Burning the calories you consume is the best way to stay at your weight. But sometimes despite the care, you do not succeed …
You really are a busy man, but you give time to go to the gym several times a week -at least two- and try to eat well. You know you need to eat carbohydrates before exercising and protein afterward. You have the necessary knowledge in nutrition without becoming neurotic. You stay happy with a roasted tuna steak, but you’re ready to break your diet in front of a bloody Mary. After all, you work hard. You see exercise and food as a credit and payment system: you make a deposit with an hour of training, and then enjoy a delicious ice cream. If you eat too much, it doesn’t matter because the Saturday soccer game or the jogging on Sunday will stabilize the accounts. If it sounds familiar to you, you’re one of the vast majority of 2011 average men who take care of their health: watch what they eat, but they are allowed to enjoy everything on Friday nights. I know all this because I include myself in this type of subject.
But something is wrong, in the last year you gained weight, maybe seven or eight kilos or enough to show it and put your heart at risk. Now the shirts are tight and some of your jeans are uncomfortable after washing, while others will stay in the closet. Two minus two is not always zero.
If you decided to dine spaghetti a la carbonara and the next day you exercise before going to your office. So why are you loading those fish markets today? The stark truth is that your calorie storage is bigger than you think, much more.
Take as a sample on a Friday night: a mug of beer 227 calories, five a night 1,135; snack peanuts 215 calories. Then, on track, you add two slices of pizza and two glasses of a red merlot, you will put in your mouth 694 and 250 more calories, respectively. It gives us a total of 2,294 kcal. Now the question is: is the exercise you do enough? Not really. To get rid of everything you just ingested, the next morning you should run about 29 km, that’s a half marathon with about 8 km of warm-up. For example, if sprinter Usain Bolt ate the same thing, he would have to run 23 minutes at 37 km / h (the speed with which he set the world record) to expend all that energy. Which, by the way, is impossible.
This represents an energy crisis for men, because no matter how much exercise we do we cannot get rid of excess calories. In addition, each wrong step you take in your habits brings you closer to a greasy reality. Apparently, what we really need in a real balance between the energy we consume and the energy we spend. It’s the bottom line of the weight management trend – and the way to forcefully refute the famous Atkins, Cabbage, or South Beach diets. So, at least try to do the following for a full month.
Income and expenses
Your first move must be an arithmetic calculation. Your body uses the food you eat to create energy. This process is your metabolism, which, in elementary terms, is a series of chemical reactions that allow a living organism (like you) to stay that way. Your basal metabolic rate (IMB) refers to the number of calories your body uses to carry out the activities of the following day. Even when you don’t make more movements than sleeping, breathing, blinking or beating your heart. You can calculate your IMB through the following equation.
66 +
(13.7 x your weight in kilos) +
(5 x your height in cm) –
(6.8 x your age in years) = IMB *
Mine is 2,044.8, which means that at most I can only eat 2,000 calories a day without the danger of gaining weight, without moving a single muscle or wasting energy. It is simple. My menu for a day includes poached eggs, toast, tuna and mayonnaise sandwich, tortelini, garlic bread and a bottle of mineral water. The point is that even after calculating your IMB according to your lifestyle (your energy demands), it results in an extra 600 calories, almost what is contained in a hamburger or 15 apples. The problem is how I pay my debt.
The next day I get on the rowing machine hoping to spend all the calories I have before lunch. I keep my eyes on the screen of the device that shows the amount of energy consumed. Little by little, my body begins to heat up and then sweat copiously for 20 minutes, after that, I can’t take it anymore. The numbers tell me that after my effort I only used 264 kcal. I don’t know whether to eat something anymore. In desperation, I seek advice from Michael Lean, director of the Department of Nutrition at the University of Glasgow in England. For sure, if someone is able to establish the nutritional balance it is him. “It is too easy to bring snacks and an appetizer to your mouth or to order something with extra cheese, which adds more than a thousand calories to your diet,” says the expert. “Nevertheless, the amount you can burn through exercise only rises a few hundred. ” In other words, they are easier to eat than to spend. Perhaps all this does not sound very revolutionary in the field of waist reduction, but it is the most effective when it comes to balancing the energy that our metabolism needs. The debt and payment system, apparently, is flawed, but if you avoid owing calories in your diet, it does work, so avoid what that delicious pudding provides. It is the first step to achieve balance.
* Your energy demands
The basal metabolic rate (IMB) is stable if you don’t have to work or exercise. Be honest and think about the total energy you spend a day. According to the Harris-Benedict equation, it is divided into five categories, which allow you to determine your IMB.
1 If you are sedentary (Little or no exercise = IMB x 1.2)
2 Little active (Light exercise 1 to 3 times a week/office work = IMB x 1,375)
3 Moderate activity (Exercise 3/5 days per week/office work = IMB x 1.55)
4 Very active (Heavy exercise 6-7 days per week = IMB x 1,725)
5 Excessively active (High-performance sports every day = IMB x 1.9)