It’s holiday party season again! How can we avoid putting on extra weight while having a great time? Here are some holiday eating tips so that you can still look good and be healthy in January without having to deprive yourself of all the holiday treats. 

• Don’t go to a holiday social event hungry.
  When you’re hungry, you tend to eat too much food too quickly. Therefore, eat a wholesome breakfast and lunch on the day of the event to avoid overeating at the party.
• Watch your portion sizes.
  Treat yourself to a nice drink, dessert, chocolate or sweets without guilt, but always watch the amounts you eat.  Go for smaller portions. This allows you to sample all the different foods. Remember, moderation is always the key.
• Make a conscious choice to limit high fat items.
  High-fat foods are found in fried foods, cream-based soups, cheese-filled casseroles, pies, processed meats (such as salami and sausages), some pastries and baked goods.
• Try low-fat versions of egg nog.
  Traditional eggnog is usually made with egg yolk and thick cream containing as much as 350 calories for an 8-oz. glass. Do a Google search for “low fat eggnog”, and you will find lots of low-fat eggnog recipes. If you buy commercial eggnog, you will be delighted to find low-fat or fat-free eggnog out there. You can even find soy nog at your local grocery store called “Holly Nog”!
• Get rid of leftovers.
  If you host a gathering and serve traditional but less than healthy food, get rid of the leftovers. If it’s not there, you can’t eat it, right? Pack it up and insist your guests take it home.
• Drink plenty of water.
  Sweet holiday beverages and coffee can dehydrate your body. Drink at least eight glasses of water daily.
• Physical activity.
  Take nice brisk walks with your loved ones and enjoy their company this
  holiday season.

The last tip stated about physical activity is the #1 factor in balancing your health. The more you move your feet, the more you’re allowed to eat. Don’t wait until January to start or re-start your fitness routine. Reduce holiday stress by working out now!

Healthy Holiday Eating Tips: Recipe substitutions

If you are the chef of the party, try the following lower-fat recipe substitutions:

• Eggs – Double up the whites & remove the yolks.
• Sour Cream – Use low-fat plain yogurt or low-fat sour cream.
• Milk – Skim or 1% milk.
• Ice Cream – Frozen yogurt
• Heavy Cream – 2 tbsp flour whisked into skim milk
• Whipped Cream – Other low-fat whipped products like Nutri-whip.
• Cheese – Low-fat cheese (Non-fat cheese doesn’t melt well when used in cooking or baking)

Results Summary:
I started using MyFoodDiary.com (MFD) on March 31, 2008 and reached my goal of 175 pounds and under 10% body fat on August 6, 2008.

What is it?:
MyFoodDiary.com is a web-based calorie counter and exercise log designed to be used as part of a weight management program.  Most users of this online service use it to assist with weight loss.  The site tracks calorie intake (diet) and calorie expenditure (exercise).  Then based on the user’s physical statistics and goals, it calculates how many calories must be consumed and/or burned to either lose one to two pounds per week, maintain weight, or gain weight.  Users can monitor on a daily basis two factors involved in weight management: food intake vs exercise.  MyFoodDiary.com supports the basic weight loss premise that one must consume less calories than the calories expended.  For example, in order to lose one pound per week, one should create a calorie deficit of 500 calories/day.  Over the course of seven days, the deficit would be 3,500 calories, which is approximately equal to one pound of weight loss.

You can watch a video overview here.

Target audience (Who is it for?):
MyFoodDiary.com is best suited for the disciplined person.  Ideal users are those who are willing to record what they eat on a daily basis (using the site’s online database of over 50,000 food items), record nutritional information for the foods not in the database, and record calories burned through activity and exercise. Users should be goal-oriented, motivated, determined, and persistent.  The service is best applied by those who want to change to a healthy, active lifestyle.  I would not recommend this service to people looking for a quick fix to their weight problems or those who just want to change their diet without exercise because losing weight in a healthy way is not just about food or “starving yourself”.  Additionally, I believe the service works best in conjunction with the use of a heart rate monitor during exercise to monitor the exact number of calories burned.

Overview of how it works:

1. Set goals.
2. Record food intake daily.
3. Record exercise activities daily.
4. Generate daily summary and/or reports on personal progress.
5. Adjust food intake and/or exercise activity levels to reach goals.

Recording daily food intake
The main tab, Food Diary, contains three ways to enter information about your food consumption plus a searchable, online food database of over 50,000 food items.  You can also search for foods that you have entered yourself.  

