The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

Arby’s, one of those places that I think about as being “healthier” fast food joints. I shouldn’t have looked up the nutritional info because ignorance definitely was bliss. But lets break this down and see what has potential.

From my previous post, my goal is to aim for around 1000 calories at lunch. Because I’m wanting to be healthy, I try to get a Market Fresh Sandwich of some sort. With random choice I get :

• small drink : 180
• small fries : 338
• Roast Turkey Ranch & Bacon Sandwich : 834

Ouch, that total comes to 1420, with my standard 5% adjustment, and no refills. And just switching to water isn’t going to help. Well they have wraps, that cuts out around 130 more calories, and while close its not quite enough. It’s a shame because I think those sandwiches are tasty but obviously to much food, just in pure volume. Wonder what my other choices are? Little bit of excel magic later I get

Of course the children sandwiches rises to the top. But if have to get that soda, you limited to 17 items or 1/3 of the menu. There’s the Vineyard Salad but any dressings will add at least 200 calories. But the most of the basic sandwiches, with exception of crispy sandwiches, pass my trigger line. Removing soda provides double the choices. But there are limited choices on subs (French Dip and Hot Ham & Swiss) as well no Market Choices. Maybe it’s time to move this choice off my rotation for work lunches. Making educated choices can be a pain!

Thank you for visiting The Life Ledger. If you enjoyed this article, check out the related posts below and subscribe to our feed.

Reuters has an article focusing simply on loss of body mass, not general health or fitness. And surprise, surprise they say something that most everyone should know.

“What we found was that it did not matter whether a reduction in calories was achieved through diet or burned everyday through exercise.”

The study consisted of 3 groups. One reduced daily caloric intake by 25% while another reduced their intake by 12.5% and increased their exercise by 12.5%. The remaining people were the control group and did nothing. At the end, both test groups lost the same amount of weight, and apparently in a very similar manner.

These results lend credence to methods of dieting like the Hacker’s Diet. Simply eat less calories than you use. And it is fairly easy to see math behind it, which dovetails into the philosophy of this site. So I’m going to translate it over into banking math. It’s different than normal financial goals because you want to decrease the value “stored”, but from an equations point of view it works similar enough.

Consider your body like a Checking account. Anything you eat is a deposit. Anything you do, at all, is a withdrawal. So we end up with something like this:

C.account(today) = C.account(yesterday) + Consume - Life - Exercise

That would be the equation for control group. Most people eat approximately the same amount every day, so C.account doesn’t change from day to day. And just living life uses up some calories. The beating of the heart, breathing, heck even digesting food takes work. At the same time, these people might get a certain amount of exercise already. The study indicates that they are healthy, just overweight.

For group one, the scientists modified the equation this way.

C.account(today) = C.account(yesterday) + 0.75 * Consume - Life - Exercise.

Since you are not taking in as many calories as before, while still maintaining everything else, your body has no other choice but to convert stored energy back over. If your paycheck got cut you would have to start digging more and more into savings.

What about group two?

C.account(today) = C.account(yesterday) + 0.875 * Consume - Life - 1.125 * Exercise.

In this case your income/caloric intake hasn’t reduced as much as group one, but at the same time you are spending more above basic necessities. So the over all loss is the same as group one.

The Reuters article does raise a good point, that I think alot of people miss. It just focuses on weight loss. There are lots of supplementary benefits from exercise. For example exercise improves aerobic fitness and lowers the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. And that’s just the short list. A full thousand words could be written about the benefits of exercise without breaking a sweat. It’s just nice to see people acknowledging the underlying properties what has to happen.

Interesting article at the Science Blog discusses how the philosophy of mindfulness is being used to treat women with eating disorders in Australia.  Here’s a couple of interesting pieces:

Unlike many therapies for eating disorders, there is less focus on food and controlling eating and more on providing freedom from negative thoughts and emotions.

“Binge eating is largely a distraction – a temporary escape from events and emotions that nevertheless can cause long-term physical problems including electrolyte imbalances. Instead, women need to learn how to react in a different way.”

