20/40/40 Balanced meals

Calculating 20/40/40 for your meals is pretty simple. You need to know a few basics about reading a nutritional label to get it right. Let's take a look at the nutritional information from a relatively balanced snack bar. Nutritional labels are very confusing. They mix up different facts and the layout implies a relationship between dissimilar components. This is the nutritional information for a Think Thin Chocolate Fudge bar:

NUTRITION FACTS

Serving Size: 60g
Servings Per Container: 1
Calories 260
Calories from fat 72
Total Fat 8 g
Saturated Fat 2.5 g
Trans Fat 0 g
Cholesterol 5 mg
Sodium 150 mg
Potassium 110 mg
Total Carbohydrate 27 g
Dietary Fiber 1 g
Sugars 0 g
Sugar Alcohol 15 g
Other Carbohydrates 9 g
Protein 20 g

There are four primary components to check when reading a label:

Location of the manufacturer

Serving size

Energy Content (Calories)

Nutritional Content (Fat/Carbohydrates/Protein)

First, where does it come from? Buy foods that are in season, available locally, and have minimal packaging and processing. Look for foods that came from a farm or factory close to home. No reason to buy products that have been shipped across the country when you can get them locally. Better to buy the locally produced non-organic product than the organic product from farm or factory in another state. Try to find foods that are in-season. Shop at the farmer's market for the freshest, healthiest foods. There are a number of online tools that help you figure out what's in season. Try this one: http://www.sustainabletable.org/shop/eatseasonal/

Second, check the serving size. Food is often packaged with multiple servings per package so you want to check serving size to make sure you aren't eating more calories than you intend. In this case, 1 per container - 60 grams total weight.

Third, consider the calories. You want to make sure your total calorie content matches your daily plan. Calories is the amount of "energy" you'll get from eating this food.

Fourth, (this is the most important one for nutrition) check the nutritional value. Make sure that the calories are approximately 40% protein, 40% carbohydrates and 20% fat. For a simple rule of thumb, look for foods where the nutritional label shows carbs and protein nearly equal and the fat is about 1/4 of that amount. For example, a snack with 20g protein, 20g of carbs and 5 grams of fat is well balanced. The goal isn't perfect 20/40/40, but as close as you can as often as you can.

When making a meal or snack, you aren't likely to find foods with the exact 20/40/40 proportions. Combine items to make the balance. For example, if you are in the mood for some crackers, add some lean meat and cheese to get your protein and fat.

If you want the math to calculate 20/40/40, there is a simple formula: Fat contains 9 calories per gram. Carbohydrates and protein contain 4 calories per gram. Our Think Thin bar above has 8 grams of fat, 27 grams of carbohydrates and 20 grams of protein. So if you do the quick math, here's the breakdown:

Fat = 8g x 9 calories per gram = 72 calories from fat

Carbohydrates = 27g x 4 calories per gram = 108 calories from carbohydrates

Protein = 20g x 4 calories per gram = 80 calories from protein

To check the percentage of calories from each micronutrient, divide each by the total calories:

Fat = 72/260 = 28% Fat

Carbohydrates = 108/260 = 41% Carbohydrates

Protein = 80/260 = 31% Protein

References: Serving Size Definition http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/qa-lab18.html

Diary

Sunday's post about nutrition and food planning left out one very important thing:

You must keep a diary. That really should be step 1. The diary will keep you honest with yourself. It seems like it would be easy to remember each meal. When you get hungry, you will conveniently forget about that cookie or candy bar you ate. When you write down what you eat, you will be faced with your choices. Remember, you are doing this for yourself and no one else. If you decide to have a candy bar, that's totally fine. Just write it down so you don't forget and eat another one tomorrow and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday…

I know it sounds daunting, but it really isn't bad. You can take the old fashion route: get a small notebook and a pen. Just make an entry for each meal and exercise. Record the food, meal time, calories, fat, carbohydrates, protein of everything you eat. Do it while you are eating or immediately after, before you forget. There's no need to follow any particular format or style, as long as you are recording your food. No one will look at this but you, so you only need to make it legible to yourself! For example, my written diary entries look like this:

Tuesday, May 5 - Daily Calorie goal 2200Kcal

600Kcal Breakfast 8AM:

Egg Sandwich, 320Kcal, F 9g, C 28g, P 26g

Oatmeal, 190Kcal, F 2g, C 38g, P 6g

Americano with milk, 60Kcal, F 4g, C 3g, P 4g

300Kcal Snack 11AM:

Greek Yogurt and Cheerios, 270Kcal, F 4.5, C 31g, P 26g

Exercise 2PM:

30 Minutes treadmill

If you're a tech savvy iPhone user, there are a number of iPhone apps that will allow you to track your daily food intake. I use an app called Lose It! From Fit Now. The app is Free and it has a huge database of foods and it allows you to create custom foods (very important).

Why go to all this trouble?

1 - Your health: healthy eating means knowing exactly what you eat. Food is essential to life. What you eat has a direct impact on your body. It's something we all must do to survive and the more healthy the food, the better we feel. Eating without thinking is a shortcut that will come back to haunt you.

