food loaded with calories, fat, salt and unhealthy preservatives, it’s a sign that time wasn’t planned for a meal.

• Make your kitchen an inviting place to work and create. If you don’t have the space to prepare a healthy meal in your kitchen, chances are you won’t. Instead, you’re likely to slap something together that fits in your limited space instead of your calories plan.

• Eat slowly. By chewing your food at least 20 times, it forces you to slow down and enjoy your food.

• Make mealtimes a dining experience. You don’t have to go out to restaurant to experience an inviting ambiance. Why not put down a nice tablecloth or light a couple candles when sitting at your own dinner table. “Dining is about enjoying good company and good food that is lovingly prepared, not just about eating,” says Walsh.

We hope these tips are helpful. If you have your own organizational tips, please share them with other MyNetDiary members on the MyNetDiary Facebook page or in our Community Forum. 

How to Exercise While in a Hotel without a Gym or Pool

Getting exercise while traveling for business can be a real challenge - we are often limited to exercising in our hotel room. If you have a choice, then choose a hotel that has a gym or a pool, even if it means spending a little bit more money. But if you don’t have that option, then it is helpful to have a program you can do safely in your room or on the hotel premises when exercise outside is not possible.

Cardio Exercises

Aerobic activity, or cardio, is one that raises your heart rate and keeps it raised for the duration of the activity. Moderate intensity activity will increase your heart rate to 50% - 70% of your maximum, whereas vigorous intensity will raise it to 70% - 85% of your maximum heart rate. A rough estimation of one’s maximum HR is 220 – age in years. In the case of a 50 year old, their estimated maximum heart rate is 170 beats per minute (BPM) and they would aim for a heart rate of 85 – 120 BPM for moderate intensity or 121 – 145 BPM for vigorous intensity exercise. Here are some ideas on how to get aerobic activity when stuck in your room or limited to the hallways and stairwells.

Cardio in the building:
- Walk the hallways of each floor of the hotel, including walking up the flight of stairs between each floor.
- For a higher intensity workout, simply walk up and down all flights of stairs (don’t take a break by walking the hallways).
- If you are very fit then you might consider going up the stairs by two steps or even running up the stairs.

Cardio in the hotel room:
-Dancing - move both your legs and arms. For inspiration or motivation, use dance or Zumba DVDs.  
-Marching - lift the knees, move your arms above your heart, and move across the room.  
-For higher intensity exercise (and if you are in a street-level room with no guests below you), then consider jogging or running in place, dancing with more jumping, skipping rope, or run a calisthenics routine without rest stops.  
-Quickly roll back and forth on a king-sized bed.
-Although jumping on the bed would be a fun way to get cardio, I would not recommend it if you want to avoid extra room charges!

Weight Resistance Exercises

Strength training in a hotel room is especially challenging if you are very strong since you have to rely on using your own body weight to provide the resistance. This can increase the risk of injuring your hands or wrists. However, for most of us, the task is a bit easier since less resistance needs to be applied to get a challenge (because we are not that strong).  To get the most out of your workout, especially if time is short, choose exercises that use multiple muscle groups simultaneously (compound exercises) over those that only work one muscle (isolated exercises).  Here are some of my favorites:

Push-ups.  If you have limited strength, then try knee push-ups or wall push-ups instead of traditional push-ups. If you are very strong, then try increasing the resistance by placing your feet on the bed and your hands on the floor.

Bent over rows with Aquabells (travel dumbbells). If you don’t have travel dumbbells, then you can make some! Ask the hotel restaurant for two empty milk or juice containers (with caps) so that you can fill with water to use as dumbbells (gallon = 8 lbs, quart = 2 lbs). If you are fairly strong, then you might consider investing in a portable chin up bar so you can do pull-ups instead.  

Squats & lunges. These are great for all-over lower body conditioning but be smart – make sure you use good form to avoid knee and back injury. Check out safety videos on squats and lunges.

Abdominal exercises. These can be performed easily in your hotel room. For core exercises beyond the simple crunch, take a look at the Mayo Clinic’s “Slide Show: Exercises to Improve Your Core Strength.” Also, see MyNetDiary’s post on core strength.  

You might want to practice your routine at home before you “take it on the road.” Ideally, have a trainer watch your form while executing new exercises.

Have questions or comments about this post? Please feel free to comment on MyNetDiary’s Forum or the MyNetDiary Facebook page. I would love to hear from you!

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD
Consulting Dietitian for MyNetDiary

More Resources

Cameron McGarr, C.S.C.S. Men’s Health. Who Needs a Gym?

