Eva Rykr » Health

Four Good Reasons to Work Out Daily

Eva Rykr — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:39:03 +0000

In order for man to succeed in life, god provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body but for the two together. With these two means, men can attain perfection’’ (Plato, fourth century BC).

Here are several good reasons to work in working out to your daily routine:

The Anti-Stress Effect

Work can be stressful, but it’s important to not work under stress. There’s evidence that exercise wards off depression, that people who exercise also have lower levels of emotional distress, and less anxiety. The evidence is growing that it’s much more than a correlational effect. So it’s not just that people who exercise happen to have better mental health. A good workout actually sparks a neurochemical chain reaction that gives us more resilience to stress-associated problems.

Sitting All Day

Sitting down all day, as most of us who work in an office environment do, is actually quite bad and puts our body into idle mode. Sitting down all day and then going for a run right before bed is much different than being lightly active throughout the entire day. Too much time without movement and our muscles, metabolism, and other body functions shut down.

Performance Boost

Physical movement is not only good for your muscles, but also for your brain. Exercise increases blood flow to the brain and also triggers the release of several key hormones:

Serotonin — boosts mood
Dopamine — learning and attention
Norepinephrine — attention, perception, motivation, and arousal

Working out during the day breaks up a long day and can keep you feeling both productive and more satisfied with your work. It’s more than just our perception, though. A study on aging, fitn ess, and neurocognitive function discovered that engaging in low intensity exercise for just a few hours a week led to large improvements in cognitive functions like planning and multitasking. This study is mentioned in the book The Invisible Gorilla–Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons write about the illusion of potential. We think that we can increase our brainpower by doing Sudokus and crosswords, when in reality, the best thing for our brains is physical exercise.

Keeps You Young

Lastly, if all the mental and cognitive benefits aren’t good enough, there is also a vanity component. Not only does working out help keep your weight down, it also keeps our cells young. The consequence is that we are more likely to avoid chronic diseases that come with age, will look and feel younger, and even keep our brains healthier and younger.

Practical Ways to Add Activity to Your Schedule

Put on sneakers and walk around the block
Bring a gym bag and try the elliptical at the local fitness club
Ride your bike instead of driving your car when running errands
Take the stairs instead of the elevator — every time!
Put an exercise ball near the couch and do crunches during commercial breaks
Waiting on someone? Do some squats or push-ups
Set an Outlook reminder or alarm to go off once per hour — take five minutes to stretch your legs and walk around a bit

This post originally appeared on the Intuit QuickBase Team Leadership blog.

How a Data Dork Loses Weight

Eva Rykr — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:59:02 +0000

Right around this time last year, I quit smoking. I didn’t take any pills (didn’t work), I didn’t chew any gum (made me dizzy), and I didn’t wear any patches (might as well have been band-aids). What I did do was stop caring about what I was eating and how much weight I was gaining. Between March and December of 2009, I was a regular at all the local Mexican food restaurants and fell in love with Taco Bell chicken burritos. Self-regulation is within us in a limited supply, so this was out of practical necessity. But it worked and as of the end of December, the habit was so ingrained that I considered myself a nonsmoker.

The problem? I have a 10 pound window where all my clothes fit and I feel great. I gained 20 pounds past the high end during those months. I refused to buy new ‘fat’ clothes because I knew this was a temporary weight gain, so instead I wore lots and lots of dresses. When I go through a pregnancy one day I won’t even have to buy maternity wear I have so much clothes with breathing room. So if 2009 is the year I quit smoking, 2010 is the year I get my weight under control.

I’m happy to say I am about halfway there. Over the past 12 weeks, I have lost 12 pounds. This is perfect progress in my book. Initially I was hoping for two pounds a week, but one pound a week is plenty.

The best tool I have used over the past three months was my excel diet spreadsheet. Any time I have ever needed to lose weight, the only way I am able to do it is if I meticulously count calories. But I find it extremely inefficient to keep a food diary. So instead, I use the excel sheet as more of a dashboard to measure my progress as opposed to a tracking system that tracks my activities.

