Calories Count

Trying to lose weight?  Remember, calories count!

How can you lose weight and keep it off for better health?  Think about your calories! 

What is a calorie?

  • A calorie is a measure of energy. 
  • A calorie is defined as the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of one gram of water (about a thimble full) by one degree Celsius. 

So what does this mean for nutrition?  Food contains calories, and the calories provide energy to the body.  The problem comes when there is an imbalance of energy—too much energy in and not enough energy out.

Calories Count!

  • To lose weight, you have to create an energy deficit in your body. 

To create a calorie deficit, you can either:

  • Decrease your calorie intake, OR
  • Increase your calorie (energy) output through exercise.

Not all calories are the same!

  • A gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories
  • A gram of protein has 4 calories
  • A gram of fat has 9 calories
  • In a healthy diet, carbohydrates should be 45-65% of your calorie intake, protein should be 10-35% of your calorie intake, and fat should be 20-35% of your calorie intake.

Exercise Helps Burn Calories

  • Physical activity is very important to maintaining good health, and it helps to burn calories. 
  • Many people don’t realize how easy it is to burn calories and create an energy deficit by adding physical activity to their daily routine.

The total number of calories you burn depends on your weight, the activity you choose and the intensity level of your activity.  If you exercise at a higher intensity level, you will burn more calories.

Consider the following averages for a person weighing 175 pounds: 30 minutes Activity Burns this many calories. (See Below)

Sitting or watching TV. 42 cal.

Volleyball. 120>cal.

Bowling. 57 cal.

Gardening. 171 cal.

Walking 183 cal.

Step aerobics (4 inch bench) 198 cal.

Hiking 201 cal.

Golf (carry clubs/walk) 210 cal.

Tennis267

Running/jogging306

Racquetball315

Basketball318

Stairmaster366

Dance (high intensity)372

Swimming (breast stroke)375

Aerobics (traditional)402

Lo Weight training (circuit)411

What is an ‘emotional push-up’? Exploring the concept of mental health gyms.

For a long time, Olivia Bowser relied on exercise to manage her mental health.

Throughout college, and after moving to Los Angeles for her first job managing digital and e-commerce for a consumer packaged goods start-up, Bowser, 27, wrestled with anxiety, stress and feelings of loneliness. She tried to find a sense of calm and happiness by going to Pilates, Barry’s Bootcamp and SoulCycle six days a week.

It didn’t work.

“It wasn’t giving me what I really needed to be able to feel stronger mentally,” Bowser said. “I needed to focus on my mental well-being, versus mental well-being being a positive side effect of physical fitness.”

Looking for answers, Bowser started attending yoga classes at night, using a meditation app and Googling journal prompts. As she began to find relief through these practices, she had an idea. What if she could take what she loved about her fitness classes and focus on strengthening the mind?

“How could I create just as energizing and dynamic and interactive an experience that we get when we go into a SoulCycle studio and 40 people high-five us on their bikes? How could we take that and create an empowering experience around mental well-being?” she wondered.

Have we been doing self-care all wrong?

Seeing a need for a studio that focused on mental fitness, Bowser launched Liberate online in May 2020, offering classes led by herself, a certified meditation and mindfulness teacher and yoga instructor, and a team of four other certified instructors. The sessions combine mindful movement — usually about 10 minutes of yoga — with journaling, conversation and meditation. The cost of Liberate is structured like a gym membership: For $19 a month, members have access to live classes, held on Zoom twice a week, as well as an extensive on-demand library of prerecorded classes.

Melanie Prior, 29, started attending Liberate classes in May 2020. She’d moved back in with her parents at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and was working long hours at a public relations company.

“I was struggling with anxiety and just getting a handle on my mental health, while the world was falling apart and all the things got worse over that year,” Prior said. She began attending the live classes once a week; she liked knowing the class started at a specific time and that somebody was waiting for her to join.

“I also liked it because it was a format to find a good level of connection with other people, but it wasn’t like you were sitting in on someone’s therapy session or you had to really open your heart up. Everybody can share as much as they want,” Prior said. And the members often benefit from one another’s insights.

Now living in her own apartment in Boston with a new job, Prior thinks back to the dark, early days of the pandemic and how Liberate helped her move through the stress and anxiety.

“I found that, with Liberate, it was a way for me to do something that helped me build a community and a routine that still felt fun and not intimidating and very approachable. And I always got something out of it every week,” Prior said.

The story of Coa

Around the same time Bowser was launching Liberate, Emily Anhalt, 34, a clinical psychologist, and Alexa Meyer, 31, a product and marketing executive, teamed up to create Coa, a mental health gym that takes a therapist-led approach to everyday mental health.

