Day by Day Nutrition

When I heard about the three Navy SEALs being charged with mistreating a terrorist, I was very disappointed in the Navy. The fact that the terrorist in question did not voice his complaint until sometime after he was jailed is very suspicious.  Plus terrorists are taught to insinuate that they have been tortured as part of their training is also part of the equation. As a person who was involved in the training of SEALs as well as working with SEAL teams, SEALs have an extremely tough job.

I first learned about the Navy SEALs when I was also the first research nutritionist at the Human Performance Lab at the military’s tri-service medical school, Uniformed Services University of the   Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, MD in mid 80’s.   During my time at USUHS, one of the research areas I was responsible for was a project working with the NAVY SEALs.  In fact, as a result of my research at USUHS, I ended being a nutrition consultant with the Navy SEAL trainees and then I worked with the SEAL teams in Coronado, CA for the next 8 years.

If you really want to get an in depth look at what the Navy SEALs do and who they are, you need to read the #1 National Bestseller, Lone Survivor written by Marcus Luttrell (www.amazon.com). The book details the ABCs of SEAL training and also some of the actual SEAL missions.  As a result of reading Luttrell’s book, you may gain some perspectives and insights as to what the Navy SEALs are trained to do and how  important they are in keeping terrorists out of America.

After reading Lone Survivor, you may even understand that the war on terror (I know that’s not what the Obama administration calls it) is not like any wars that we have fought in the past. In fact, in the mid 80’s when I started working with the SEALs, the whole point of the research was how to keep more SEAL trainees from bailing out. At that point in time, the Navy wanted to train twice as many SEALs due to the fact that the next war (which is the one we are raging today) was going to be a terroristic type war.  It’s amazing to me that in the 80’s our military was already predicting what happened on September 11, 2001. When I was working with the SEALs, they were recruited from within the Navy populations, today the Navy recruits a different way for the SEALs. They recruit high school & college athletes. If they can make the cut from passing a series of physical testing they join the ranks of the Navy. The recruits take a basic training in the Navy and then are put through the vigors of 6 months of training at Coronado, CA. You can read the specifics about the training in Lone Survivor.

Successfully completing SEAL training is definitely a mind over matter situation! Some SEAL trainees are forced to bailout due to injuries. Looking at nutrition and injuries were areas of the research we were involved in as a lab. We learned that many trainees were not fueling their bodies properly, were dehydrated so when our nutrition strategies were implemented the SEALs found these suggestions to be very helpful in retention. In addition, the orthopedic surgeons affiliated with our lab were able to make some training suggestions that would help with injury prevention.

When I worked with the SEAL trainees, our lab worked with three separate classes and followed them through training to graduation. I learned firsthand that the mind could take your body further than the textbook thought it could. We participated in 3 Hell Weeks which was pure hell for us, all though we were just observers. One of my jobs was to calculate how many calories and fluids the trainees needed and also how many calories they were eating for their 4 meals a day. They typically ate midnight rats. Unlike Ranger training, SEAL trainees were sleep deprived not food deprived.

If you want to learn more about the Navy SEALs read Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor or go to http://www.sealchallenge.navy.mil

Images from: www.Navy.mil.

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My son, Jon, called me several months ago about a new app that he found for his I Touch called Lose It! Jon is a runner and very health conscious.  He is on a mission to ensure he’s maintaining a healthy lifestyle even though he works a lot of hours.  Jon is a radiology resident and is constantly faced with time management as well as making good food choices when he’s very busy.  He’s been very successful at controlling his weight even though he works lots of hours and also has to balance his time for his wife and three kids.

Jon has been so successful at maintaining his weight he has told a lot of his friends and family about the Lose It! program as well. My husband, Ordie, is currently using the Lose It! to help him maintain his weight as well.

As a dietitian, I have always encouraged my clients to keep food diaries but using this Lose It! App makes it incredibly easy for me and my clients as well. But the one drawback is that you have to have either an I Touch or I Phone.

Lose It! is free app that you can download directly to your I Phone or I Touch. For more information about this weight loss app you can go to www.loseit.com.

Getting Started

To start the Lose It! Process you need to get an accurate weight. Then you need to decide how many pounds you want to lose per week. The program then determines your daily calorie budget. The number of calories you burn at rest is estimated using a standard formula on height, weight, age and gender using the Mifflin equation. If you have had a resting metabolic rate using the Med Gem or Body Gem you can manually add this number of calories. You can adjust this daily calorie budget using the Adjustment field under the Daily Calorie Budget screen.  Next you begin to add your foods for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. You can add custom foods that are not in the database and also add custom recipes as well.  In addition to you can add your specific nutrient preferences as well.

