The Science of Sedentary Behavior

Studies show that sitting endangers your health. It reduces your circulation and your metabolism starts to shut down. I don’t like that I am sitting here writing this post! However, no consensus has been reached on exactly how much sitting is bad for you. We all have to sit, whether on a train, bus or car to get to work, or while working in an office.

Make sure you get up and regular intervals, even if you just walk around your desk a few times. Or get yourself a glass of water, drinking enough water is a whole health topic by itself.

From The Stanford Center on Longevity: http://longevity.stanford.edu/

A new gadget was featured in an article in the July 2010 Wired magazine. It straps onto your upper arm kind of  like a watch and it “captures your calorie burn with an astonishing 90% accuracy” according to the website for this gadget. The device is part of their holistic weight management system.

I wonder how this works. Do you watch the monitor to see how many calories you have burned so far and then get up and run around if you haven’t burned enough? I should watch their video, but I am running off to a meeting, maybe later!

Here’s the learn more page on their website:  http://www.bodymedia.com/Shop/Learn-More/What-is-BodyMedia-FIT

One of the biggest crazes at the moment is toning shoes, shoes which create instability when you walk and therefore cause your leg muscles to work harder to maintain your balance, among other things. The American Council On Exercise has found that these claims -burning more calories, building leg muscles, reducing joint stress and improving posture by SOME of the shoe manufacturers are not true! Reebok and New Balance have created a better design, and have done more testing, and some consumers swear by their toning shoes. The answer to this question is that it depends on the brand. Do some research before you buy.

Hungry girl, also known as Lisa Lillien, has developed quite a following for her daily email newsletter. I just signed up myself. She gives tips and tricks for hungry chicks. She spends time finding the most fun meals for the fewest amount of calories. I am looking forward to reading her advice and food suggestions.

You can find her at: http://www.hungry-girl.com

Apparently the experts are telling us now that increasing our fiber intake helps us keep off unwanted extra calories and perhaps even helps with weight loss. Over the course of the two-year study, the researchers found that boosting fiber by 8 grams for every 1,000 calories resulted in about 4 ½ pounds of weight lost. This is not impossible to do!

Here are some excellent sources of fiber:

• Apples
• Chickpeas
• Pumpkin
• Green beans
• Sweet potatoes

Click here for the article on eatingwell.com

For a long time, I have thought that I needed to stay away from coconuts, because of the fat content, but it turns out that some culture in the world have used coconuts for food AND medicine. It has some fairly incredible healing properties and helps you use the essential fatty acids in your food. We should be adding coconuts to our health food list because, among other things:

• Coconut oil is the lowest calorie fat source
• It softens your skin and helps prevent wrinkles
• It is good for your hair
• It has antioxidants

And there are so many other benefits, which you can see here: http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/

I have figured out that when I am tempted to eat any kind of junk food, if I get started at all, I CANNOT stop. I think, well, I will just have a few, and a few turns into a lot, or what is left of the candy or chips or even pretzels.

So how do I handle this? I have decided that I should work harder not to eat the first one. This works sometimes, but of course, not always. My husband likes to bring me chocolate, which I adore, because  he equates sweets with love. I have asked him not to do this! But he does it anyway. SO I just ate about 6 malted milk balls. Ugh. They are delicious of course. Tomorrow, I am not going to eat any. I hope.

I found this great website, which lets you to find the amount of calories in a huge variety of foods, and allows you to create a free account and keep track of your weight, what activity you did during the day and the foods you have eaten. You also enter a diet start and end date and it tells you how many calories you can eat in a day as well as an overview of the fat, carbs and protein you have eaten and a graph of your weight.

My first problem with this site is that I think it is overstating the number of calories I need to lose the amount of weight I want to lose in the next six weeks. Other sites I have used to enter my weight, height, sex and daily activity level have suggested the amount of calories I need each day are less, like 500 calories less.

My second problem is that I had a hard time finding the amount of calories they suggest I burn in an average day, how much I should be eating to lose weight and how many calories I have left in a given day. Their “calorie balance equation”, which tells you the calories you burn minus the calorie restriction to lose the amount of weight in your desired amount of time, is here: go to the “Weight Goal” tab. At the bottom of the page are a set of 6 tabs. Go to the tab that says “Calorie Balance”.

Turning off the television is a useful dieting techniques on so many levels.

1. You have a much better chance of doing some moderate activity if you get off the couch.
2. You are not subject to the very bad ads for junk food that get into your head and make you crave junk food.
3. You can’t be watching TV and snacking if you are not watching TV.
4. People who watch 2 or more hours of TV per day eat 7% more calories, which is certainly enough for a steady weight gain.
5. If you are going to be sedentary, dive into a great book instead, it is good for your brain.

I read a good article on Yahoo. It suggests that you need to weigh yourself EVERY DAY. Personally, I hate doing this, especially because it is cold in my house at this time of year, it is winter after all, and I always weigh myself naked. I would hate for my weight to fluctuate because I have on different clothes in the morning. I have to weigh myself in the morning because I always feel the thinnest when I wake up. I wonder if I actually weigh less?

This article says weighing yourself every day is a key to long term weight loss, which means I am going to have to do this in spite of freezing to death while doing it. Maybe I could indulge in setting the thermostat higher, but I like to be cold when I sleep.