The seeds for Coa were planted when Anhalt realized that most people don’t work on their mental and emotional health until things start falling apart. “And to me,” Anhalt said, “that’s a little like waiting until you have early signs of heart disease to start doing cardio.” She wanted to reframe the idea of focusing on mental health as “a more proactive thing that we do to maintain wellness.”

In 2016, Anhalt began doing research, interviewing 100 psychologists and 100 entrepreneurs to come up with the seven things emotionally healthy people are working on all the time, which she called the seven traits of emotional fitness: self-awareness, empathy, curiosity, mindfulness, playfulness, resilience and communication. She created a curriculum around these traits with the goal of giving people a way to strengthen their minds, just like they’d lift weights to strengthen their bodies.

Democracy Dies in Darknessnullhttps://5fdde2f737e3546da22cb80a2394981a.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.htmlWellness

What is an ‘emotional push-up’? Exploring the concept of mental health gyms.

By Hilary AchauerOctober 19, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. EDT

For a long time, Olivia Bowser relied on exercise to manage her mental health.

Throughout college, and after moving to Los Angeles for her first job managing digital and e-commerce for a consumer packaged goods start-up, Bowser, 27, wrestled with anxiety, stress and feelings of loneliness. She tried to find a sense of calm and happiness by going to Pilates, Barry’s Bootcamp and SoulCycle six days a week.

Tips for starting and getting the most out of therapy

It didn’t work.

“It wasn’t giving me what I really needed to be able to feel stronger mentally,” Bowser said. “I needed to focus on my mental well-being, versus mental well-being being a positive side effect of physical fitness.”

Looking for answers, Bowser started attending yoga classes at night, using a meditation app and Googling journal prompts. As she began to find relief through these practices, she had an idea. What if she could take what she loved about her fitness classes and focus on strengthening the mind?

“How could I create just as energizing and dynamic and interactive an experience that we get when we go into a SoulCycle studio and 40 people high-five us on their bikes? How could we take that and create an empowering experience around mental well-being?” she wondered.

Have we been doing self-care all wrong?

Seeing a need for a studio that focused on mental fitness, Bowser launched Liberate online in May 2020, offering classes led by herself, a certified meditation and mindfulness teacher and yoga instructor, and a team of four other certified instructors. The sessions combine mindful movement — usually about 10 minutes of yoga — with journaling, conversation and meditation. The cost of Liberate is structured like a gym membership: For $19 a month, members have access to live classes, held on Zoom twice a week, as well as an extensive on-demand library of prerecorded classes.

The Liberate

Melanie Prior, 29, started attending Liberate classes in May 2020. She’d moved back in with her parents at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and was working long hours at a public relations company.

“I was struggling with anxiety and just getting a handle on my mental health, while the world was falling apart and all the things got worse over that year,” Prior said. She began attending the live classes once a week; she liked knowing the class started at a specific time and that somebody was waiting for her to join.

“I also liked it because it was a format to find a good level of connection with other people, but it wasn’t like you were sitting in on someone’s therapy session or you had to really open your heart up. Everybody can share as much as they want,” Prior said. And the members often benefit from one another’s insights.

You don’t like violence but want to watch ‘Squid Game.’ These tips can help.

Now living in her own apartment in Boston with a new job, Prior thinks back to the dark, early days of the pandemic and how Liberate helped her move through the stress and anxiety.

“I found that, with Liberate, it was a way for me to do something that helped me build a community and a routine that still felt fun and not intimidating and very approachable. And I always got something out of it every week,” Prior said.

The story of Coa

Around the same time Bowser was launching Liberate, Emily Anhalt, 34, a clinical psychologist, and Alexa Meyer, 31, a product and marketing executive, teamed up to create Coa, a mental health gym that takes a therapist-led approach to everyday mental health.

The seeds for Coa were planted when Anhalt realized that most people don’t work on their mental and emotional health until things start falling apart. “And to me,” Anhalt said, “that’s a little like waiting until you have early signs of heart disease to start doing cardio.” She wanted to reframe the idea of focusing on mental health as “a more proactive thing that we do to maintain wellness.”

In 2016, Anhalt began doing research, interviewing 100 psychologists and 100 entrepreneurs to come up with the seven things emotionally healthy people are working on all the time, which she called the seven traits of emotional fitness: self-awareness, empathy, curiosity, mindfulness, playfulness, resilience and communication. She created a curriculum around these traits with the goal of giving people a way to strengthen their minds, just like they’d lift weights to strengthen their bodies.