Exercise Calories

The exercise database is exceptional.  The calories burned are based on your individual weight.  It’s very interesting to scroll through the exercise to see how many calories can be burned for example I can burn 225 calories on an  elliptical for 30 minutes of exercise, burn 161 calories for hiking for 30 minutes, burn 225 calories running 30 minutes or burn 74 calories walking for 30 minutes.

Motivators

You can set up motivators to keep you on track.  These motivators include: reminders on your phone when you forget to log, daily or weekly emails that share your progress with others, and sharing your progress on Twitter and Facebook.  You can also add friends as motivators.  I am getting daily updates on my I Phone about how well my son, Jon, is doing with his commitment to exercise and eating healthfully.  This information tells me how many calories he ate, was he over or under and also how much he exercised.

Try Lose It! I think you will like it and find it useful in helping you to lose and maintain a weight loss, too!

Image from: www.longevityclubs.com.

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Know Your Numbers – How Many Calories You Need Each Day.

Knowing how many calories you need each day will help you to determine how many calories you can eat.  You can figure out your calorie requirement by going to www.mypyramid.gov.  There is lots of really great information on this website:  food guide pyramids for every age group, nutrition tips, recipes, menus, plus an array of exercise tips.  Or you can have your resting metabolic rate analyzed individually rather than depending on a formula to estimate your needs.  A resting metabolic rate test would give you a more realistic number of calories you personally need each day (www.DayByDayNutrition.com).  Once you determine your resting metabolic rate, then you need to determine how many calories you actually burn being active.

Not All Activities are Created Equal in Calorie Burn

If you weigh 130 pounds and leisurely walk on an asphalt road for 30 minutes, you can burn 141 calories.  But if you kick it up a notch and walked 4 miles per hour for 30 minutes, you could burn 171 calories. But if you run an 11 minute mile you could burn 237 calories for 30 minutes (7.9 X 30 minutes = 237 calories). The current US Dietary Guidelines suggest if you want to lose weight, you need to exercise at least 60 minutes a day.  As you can see, a 30-minute stroll maybe with a friend or walking your dog does burn some calories but not enough to elicit an effective weight loss.

Moderate – intensity exercise which is the type of exercise that help one lose weight is exercise where you noticeably increases your heart rate and your breathing rate. You can talk but you can’t sing. Examples: ballroom or line dancing, biking on relatively level ground, canoeing, doubles tennis, sports where you catch and throw (baseball, volleyball), walking briskly and water aerobics.  Vigorous exercise occurs when your heart is beating noticeably faster and you are probably sweating.  You can only say a few words before you catch your breath.  Examples: aerobic or fast dancing, biking more than 10 mph, hiking uphill, jogging, jumping rope, martial arts (karate, etc), race walking, running, singles tennis, sports with a lot of running (basketball, hockey, soccer) swimming fast or swimming laps (www.health.gov/paguidelines/committeereport).

To get a more realistic number of calories burned when exercising you could use a heart rate monitor.  You heart rate needs to go up if you are using your exercise to help you burn more calories.  While it’s true if you are out walking you are not being a couch potato but you are not burning a lot of calories either.  Note: I personally use a FT 40 Polar® Heart Rate Monitor which tells me how many calories I burn after an exercise bout which I personally find very useful (retails for $179; Amazon under $150).

The take home message here is you can tack on the active calories to your actual calorie needs and you will break even: calories in vs.  calories out = weight maintenance.  But if you want to lose weight, you need to either burn more active calories or just simply eat less.  However, eating too few calories may end of being counter productive.  Typically, when I am working with a client, I expect them to commit to burn at least 250 calories each day if they are not currently exercising and then move them over time to commit to at least a 500 calorie burn each day.

Keep a Food and Activity Record for Effective Weight Loss

It’s no secret.  People who lose weight and keep it off, religiously keep a food and activity diary, according to the National Weight Loss Registry (www.nwcr.ws).   It’s similar to keeping track of how much money you have in the bank through your checkbook.  In addition, there is variety of ways how NWCR members keep the weight off. They report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and also doing high levels of activity (N = 5,000).  Here are some interesting facts from the data collected: 78% eat breakfast every day; 75% weigh at least once a week; 62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week; and 90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.

For effective weight loss here’s some basic recommendations: Be wise and exercise.  To downsize you need to portion size.  Eat more of the best and less of the rest.

Image from: www.Sacromentoscoop.com

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