A Box of Chocolates

Hi. It's Laura.

Thursday morning a package showed up in the mail. It was from The Mom. I knew exactly what it was before I even opened it. It’s Easter Candy.

The box contains two hand crafted solid milk chocolate bunnies, two peanut butter chocolate eggs about the size of my fist and a glad storage bag of jelly beans. I am sitting here staring at the box debating on whether or not I should or should not indulge (its only Thursday and sweets are for days that start with "S"). I know I shouldn't because once I start on the jelly beans it’s all over. I will eat every last one of them and then feel guilty for doing so. The OCD part of me will log it into MyFitnessPal where I can brood over it all day.

I do have to say "thank you Mom"! I love the gesture. I will indulge on Sunday.

I also have in front of me my afternoon snack: a homemade geen smoothie (spinach, celery, cucumber, 1/2 banana, 1/2 cup pineapple, 1/2 nonfat plain Greek yogurt). YUM! It really is quite tasty and my two pieces of citrus chia food superfood power snack (also yum but the damn seeds get stuck in my teeth). Oh the dilemma. But the "rules” win. SWEETS ONLY ON DAYS THAT BEGIN WITH "S" (thank you Michael Pollan).

In years past I would not have even hesitated and I would have dove right into the box. It would all be gone, if not by the next day but definitely, by Sunday. That was before. And by Before I mean, before I knew where in the body that sugar was going and exactly what it was going to do to my body. Once you know something, you cannot un-know it.

So how do you go from eating a box of chocolates without hesitation to actually embracing the green smoothie?

Nutritional education.

It is amazing to me that adults do not know what or how to eat. The more I think about it, who would teach them? A piece of fruit is not breakfast. Orange juice has more sugar in it than full fat ice cream. Doritos are not food.

Little things.

I know there are so many ads and TV programs and magazines that are talking about the latest superfood (chia seeds, goji berries). There are the latest diets, when to "fuel" and how to "recover" that I think we kind of all forgot the basics. Once you have got down the basics then we get more advanced.

Somewhere along the line we went from, eat an apple a day (sound advice FYI) to superfoods and boosters and gels. What happened to the step in the middle where you eat food like spinach, celery and chicken? You are supposed to get your nutrition from whole foods. “The basics”.

Let's start with knowing how much you are supposed to eat ad when. You should eat when you are hungry and drink when you are thirsty (one thing you are going to start to hear about is WHEN to eat for athletic recovery and we are not there yet). You should also stop eating when you are no longer hungry not when you are stuffed.

Your body is pretty smart it can actually tell when you need food. How much to eat? Aah that is the tricky question. There is a formula for that called the Basal Metabolic Rate. That number will give you the right amount of calories based on your age, height, weight and some calculators also have an additional button to add how active you are.

For our purposes, we are going to use a 50 year old, 5'9" male who works in an office [Editor’s Note: Hey!!!!!].

He will need to consume 1900 calories per day to maintain his current weight. I used this calculator from about.com. Right now we are not going to worry about if he wants to lose weight or gain weight, just what he should eat per day.

I bet you most people just don't know their true caloric need and eat too little or too much and usually the wrong things (especially if you think Doritos are food). And get lucky because they are not fat (yet).

What would a day of food look like for this man? Taking into account 3 meals and one snack, he should eat approximately 583 calories per meal and a 150 calorie snack or a little more.

This is not exact science so 10 calories here and there would be ok.

Breakfast: whole wheat English muffin - 150 calories

1/2 cup of egg whites 75 calories

Two slices of Canadian bacon 40 calories

1 cup of skim milk 80

8 oz of V8 60

Breakfast is 405 calories. If he is hungry mid-morning he has some left over calories for a small snack. What is a small snack? Almonds, 10 of them should do the trick.

Lunch you ask? easy easy. 6 oz. of turkey breast 228 calories (of course this a turkey breast with no skin) or he can mix and match turkey and chicken or ham. lean protein!

Add 2 cups of spinach, cucumbers, radishes, onions, broccoli, asparagus or any other vegetable of choice into a salad. 2 cups of spinach has about 13 calories. He can have more if he wants! His salad so far is pretty low in calories we have room for 2 tablespoons of reduced fat salad dressing ( 150 calories), add a piece of bread ( 100 calories) wheat NOT WHITE and lunch is 478 calories. He even has room for dessert, maybe a cup of strawberries.

Do you see where I am going here? Actual food and vegetables. Items with names that are identifiable. Gogurt? What is that? I am always shocked when I go into the snack aisle to get peanuts or popcorn and see things with wacky made up names that mean nothing so that kids will beg their parents to buy them. (ah marketing)

Tips and tricks: leafy greens, greens, lean protein, more vegetables (even I eat Brussels sprouts these days) skim milk, eggs or egg whites, nuts & seeds, then fruit and save the treats for the weekends.

Like I said once you know how added sugars and non-food foods affect your body, it makes it very difficult to consume things that are not so good for you (or just are not food, did I say potato chips?). We get so caught up in the latest and greatest that if we just stuck to the basics we as a whole would a lot better off at least when it comes to food.

Thank you Mom ;)

Play hard & eat well.

Laura