One of the ultra cool things about boot camp was the nutritional guidance. A registered dietician, Lauren Squire, came out to talk to us on consecutive weeks. A lot of it was basic: Eat less junk food, exercise more.
But there were some good nuggets in there. Such as the counterintuitive concept of eating more — as in six small meals a day — to lose weight. (It helps keep your metabolism running, BUT more importantly taks the edge off hunger. Making it less likely that I’ll be driven to Fritos.) Another great tool was a matrix that helps you figure out a minimum number of calories you should consume each day. You do a bunch of mathematical computations involving current weight, height, and activity level, and it gives you a ball park figure.
You don’t want to go too far below that figure — it will just make your body hold on to its fat that much more. So the trick is not going too high above that figure. Long story longer: I bring this packet of info home, and leave it on the kichen table. Later that morning, I get this e-mail from my hubby with the following subject line:
Subject: calorie spreadsheet
This morning I turned the Calorie Goal worksheet from
your Boot Camp into a spreadsheet.Why? Because I could.
Yep. Some people read magazines in their spare time, others watch TV. My husband puts together spreadsheets for the fun of it! So no more math. You just plug in a few personal figures, and it spits out your minimum calorie count. I am stressing this because if you are trying to lose weight you need to eat more than that amount, and because I am happy to pass along my matrix if you’d like to try it. I’ll try to figure out how to post a spreadsheet to the blog. In the meantime, let me know if you are interested and I will e-mail it to you.
I’m supposed to aim for between 1800 and 2000 calories a day.