2 - The environment: As you begin to keep track of what you eat and get used to reading the labels, you'll become aware of the origin of the foods and the ingredients. Why buy English muffins that were shipped across the country when there's a brand that comes from Seattle?

We need fat in our diet. Good fat.

For those who don't know me well, there are some facts you should understand to put this post into context: I'm fit - about 6% body fat. I exercise regularly with very high intensity. And I do a tremendous amount of cardio exercise (40 minutes of cardio daily). I also stick to a very regimented diet. That diet is very low in fat of any kind, particularly saturated fat.

So you can imagine my surprise when my doctor told me that my LDL cholesterol (the bad kind) is too high. After discussing the possible causes with my doctor, it seems clear that the primary cause is my genetic makeup. He suggested adding some LDL-lowering foods to my diet. He specifically recommended fatty acids from fish in the form of fish oil tablets. This posed a dilemma for me since I avoid fish and fish products due to concerns of overfishing. So I began to research LDL-lowering foods. I wanted to understand which ones are safe for the environment, safe for my health and how to incorporate them into my diet. LDL-lowering foods include Oats, Almonds and Walnuts, fatty acids (from fish), plant sterols\stanols and olive oil. (See this article from the Mayo Clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cholesterol/CL00002)

While there are many sources of these good fats, one of the best is the oil from fish. So if fish is on the menu, how do I find a good source for information about fish that are safe to eat? There are a bunch of resources with excellent, reliable information. One of the best sources is the Environmental Defense Fund. The EDF has a Seafood Selector http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1521 and a new Sushi selector! http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=29774 Both can be printed in pocket-size for your wallet or purse. The Blue Ocean Institute also has a service called FishPhone for when you're on the go. You can send a text message to 30644 with the message FISH and the name of the fish and you'll get a reply with an environmental safety rating for the fish! See more at http://www.blueocean.org/

Here's a list of things to add to your diet that keep you healthy with the lowest environmental impact. Remember, read the label - look for products from your home state first. Try to find products that travel the shortest distance to your local grocery store.

Oats and oatmeal (Go for the ones with minimal sugar)

Walnuts and almonds - plain, unsalted. Add them to salad or smoothie.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil - Extra Virgin has been filtered less. Use this for cooking or paired with vinegar for salad dressing.
Take Control Margarine from Promise- Use it in cooking or where you'd otherwise use butter.
Fish Oil Supplements from small fish and well-managed fisheries. See this article at EDF.org: http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=19376 The brand I use is Spectrum Organics.

Sources:
Sterols/Stanols: http://www.ific.org/publications/factsheets/sterolfs.cfm
Margarine reduces LDL: http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v52/n5/abs/1600559a.html

Nutrition: What do we need?

Food is the most critical factor in personal health and fitness. Exercise and activity is important, but exercise can't completely compensate for an unbalanced diet. Most people consider exercise a way to counteract the foods we like to eat but don't really need. It is commonly thought that calories are calories. As long as we're burning more than we consume, we'll be able to sustain or lose weight. However, the food we eat is made up of 3 primary micronutrients: Fat, Carbohydrates and Protein. The body needs these micronutrients in the correct proportions and at the right intervals in order to be most efficient at keeping our bodies healthy and strong. We need 4-6 meals per day, with a total calorie count of 1500-2500. (Your personal calorie requirements will vary dramatically depending on your fitness level and goals. Calculate your calorie requirements here: http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm )

Fat is used as an energy source and 20% of each meal should be fat
Carbohydrates are used as an energy source right away and should make up 40% of each meal
Protein is used to build and repair cells and muscles and should make up 40% of each meal

The typical binge and exercise fitness plan doesn't work because our binges don't follow the above proportions. A binge on 500 calories of donuts (that's about 1 donut), we overload our body with carbohydrates and fat. But we need protein as well. So we could eat a chicken breast to add protein, but that adds an additional 120 calories. That's an additional 15 minutes on the treadmill - 30-45 minutes total cardio time! But all that cardio exercise has an impact. When using energy, our body will use every source at its disposal. Carbohydrates, fat, and the energy stored in muscles are all used to fuel our endurance exercises. So if our goal is to keep or add muscle mass, 45 minutes of endurance exercise is counter-productive. A much more efficient method would be to plan meals around your own personal goals and plan exceptions to your plan to satisfy cravings.

