If a “picture is worth a thousand words,” here's a video that will give you a real education about the calorie content of six healthy meals (it's worth the 15-second commericial that precedes it).  If you need about 1,800 calories a day (check out our calorie needs calculator), the 300-calorie meals and snacks shown can add up to a day’s worth of good nutrition without busting your gut. 

Let us know your reaction to seeing what 300 calories of food looks like. 

Eleven percent to 15%. There has been a four percentage point increase in one year in the number of people who could correctly estimate the daily calorie intake level that is right for them, according to a new survey released this week by the International Food Information Council (IFIC). A jump of over 25% in a single year. Fantastic! But let’s look at it another way. If we continue at this rate, it will be 21 years – or 2029 – before all Americans know what is the appropriate calorie level for them. 

Obviously, we have to find ways get more people to clue in to their calorie needs – and soon. Armed with this personalized information, people can better reach calorie balance by adjusting their calorie intake to match the number of calories their body burns. Calorie balance is important for maintaining a healthy body weight. Yet, according to the IFIC study, even among people who report being physically active, 44% are not even trying to balance diet and physical activity to manage their weight. 

So let’s just accept that it is easy to calculate a person’s daily calorie needs. (Not! We’ll talk about the challenges with calorie assessment on this site in the future. Even the calculator we provide on the Stand Up & Eat web site will only give you a rough estimate.) How DO we get people to know what is their daily calorie limit is?

• Should it be calculated at every doctor visit?
• Provided on each child’s report card?
• Should a formula be put on YouTube (it’s already there, but not all the methods provided are accurate so beware) or blared across the evening news?
• How about a Super Bowl ad that tells people how to find out their personal calorie level?

What are your ideas of making Americans more calorie literate a lot sooner than 2029?

People are getting green – with envy over their friends’ and neighbors’ environment-friendly cars. Now with gas prices going through the sunroof, they are even more envious of the energy-efficiency feature of such cars. 

But before you turn green with envy – or from nausea over gas prices – consider this. You and your legs are the most energy efficient mode of transportation there is. According to Marcia Lowe in her book, “The Bicycle:  Vehicle for a Small Planet,” published by the Worldwatch Institute in 1989, bicycling burns 35 calories per person mile traveled. Walking – 100 calories per person per mile. But hop in your car and drive a mile and your car will burn over 1,800 calories – and add pollution to boot. 

Now consider this. The gas you use for your car is non-renewable. It comes out of the ground, is refined, put in the car, burned, and it's gone. The fuel your body uses is renewable.  Food comes from the earth, is processed in some cases (think potato chips versus potatoes), is eaten, and burned.  But our food fuel can be replanted and regrown year after year.

Remember, too, that using “leg power” is not only good for the earth, it is good for your health.  Regular physical activity reduces risk for many chronic ailments including heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes, and, of course, obesity.

With global warming and the growing global obesity epidemic, perhaps Dr. Lowe should update her book title to “The Bicycle: Vehicle for a Fat Planet.”

What are ways you can use “leg power” instead of your auto?

Do you know just how much food you chow down on each day? Chances are you don’t. And that can get you into deep calorie balance trouble.  
 
According to Dr. Brian Wansink, a former professor of marketing at Cornell University and now the Executive Director of Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, you make several hundred different decisions about food – each day! But most decisions are mindless ones. That is, your food environment – the packaging, placement, and promotion of foods – guides how much you put into your mouth. For example, Dr. Wansink’s research has shown that people will eat:

• more when eating out of larger packages. You’re likely to finish the whole container of soda whether it is a 12-ounce can or a 20-ounce bottle. There’s a difference of 100 calories between the two.
• more when the visual cues of food being eaten are removed. Wansink had participants in one study eat chicken wings while watching a sports event on TV. The subjects ate more wings when the leftover wing bones were taken away periodically by the wait staff than when the bones stayed in a bowl on the table.
• less when food is harder to access. In one study, moving a dish of chocolate candies from a person’s desktop to just six feet away led to a significant reduction in number of candies – and calories – eaten.
• less when using smaller plates and beverage glasses. 

Here’s living proof of the latter point. A participant in one of our personal training workshops stated that on the Navy base where he worked, the galley (that’s cafeteria to us civilians) started serving smaller portions in an effort to help patrons balance their calories better. There was nearly a mutiny as active duty sailors and civilians complained profusely that they were getting gypped. The galley staff switched to serving the smaller portions on smaller plates. The customers’ complaints subsided because they thought they were once again getting the larger portion. It’s been smooth sailing ever since.
 
To combat mindless eating,

• Let physical hunger, not food proximity, be your eating trigger.
• Focus on the food.  Don’t read, watch TV, drive, or otherwise be distracted when you are eating.
• Use your grandma’s china.  In the last few generations, plates have grown from the 10 inches to 12 inches in diameter.

We’ll discuss mindless eating and Dr. Wansink’s work in future blogs and articles. In the meantime, how do you stay mindful about how much you eat?

Click on the picture above to watch a great clip of Snowball dancing to the Back Street Boys.

Now if you just sat there in your chair watching Snowball do his thing, you burned about two (2) calories. If you stood up and followed Snowball's every move, you danced off about 8 calories!

So every time you need a break at work, have Snowball put you through your paces. Five times a day = lots of belly laughs and 40 extra calories burned.  Do that every work day and you will have burned over 200 calories in a week.  That's about equal to a 16-ounce cherry soda or 2.5 cups of fresh cherries.

For ideas of ways to work out at work (without breaking a sweat), check out this article.   

Learn more about Snowball's adventures (he was on the David Letterman show!) at the Bird Lovers Only Rescue blog site.

Calorie literacy - that's what we're after. And boy is it needed. Check out this YouTube clip of people trying to guess the amount of calories in a typical fast food meal.  The vast majority of people get it wrong. There are guesses from 0.3 to 5,000 calories! The actual total is 1,215 calories.

Obviously, most people don't have a clue about the number of calories they put into their bodies each day.  That's one of the reasons for the growing obesity epidemic in America and around the globe.  It's also why New York City and other places are trying to mandate that restaurants post calorie amounts on their menus and menu boards. 

This is a great step to promoting calorie literacy - the degree to which individuals can get, understand and use calorie information to make calorie balance and health decisions. But as we argue in an earlier Stand Up & Eat Blog, calorie labeling is only one part of calorie literacy. People also have to know how many calories they need to maintain their current weight. Or for most Americans, the calories they need to lose weight. Plus, we all need to get a clue about how FEW calories we burn each day and what are simple, easy ways to move more.

There are resources in the Stand Up & Eat Tools page to help you become fluent in all parts of calorie balance - calories in, calories out, and calories needed.  Check them out and report back in the comments section on what you learned about your calorie literacy.