Mindfulness involves exercises similar to meditation that could help people live more in the moment, develop a healthy acceptance of self and become aware of potentially destructive habitual responses.

“Women who have been through the program report less dissatisfaction with their bodies, increased self-esteem and improved personal relationships,” Ms Morgan said.

“They learn that thoughts and emotions don’t have any power over us as they are just passing phenomena and aren’t permanent.”

I completely agree with this aproach.  So long as I focus on being mindful of what I put in my mouth, be it a condiment, a drink or a food, I recognize it’s a choice to chomp that morsel, not a reaction to an emotion or an addiction.  Mindfulness leads to choice, which leads to empowerment, which leads to lifestyle change.

Reanalysis of Cigarette Content Confirms Tobacco Companies Have Increased Addictive Nicotine 11 Percent Over Recent Seven-Year Period (@ Harvard School of Public Health)

I don’t smoke, so I don’t usually pay attention to news about smoking, but this study by Harvard School of Public Health sure picqued my interest.  Here’s an excerpt:

A reanalysis of nicotine yield from major brand name cigarettes sold in Massachusetts from 1997 to 2005 has confirmed that manufacturers have steadily increased the levels of this agent in cigarettes. This independent analysis, based on data submitted to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) by the manufacturers, found that increases in smoke nicotine yield per cigarette averaged 1.6 percent each year, or about 11 percent over a seven-year period (1998-2005).

I wonder if there’s a way to discover how much money the tobacco industry funnels into the stop smoking industry?

Keeping pace: Do TVs, iPods help or hurt your workout? (@ cnn.com)
Here’s the gist of this article:

“If you want to maintain a high level of intensity, you pretty much have to focus on your body,” he said.

This is related to the belief that noisy gadgets interfere with the intensely focused mental state many athletes refer to as “flow.” For instance, visitors to the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, are encouraged to leave the headphones behind. Jennifer Young, director of healthy living programs, said she wants to keep visitors’ mind-body connections strong.

“Don’t turn out and turn off,” Young said, “because then there’s that underlying signal, ‘Oh, working out is something I don’t want to do. I’m escaping it by doing this.”‘

My personal opinion - isn’t it fascinating what we study?  I wonder who funded this research.  At any rate, I love listening to music or podcasts as I bike ride, walk or otherwise exercise, and I think whatever makes it easier or more fun to exercise is worth doing.  This “be in the flow” stuff is for the people who get a kick out of exercising, and you’re not going to force that enjoyment on people who don’t naturally like running marathons.

Hope over ‘obesity busting gum’ (@ bbc.co.uk)
Still looking for the magic bullet.  Still not going to find it - the more unnatural crap you add to your body, the less healthy you are.  This gum is supposed to work by adding levels of pancreatic polypeptide, a hormone your body naturally makes that induces the feeling of being full.  I say, eat less and move around more instead of messing around with your body’s chemistry.

Cancer Deaths Drop for Second Year (@ cnn.com)
Here’s CNN’s story highlights for this article:

• U.S. cancer deaths dropped by 3,014 in 2003-2004
• Second straight year of declines, Cancer Society says
• Early detection and improved treatment credited for drop

The numbers focus on the amount of people dying of cancer, and are derived by studying death certificates.  Shouldn’t we also be looking at the cancer death rate, and look for correlating trends in the number of elderly people or other groups of people with a higher-than-normal rate of cancer?  Personally, I suspect this number will go back up as the baby boomer generation ages, and can’t help but think this number may be somewhat misleading.  I don’t discount the work being done on cancer research, but I can’t help think the buzz about these numbers is somewhat overstated.  On the other hand, it is nice to see good news about cancer.

Low-stress Life May Be Best Way to Prevent Colds (@ npr.org)
The article talks about an untested product called Airborne that multitudes of people buy to treat the common cold.  There must be some psychological reason people turn to medication rather than make lifestyle changes that actually do help.  Is marketing and advertising really that effective?  It sure has created an entire culture and industry around diamonds.  Whatever it is, it’s unhealthy.