CDC. Target Heart Rate and Estimated Maximum Heart Rate.

Katherine Isacks, MPS, RD. MyNetDiary. Physical Activity.  

Disclaimer: Please note that we cannot provide personalized advice and that the information provided does not constitute medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, please visit a medical professional.

Strong to the Core: It’s about more than Sit-Ups

It seems that a perennial topic of discussion when it comes to working out is why do ab exercises and how much should we be doing. Not everyone is out to build a chiseled six-pack, but core exercises are extremely important because they can do a lot to help prevent injuries and give us better balance and stability.

Core strength is about getting the muscles around our trunk and pelvis in shape. Through core exercises, you train the muscles around your pelvis, abdomen, lower back and hips to work together. This is what gives you better balance and agility.

In fact, a strong core can make doing nearly any activity easier, from swinging a golf club to household chores. Without good core strength, we tend to have poorer posture, more low back pain and more muscle injuries.

What’s nice about core exercises is that you can do them without needing fancy gym equipment. In fact, you can do them in the morning before work, while on your lunch break, or before bed. Here are three different core exercises you can do to improve your strength, balance and posture.

Bridge Pose - Lie on your back with your knees bent while keeping your back in a neutral position - not arching and not pressed into the floor. Do not tilt your hips. Now tighten your abdominal muscles and raise your hips off the floor until your hips are aligned with your knees and shoulders. Hold the position for as long as you can without breaking form.

Plank - Lie face down on a mat while resting on your forearms, with palms flat on the floor. Push off the floor, raising up on your toes and resting on the elbows. Keep your back flat. Now tilt your pelvis and contract your abdominal muscles to prevent your trunk from sticking up or sagging in the middle. Hold this pose for 20 to 60 seconds, lower and repeat three to five times.

Bicycle Exercises - Lie face up on a mat, placing your hands behind your head and lightly supporting it with your fingers. Bring your knees in toward your chest while lifting your shoulder blades off the floor - all without pulling on your neck. Now rotate to the left, bringing the right elbow toward the left knee as you straighten the other leg. Now switch sides, bringing the left elbow towards the right knee. Continue alternating sides in a pedaling motion for one to three sets of about 15 reps.

Keep these core exercises as part of your regular workout routine and you will notice a difference with your overall strength and balance.

Do you have any other fun core exercises? Share them with us on our MyNetDiary Facebook page or in our Community Forum. 

Size Matters: A Quick & Dirty Guide to Controlling Portion Size

Although most of us think we are good guessers when it comes to portion size, we aren’t! We are easily tricked into overestimating or underestimating portion size, and therefore, calories. Small differences in portion size might not seem like a big deal, but those differences add up over time and can help you make or break your weight goals. So learn tips on how to err on the side on minimizing, not maximizing calories. Most of the tips listed here are adapted from Brian Wansink’s “Mindless Eating.”

1.       Container Size

We think portions are smaller when their containers are large and conversely, we think portions are larger when their containers are small. These tips are especially important for those of you who do not measure or who just measured a food or beverage once and then shifted to “guestimating” thereafter.

Use tall, skinny glasses instead of short, wide glasses. The same amount of liquid (e.g. 1 cup) will look like more in a tall, skinny glass than when it is contained in a short, wide glass. We tend to drink more calories from short, wide glasses. Practical tip: don’t throw out your short, wide glasses – instead, use them for water. This will encourage you to drink more water.

Use smaller plates (8-9 inches) instead standard dinner plates (10-12 inches). Don’t guess – take out a ruler or measuring tape and measure the total diameter of your plate. Are your plates really large? Consider using salad plates instead of dinner plates, or simply buy smaller dinner plates.

Use custard cups instead of bowls. Pyrex custard cups will hold about ½ cup or 4 fl oz without spilling over the sides. Regular-sized bowls can easily hold up to 12 fl oz (up to about 1½ cups). Custard cups are perfect for ice cream, puddings, fresh fruit salad, and other foods that you wish to limit to a ½ cup serving.

2.       Color & Contrast

If the food and dish have a similar color, then we are more likely “over serve” ourselves compared to a target amount (and therefore, eat more calories). Example: attempting to serve oneself one cup of cooked white pasta on a white plate. When the food and plate have a high color contrast, we tend to guess lower – that is, we tend to “under serve” ourselves (e.g. white pasta on a black plate). And interestingly, the reverse is true if the plate and tablecloth have a high contrast – we tend to over-serve food (e.g. white plate on a black tablecloth). The key is contrast rather than plate color per se. Van Ittersum and Wansink published a great article on this subject: “Plate Size and Color Suggestibility: The Delboeuf Illusion’s Bias on Serving and Eating behavior.” The article will be published in the Journal of Consumer Research, but it is accessible online ahead of print here. If you prefer a brief summary of that study, then check out Ann Lukits’ article, “Tricking the Eye To Keep From Heaping Plates” in The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2011.    