Food Diary >> The Fridge, Manual Food Entry, Recipe Builder

First, you search for your food item in the database. It’s fairly extensive, and a pretty powerful search engine in its own right. So you should just use a few key words when searching. For example, suppose you’re looking for Niblets Corn & Butter Sauce by Green Giant.  If you search for green giant, the result will return all the food items in the database containing Green Giant, which produces an unwieldy list of 25 items, four pages long.  But if you narrow the search to just the keyword niblets, the search result returns only two items.

Searchable food database

After the search, you can:

• Add the food item to your e-fridge
• Specify the quantity of the food
• Specify for which meal of the day you ate the food item

Manual Food Entry >> Add New Food

Finally, you can also add your own recipes to your own database and/or e-fridge with the built-in Recipe Builder. The recipe builder allows you to create custom meals and specify the meal by how many servings you consume.  It calculates how many calories the serving is worth based on caloric value of all the ingredients in the recipe.

Recipe Builder

Limitation: As with any database, there’s a finite amount of food in the database. Although cumbersome to manually enter nutritional information, your personal food database seems limitless. One suggestion to make things easier would be to incorporate a barcode scanner that would input the nutritional information directly into the database. Now that would be hard core.

After you enter the food, the Food Diary shows you a list of the food items you’ve eaten so far.  I really like the drop down menus that allow you to change the meal for which the food was eaten.  This allows you to correct mistakes from the summary list without having to re-enter the item.

Food Diary >> List of foods eaten for the day

Recording daily exercise
After you record your food items, use the Exercise Log to record the calories you burn through physical activity.  There are two ways to enter your activities: (1) Predetermined exercise list with estimated caloric values for a given amount of time and effort or (2) Manually enter exercise and calories with the use of a heart rate monitor.

Select from a predetermined list of exercises with estimated caloric values

Customized exercise list, manually input calories from HRM output

Power Recommendation: I highly suggest using OPTION 2: Manual Entry of Exercise. Get a good heart rate monitor like the Suunto t3c, and use it while you exercise. Then you can enter the exact caloric expenditure you have for your activity. This gives you more control over what you can eat and also lets you decide how much you want to exercise in order to burn a specific amount of calories. Although it’s a bit rigid, it allowed me to be in control of what I would eat because if I wanted to eat a little bit more, I could simply exercise more.

After all your exercise is recorded, you can see your list of physical activities for the day and the total amount of calories burned.

Exercise summary

Generating an overall summary or daily report
This is the most powerful feature of MFD. After you’ve finished entering your food eaten for the day and your exercise, you can generate a report.  And the cool thing is that you can generate this report even before you’re done entering your food items or exercise.  This allows you to monitor how you’re doing throughout the day.  So you can make adjustments before the day is over, like eating less or exercising more.

On the Food Diary, click the View Daily Report button.

The daily report contains six sections (click on each link to see):

1. Food Summary
   Tells you the amount of calories for each meal, as well as grams of fat, carbs, and protein.
2. Exercise Summary
   Lists the exercise(s) performed, duration of exercise, and calories burned for each exercise. 
3. Calories Remaining
   Lets you know how many calories left to lose weight or maintain weight. This is big time because it allows you to make mid-day adjustments in your diet and exercise. It is by far the most powerful item on MFD in my opinion.
4. Water Consumption Level
   Shows how much water you have drank in comparison to your water consumption goal. 
5. Projection of Weight Change
   Makes projections of your weight based on the food consumption and exercise for the day.  Provides an estimate for when the goal can be reached. 
6. At a glance
   Provides feedback on exercise and food. 

Big time amenities:

• Flat course - thank you, I appreciate that!
• Free champagne brunch for the participants
• Cool t-shirt

Not so fun:

Only one downer — the weather was a little on the cool side, not so cold that it was uncomfortable while running, but mainly after the run when my sweat was drying really fast and cooling my body temperature.

Kathy Loper typically hosts some great events, and this was no exception.  With adaptive therapies for injured soldiers as the cause, my wife, son and I were pleased to participate in this event with our entry fees benefiting such a worthy cause.

Results: (Also, check out my runningahead.com results summary.)

• Official time = 21:56
• Unofficial time = 21:54
• Age Group (40-44): 12/46
• Overall: 73/920

I’m pleased with my results considering it’s my first race ever, and after only four weeks of running.  I entered the race with three goals:

1. Beat Trainer Murray
2. Finish in under 22 minutes
3. Beat my fastest time

I accomplished two of the three, but did not beat my previous fastest 5K practice time of 21:42.

I am amazed at how fast people can run, even in their old age.  There were some 50+ year olds who had faster times than me and faster than people much younger.  The winner was 36 years old with a time of 16:02.  The first three finishers in my age group finished around 19 minutes.  My son was saying that running speed at this level is almost independent of age, and with people in their 30s through 50s running at these times, I have to agree with him. 