Around 2018, Anhalt met Meyer, her co-founder, who’d had a frustrating therapy experience and was troubled by the stigma still attached to the process. Meyer began thinking about creating a better therapy experience because like Bowser, she saw so many different ways for people to work on their physical health, but no equivalent for mental health.

The two created in-person mental health popups around the United States and Canada, where people were matched with an experienced therapist for one-on-one sessions, and then took a class with Anhalt about emotional fitness.

They set up a space where people could hang out after the class and noticed that the attendees would linger for hours after their session was over. When asked why, the class members said it was because they knew everyone was there for the same reason, and it felt like a safe space to build community.

Positive affirmations don’t work (here are three things that do)

Positive affirmations don’t work (here are three things that do)

Positive affirmations can be an incredibly powerful tool to retrain the brain, but they can also majorly backfire. Looking in the mirror and saying, “I am strong, I am powerful” on a morning when I feel anything but strong or powerful makes my brain smirk and call bullsh*t. Because affirmations speak to the conscious mind, if your subconscious holds a different set of beliefs, it can set off an internal war—and when that happens, my brain can get mean: “Keep telling yourself that, Melissa, but we both know it’s not true.”



The good news is that I’ve discovered three alternatives to positive affirmations that work with the brain, not against, and provide a gentler and far more effective way to shift your subconscious thought patterns.

Interrogative Self-Talk

Declarative self-talk is what we typically think of when someone says “affirmation.” Think, “I am going to ace this interview” or “today I will be happy.” But if your subconscious brain is worried about the interview or doesn’t feel particularly happy, those declarations won’t hold much weight.

Interrogative self-talk is a fancy term for “make it a question.” Similar to Byron Katie’s practice called The Work, turning the declaration into a question helps prime the brain to question your own stories and look for evidence to support the positive outcome you want to see.

Using this technique, you’d ask yourself, “Can I be good at interviews? When have I been good in an interview?” Now, your brain is thinking about all of the ways you’ve been great at interviews, from arriving early to researching the company ahead of time to asking great follow-up questions. And even if there is just one piece of evidence to support you can be good,  that completely debunks the stressful thought, “I’m terrible at interviews.” Is that true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Not if you can think of even one exception.

For the second one, you might ask, “How have I been happy in the past? What kinds of things have brought me joy?” Now you’re thinking, “Oh, using the fresh Sharpie, actually sitting down for lunch, and making time to read before bed makes me happy, let’s build some of those things in.”  Or maybe you ask, “How could I be happy today?” Even if it’s a hard day, your brain is now primed to look for one sliver of light, and creating that can be a powerful and momentous experience.

The Fad that Fits: Find the Right Nutrition Plan for Your Body

Women Fitness Magazine The Fad that Fits: Find the Right Nutrition Plan for Your Body : Diet culture. This cringe-worthy term invades our social feeds, usually as a negative for its reputation of assigning value to body size. Assuming “skinnier” is “healthier” undermines the beautiful whole of our amazing human figures—not to mention the many important…

The Fad that Fits: Find the Right Nutrition Plan for Your Body

Gluten Free Shepherds Pie

Gluten Free Shepherds Pie

An easy to cook recipe for delicious winter comfort food, Easy gluten free Shepherds Pie, can easily be paleo or Whole 30 too.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Total Carbs: 32 g Protein: 20 g Servings: 6 g

Ingredients

  • 1 lb lean ground lamb, or beef , 450g
  • 1 tbsp oil
  • 3 large carrots , medium dice
  • 1 large onion , chopped
  • 2 tbsp tomato paste
  • 1 tbsp Gluten Free Worcestershire sauce , omit for paleo/W30
  • 2 cups gluten free beef stock , 500ml
  • 4 medium potatoes , peeled and cut into large chunks
  • 2 tbsp butter , or vegan margarine for dairy-free, it’s not paleo)
  • 2 tbsp arrowroot powder , or cornstarch if not paleo
  • 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese – , optional
  • salt to taste
  • pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Scroll up to watch the recipe video!
  2. For Whole30 – omit the butter in the potatoes and do not add cheese, no Worcestershire sauce either. For Paleo omit the Worcestershire sauce and add butter and cheese if that works for you.
  3. Heat the oil in a pan and add the onion and carrots and saute for a 3 – 4 minutes.
  4. Add the ground lamb or ground beef and brown over a medium heat, stirring all the time, spoon off excess fat if necessary.
  5. Add the tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce then cook for a few more minutes. Add the beef stock, bring to a simmer, then cover pan and cook for about 20 minutes.