Making your own food plan:
1. Determine your daily calorie requirements. Are you trying to sustain, lose weight, gain muscle mass or train for an event? It's best to talk to a nutritionist about your own personal goals. You can also see one of the sites as a good starting point:
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm or http://www.kinetixliving.com/nutrition_overview.php
2. Develop a daily food plan. Planning ahead is a primary key to success. If you wait until it's time to eat to figure out what you're going to eat, you will be more likely to eat calories your body doesn't need.
a. Divide your daily calorie requirement by 5. If your daily calorie requirement is 2000, that's 400 calories per meal. So you'll be eating 400 calories, every 3 hours. You can also have three main meals and two snacks. Breakfast 500, snack 250, lunch 500, snack 250, dinner 500. Skipping meals is not cool.
b. Pick balanced recipes to incorporate into your 5 meals. Kinetix Living is a great source for recipes. They use a system called "K-Count". A K-count of 5 is 500 calories. K-count of 4 is 400 calories. http://www.kinetixliving.com/nutrition_recipes.php
c. Pick easy snacks to eat in case you can't get to a meal. Eating every three hours is very important. If you skip a meal, you will not be able to resist the cupcake or chocolate bar. Skipping a meal also means you'll eat more when you do eat again. Since your body can't really use more than a few hundred calories at a time without storing it, you'll store every calorie you eat over what you actually need. Energy/Protein bars can be a convenient snack option. However, there are many that aren't any better than a candy bar. I'm working on an article that describes what to look for in an energy bar. In the meantime, look for bars that have an equal amount of protein and carbohydrates. For example, these Think Thin bars are an good snack choice: http://shop.thinkproducts.com/thinkproduct.aspx?product=B000GAZ0QI
3. Plan two "free targets" per week. In order to maintain a healthy food plan, you will need to have opportunities to feed your cravings. Its important to remember that success will be determined by what you eat on a daily basis. Planned, controlled exceptions are acceptable. Pick two, 4-hour windows per week when you can eat anything you want. Look forward to these times. Consider how often we eat random calories because they are at our fingertips. Don't settle! Get the indulgences you really enjoy. If you really like Buffalo Bleu Kettle Chips, plan to eat a bag of them! If you have a soft spot for Carrot Cake, plan to eat some! Your free targets should also be the time when you drink alcohol.

Don't call your food plan a Diet. Diet implies that you are keeping yourself from something. You will be eating correctly to give your body the correct nutrients in the appropriate amounts at the right time. There's no such thing as bad food or bad calories. There are only calories our body needs and those that we don't need. Balancing your food plan is about understanding what you need and providing the correct amounts.

For more information about nutrition, try:
http://nutrition.about.com/od/basicnutritionecourse/Basic_Nutrition_E_Course_Ten_Weeks_to_Understanding_Nutrition.htm

Priority 1

The first post mentioned priorities. Life is an exploration of your own personal priorities. What's important to you and your family today may change. Today's economic climate has caused millions to reassess their own priorities.
 

However, there are some things that are fundamental. There are things that transcend cultural and societal traditions and lie at the core of what makes us humans. Understanding someone else's decisions begins with understanding their priorities. And understanding your own priorities is important to making decisions that keep you in harmony with yourself and your world. But let's be clear about the most fundamental human drive: survival. 
 

Our most basic drive is the drive to survive. We are in a unique position from all other species in all other periods of recorded history: We have the ability to make absurd choices in an effort to make survival as uncompromising and enjoyable as possible. We spend precious resources bringing every possible fruit, vegetable and foodstuff across the globe to our local grocery store. We think that because we can, we should. At the same time, there are farmers within 100 miles of our homes who can't survive without government subsidies. There are families who can't afford natural or local foods so they buy the cheapest calories they can find. Often those cheap calories aren't the healthiest for the consumer or the planet.  
 

Priority 1: Eat Responsibly: Understand your unique nutritional requirements and find foods that meet those requirements within 100 miles of home - whenever possible. Getting to a point where diet is in harmony with your body and your environment is a process. It's easy to get overwhelmed and give up. But remember that every time you make the choice for the locally raised Pears over the Mango that comes from the Philippines, you've made a choice that has serious long-term impact. Same goes for making a healthier choice - choosing not to eat an extra cupcake won't immediately give you the body you want -but a lifetime of such choices will.

Life in harmony

What does it mean to live in harmony with our planet?
What does it mean to live in harmony with our own bodies?
How can we reasonably maintain a balance between fitness, health and our environment?

We, as a species, are under pressure by our environment to define a new way of existing that suits our role in the planet as the apex species. We are omnivores, so we can eat almost anything. We are intelligent, so we can design and build things that affect our environment. We are curious, so we feel the urge to understand the circumstances and science that make the world around us. We are driven by our desire to be secure, safe and well fed. We've existed with little need to understand how our choices imact our environment and our health. However, its become clear that as our population grows, our choices have a real impact. Whether our individual choices have a positive or negative impact, they are amplified by our sheer numbers. The smallest quantity of a toxic chemical compound used to clean the toilet once a month isn't toxic - until everyone in the neighborhood buys the Costco-sized container and uses it with the same frequency. It is time for our species to consider our responsibility to the planet. We are intelligent - the only species with the intelligence to help save our planet. As such, we are compelled to do so.

How does this change happen?
One person, one decision, one small step at a time.
With so much great information about food choices, fitness options, and green choices, how are we to make sense of the things that have the greatest impact? The first step is to understand and define our priorities. We must prioritize the things that drive our lives in a way that better coincides with our core human needs. We must consider the sacrifices that we need to make to save our lives and our planet. I will share my knowledge, explorations and experiences in the pursuit of a more harmonious existence.