What I learned:

1. Save some gas for the end.
   I definitely came out of the gates way too fast.  My one-mile time was around 6:40.  Strangely, it didn’t feel like I was running that fast.  By 1.5 miles, I met my milestone marker of being under 9 minutes, but by the last half-mile of the race, I was tired.  I tried sprinting for the last half-mile, but my legs and lungs rebelled.  I did, however, sprint the last quarter-mile, but by then it was too late to beat my previous best time.
2. Stick with a routine with eating.
   I really liked how I did not drastically alter my pre-race breakfast: cereal with non-fat milk, fruit, and coffee (grande, iced skinny vanilla latte from Sbux).  The only new item I added to my pre-race diet was a free drink mix sample I received called CytoMax (Cool Citrus flavor).
3. Be sure to get to bed early the night before.
   I went to bed at 10 PM.  I probably could have gone to bed at 9 instead.  Because I was excited about the race, I didn’t sleep very well.  I might consider taking some Melatonin next time to help me sleep.
4. Enjoy the improvements and gains made while training.
   Hard work pays off.  And while I may not have reached all my goals, I am content with my progress in learning this new sport.

We look forward to our writing partnership geared towards helping you achieve a level of health and fitness that you want, maybe even a level that you would have never thought possible.

Read on!

Yes, I’m aware that my chances are slim.  But I don’t intend to go into this race resigned to the fact that I will lose.  I know the likelihood of getting one of the top three medals in the upcoming race is very low.  Last year’s winning results for my age division, ages 40-44 were as follows:  1st place = 18:30 (44 years old), 2nd place = 19:03 (44 years old), and 3rd place = 19:08 (43 years old).  My latest time seems light years away with a difference of 3 minutes.  No, I don’t think it’s humanly possible to shave three minutes off my time by November 9th.

But that is not going to stop me from trying.  Because in the course of trying, I make great strides and improvements.  Example: When I first ran the 5K distance, my time was in the 28-minute range.  I’ve now run this distance a total of five times, including today’s run.  My time today was 22:44, a difference of about 6 minutes.  

Belief is the heartbeat of success, the core to my success.

**I like my abs**

And yes, I’m going to save that e-mail for a very long time.

My goal: to run 5 x 400 meter intervals, which is approximately 2.5 miles overall.  5 laps of sprints with walking in between laps, a total of 10 laps.  That’s 1 sprint followed by 1 walk, for a total of 5 sets.

My times are here, not that bad for a total novice like me.  At least I think they’re okay.  For the most part on the 1 lap sprints, I was running them at a sub-six minute pace.  That’s pretty fast for a 42-year old, no?  The real question is: Can I sustain a similar pace for 3.1 miles (equal to a little less than 13 laps around the track) on November 9th for the Shelter Island 5K?

I don’t know all the physiology behind why interval training is supposed to help me run faster.  I sure hope it works because I really hate it.  Perhaps by the time I reach 10 x 400 intervals, I will be better at it, and not be so winded.

Do you remember those physical fitness tests you had to take in middle school P.E.?  Never mind about the trauma of undressing in front of people in the locker room.  Maybe you were the type that looked forward to physical fitness testing: the sit-ups, the push-ups, the mile run, and yes, the dreaded pull-ups.  Were you the one that could do 15 pull-ups, and keep going and going like the Energizer bunny?  Were you able to do 80 sit-ups in three minutes and 100 pushups in the same amount of time?  I remember being envious of those athletic people in gym class.

As for me, I was the short, fat kid who couldn’t do anything, maybe 5 push-ups and 18 sit-ups on a good day.  The most humiliating thing was to go to the pull-up bar, knowing that it would take a huge effort just to get my hands on the bar, and then not be able to do a single pull-up.  Pretty much it was only the girls and the fat kids who couldn’t do pull-ups at that age.  Just one of the few reasons I hated P.E…

I just can’t believe what happened today at the gym during my workout.

I was getting ready to do a “negative” pull-up.  That’s when you jump up to the highest position you can just below the top of the pull-up bar, and let yourself down as slow as you can.  These “negative” exercises are designed to build up the strength to perform difficult exercises.  My trainer says that negative pull-ups help you to get better at performing the bench press, and obviously, better at doing pull-ups.  I’ve been doing this negative pull-up exercise for about two weeks now, maybe only three times total.

So I get my hands on the bars, and was just about to hang, when I sensed additional strength in me.  And then I actually pulled my head over the top of the bar!