3.       See All You Eat

Assemble all meal components (prepared, that is) so that you see everything you are about to eat for that meal. Once you finish your meal, do not go back for seconds. When we eat multiple courses, we lose track of how much we have eaten and tend to eat more calories. Keeping visual reminders on the table of how much food or drink we have consumed (e.g. empty beer or soda bottles, empty plates, bowls, or glasses, bones, etc.) helps us eat fewer calories than if there are no visual reminders. Practical tip:  avoid “all you can eat” restaurant specials and buffets.  

Good luck experimenting with portion size! Have questions or comments about this post? Please feel free to comment on MyNetDiary’s Community Forum or MyNetDiary Facebook page. I would love to hear from you!

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD
Consulting Dietitian for MyNetDiary

More Resources

Katherine Isacks, MPS, RD. MyNetDiary. Hidden Cues to Eating.  

Katherine Isacks, MPS, RD. MyNetDiary. Measuring & Estimating Portion Size.  

Wichita State University. Visual Estimates of Serving Sizes.  

Disclaimer: Please note that we cannot provide personalized advice and that the information provided does not constitute medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, please visit a medical professional.

10% Off: The Best ‘Deal’ in Weight Loss

No, we’re not trying to sale you something at a discount. We’re trying to help you set a realistic and helpful weight loss goal to start the new year off right. And what is that goal? It’s losing 10% of your starting body weight. Now before you think we’re giving you too simple of a target to hit, we’ll share with you some important facts and figures.

According to a study released last November, more than one in three Americans believe overweight people need to lose 30% of their body weight to improve their health. And more than 70% believe that overweight individuals need to lose at least 20% of their body weight to improve their health. However, only one in five people thinks that losing 10% of one’s body weight will improve one’s health. 

But according to the experts, losing just 10% of one’s body weight can have big payoffs for health. And these experts aren’t talking about losing 10% of your body weight in a “Biggest Loser” fashion, dropping it in two days while a chiseled and tan personal trainer screams in your ear and inspirational theme music plays in the background. Experts say the “gold standard” of weight loss is losing 10% of your body weight over a period of six months. If you hit your goal in six months and you still need to lose weight, set another six-month goal for another 10%. 

At this rate, losing weight becomes more about making the lifestyle changes that will keep the weight off over the long term. The studies that have backed these claims have shown that losing 5-10% of one’s body weight improved blood pressure, reduced LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, improved glucose tolerance, and lowered risk for cardiovascular disease. And the results of losing this low percentage of weight even outweighed the benefits of taking medications for some of these health issues. 

Weight loss is much more than getting to the size jeans you want to wear. It’s also about getting healthy on the inside so you can live longer, do more and be happier. We want everyone to reach their goals this year. And speaking of goals, tell us what your goal for 2012 is at our Community Forum. We’d love to hear from you!

If you have questions about using MyNetDiary or calculating a proper weight loss goal, you can also post a question in the “Ask a Dietitian” thread. 

Is Your Weight Goal SMART?

Happy Holidays from MyNetDiary!

The MyNetDiary team would like to extend a warm and thankful “Happy Holidays” to all our members out there. We know you worked hard this year on your goal, and we’re proud to have helped in the ways we do. But we know the real “labor of love” were the hours you exercised and the times you made healthful food choices. 

We are excited that we released some important updates this year to some of our apps, most notably the “Photo Foods” feature for the MyNetDiary iPhone app, which allows members to contribute new foods by snapping a picture of the food package and nutrition label and letting us do the legwork of entering the information. 

We also continued to support and improve the MyNetDiary iPad app, taking full advantage of the iPad’s large screen and responsive features. 

These improvements and your supportive feedback in the App Store and Android Market have helped us tremendously. If haven’t yet left us a review, please consider taking a moment to do that now. We really do rely on your positive feedback to make MyNetDiary the best it can be!

We have many more great improvements and offerings in store, one of which will be officially announced next week! So stay tuned. We hope you have been enjoying MyNetDiary’s services and we look forward to continue supporting your weight loss goals in 2012! 

-The MyNetDiary Team