I have a column for:

Date [A]
Expected/Goal Weight [B]
Actual Weight [C]
Caloric Expenditure Through Physical Activity [G]
Caloric Intake Through Food [H]

My assumption is that, living a completely sedentary lifestyle, my metabolism is built to take care of 1650 calories per day. Any physical activity I do each day is then a ‘bonus.’ I find this is much more motivating to me than using an activity calculator.

I use all that data to make the following calculations (using formulas, of course):

Average Weekly Caloric Intake [K] (=average of ‘caloric intake through food’)
Total Calories Expended Through Physical Activity [L] (=sum of ‘caloric expenditure through physical activity’)
Daily Physical Activity Expenditure [M] (=average of ‘caloric expenditure through physical activity’)
Net Caloric Intake [N] (= ‘average of caloric intake through food’ minus ‘average of ‘caloric expenditure through physical activity’)
Caloric Deficit [O] [=('Net Caloric Intake' - 1650)x7]
Cumulative Caloric Deficit [P] (=cumulative sum of ‘caloric deficit’)
Theoretical Pounds Lost [Q] (=’Cumulative sum of caloric deficit’ / 3500)
Average Weight [R] (=average of ‘weight’)
Average Expected Weight [S] (=starting weight + ‘theoretical pounds lost’)

I just bought a Tanita body fat scale, so three new columns were recently added to include:

Body Fat Percentage [D]
Pounds of Fat [E] (=’Weight’ x ‘Body Fat Percentage’)
Lean Body Mass [F] (=’Weight’ minus ‘Fat Body Mass’)

Then, in a separate tab I have dashboards that display the data visually (line graphs, bar graphs, etc.). If you are less nerdy, you can use fitday.com or nutritiondata.com — you just enter your calories and activities and they’ll do the number crunching for you. My issues with those sites is they didn’t feel custom enough and it was too much work to update each meal.

Free Download: Diet Data Template

Blueberry Power Muffins

Eva Rykr — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:03:36 +0000

I have a terrible sweet tooth, so what I like to do is make my favorite foods healthy. I’m on a muffin kick right now, and I have been making these every weekend lately. This quick recipe makes for an excellent brunch on lazy Saturdays and Sundays.

Wet Ingredients

5 egg whites
1 egg
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1 tbsp. vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients

1 cup of Quaker Oats
1 scoop Vanilla flavored Whey Protein Powder
1/3 cup of sugar substitute (or sugar)
2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt

Mix-ins

Blueberries (1 cup or 6 oz works well)
Chopped Pecans (1/4 cup works well)

Utensils

Large bowl for wet ingredients
Medium bowl for dry ingredients
Hand mixer (or a whisk and a strong forearm)
Spatula
Muffin cups (individual silicone ones highly recommended…because this recipe is not oozing with fat, the muffins WILL stick to the muffin cups, unless you use the silicone kind)
Cookie sheet (optional, depending on the type of muffin cups used)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350
Beat the egg/egg whites
Add in the applesauce and vanilla, mix
In a separate bowl, mix well ALL the dry ingredients (oats, protein powder, sugar sub, baking powder, salt)
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients bowl, mix
Add cottage cheese, mix
Add pecans and blueberries – stir by hand with spatula
Spray muffin cups heavily if not using the silicone ones; pour mixture into muffin cups
Bake for 25 minutes for regular size muffins; 15 minutes for mini muffins – until slightly browned on top

This recipe makes 12 regular sized muffins. You can easily double the ingredients to make 24. Here’s the nutrition data for 12:

Per muffin

Calories: 64
Fat: 1.3 g
Carbohydrates: 7.3 g
Fiber: 1.1 g
Protein: 6.1 g

For entire recipe

Calories: 768
Fat: 15.5 g
Carbohydrates: 87.5 g
Fiber: 13 g
Protein: 74 g

The best part? With under 800 calories total, you can eat the whole batch!