Un-be-lievable!  I actually did a pull-up, and not just one pull-up, but a total of 16. My five sets of pull-ups were: 5, 3, 2, 3, and 3.  Wow.  These pull-ups were 42 years in the making.  I’m totally stoked.

To offset the planned Greek food, I went on a 5-mile run Saturday morning down to the gym and back.  It was an easy run, but strangely, I felt a little lethargic.  In any case, the 700 calories I burned were not enough to offset my overeating later than night.

To compensate for the unwanted weight gain, I burned over 1700 calories in the gym Sunday:  spin class, abs workout, and a short upper body workout at LA|FITNESS, and then my leg workout at 24Hour Fitness later in the evening.  I sure did sweat a lot on Sunday, but I think the two protein shakes I drank gave me some constipation this morning.  Even so, I was able to drop down to 178.8 lbs.  Surely, if I had had a BM (as my trainer likes to say… stands for “bowel movement”), I would have been at my previous 177 lbs on the scale this morning.

Last night I used my new 24Hour Fitness membership for the first time.  LA|FITNESS closes at 8:00 PM on weekends.  I have to say that the 24Hour in Escondido looks good on the outside, but compared to the new LA|FITNESS, it was definitely an eyesore inside with old equipment.  But there could far worse things.  I am fortunate to be a member at both clubs.

My Lower Body workout routine was good.  I think my least favorite part is the squats, especially the split stance squats where you put one leg in front of the other.  I do them on the Smith machine, and it’s just not comfortable for me right now.  I feel a little hesitant, like I might drop the bar and hurt my back.  The split stance is more difficult that the regular front squats because on the front ones, I can support the weight with both of my legs directly under the weight.  In any case, I sure did sweat a lot … to the tune of about 400 calories.

I continued my new running program this morning before work.  Again, I did about 3 miles.  I felt strong in the legs, probably from the strength training from last night.  But strangely, my pace was a little slower than last week’s.  It’s hard to say why.  The whole run felt good.  I was motivated.  Maybe I got lulled into a slow pace by how easy the run felt.  I will be sure to push myself harder when I feel that strong in my legs.

Then there’s the depressing fall (which happens to be my wife’s favorite season).  It’s dark in the morning when you leave for work, and it’s either getting dark or dark when you arrive home.  Just plain depressing. 

Since I plan to ride my bike only once a week now and replace my cardio activities with training for runs, there is little light left during the afternoon after work to get in a good run.  Some good things about running on the Naval base are that:

• Sailors run on the streets of the base all the time
• Speed limits are strictly enforced
• There is very little traffic
• The base is closed, and pretty much safe from strange people
• There are plenty of places to run on a flat surface

So this morning, I implemented my darkness contingency running plan: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I intend to run at least 3.1 miles on the base in the morning before work.  Today I arrived on base a little after 6:00 AM.  The sun had still not come up.  After getting situated at my desk and going to the bathroom, I stretched out my hamstrings, quads, groin, and hip flexors (next time I have to remember to stretch my lower back and calves).  Just put my military id in my pocket and headed out the door!

It felt great.  Very miniscule tightness in my lower back and hamstrings, no tightness in my glutes.  I’d say the discomfort was about 1 to 2 %.  I attribute the improvement to the 15 minutes of stretching at the gym last night using the stretch machines.  I liked running with, ummmm, say about 99% of my range of motion.  What a difference.

In approximately the same distance as my previous run, I did 3.14 miles in 25:32, which is an 8:08 pace.  I’m stoked to shave off almost three minutes from my last run.  I think I’ll be ready for my first 5K in early November.  Heck, when you look at some of the winning times in my age group at around 19 minutes, I could be in serious contention for a winning medal by then.  Now that would be amazing.

My running appreciation just went up.  I’d say that I moved a couple of notches above hating to run to actually just below liking it.  The best thing about it so far: I can actually envision myself getting better at it.

I suspect that my “breaks” in between sets and exercises are a tad too long. The pace of exercise is probably too “fast” when it should be a little slower and gritty.

Sure. Some of this uneasiness could be learning these three new routines. I’ve only finished one full rotation of all three, and it could very well be that after one or two more full rotations, my confidence in performing the exercises correctly will increase to the point where I can get more intense.

That’s the way I felt during the other two phases in the past four months.

My intensity does need to decrease when it comes to my weight… on the scale that is. This morning I weighed in at 177 lbs, which caused me to freak out … for just a little bit.  I’m curious to see what body fat % my skinfold measurements yield tonight. If they are the same or lower than last week’s, then I’m okay with the quantity of food I’ve been eating, which ranges from 2500 - 3000 kcal/day while burning anywhere from 400 - 800 kcal/day.