My new Body Media gadget
I recently purchased a new fitness “gadget” which I’ll shortly be doing a review on. It is a Body Media product, called Ki Performance/Ki Fit in the UK and called Go Wear in the US.
Without going into too much detail, it is an advanced sensor system that can track the steps you’ve taken, calories burned, sleep patterns and more. You wear it on an armband and then sync the sensor with your computer. All the data uploads into the a computer program and voila – you’ve got some interesting information! It also has the function to give you great information about your nutrition. You just input things you’ve eaten/drank throughout the day and the software does the rest for you.
The point of this article is that over the course of the last two weeks, I’ve been able to analyse my caloric intake each day, along with looking at fat, carb, protein, and sugar intake.
It’s the little things that count
One of the things I’ve noticed is that on the days where I had a calorie surplus overall, rather than a calorie deficit, the only difference was a few small things I’d eaten or had to drink during the day. It was always that “little” snack or couple of small glasses of wine that took me into a surplus. (Yes, you can drink wine and lose weight.)
Now, this probably sounds like a pretty basic concept, but it’s easy to forget. When you actually look at where your calories are coming from, it is the little things that make a difference between losing, gaining, or maintaining weight.
It isn’t just calories that matter, but if you’re following a weight loss plan, or just trying to eat a healthier diet, calories are one of the things you look at. And by adding even a small “treat” during the day, that can make a difference to whether or not you are moving towards achieving your weight loss goals.
For example, if you have a bag of potato chips with your lunch or as an afternoon snack, that can be anywhere between 115 and 300 calories. I think for most of us, a bag of potato chips doesn’t actually fill us up or keep us from getting hungry, but is just a snack that we enjoy. So, if we just cut that out, we wouldn’t be any hungrier at the end of the day, but it might be the difference between being in a calorie surplus or calorie deficit for that day.
There are plenty of other examples out there of similar things (and I’m sure you can come up with something better than potato chips, as most people already know that they aren’t very “healthy.”)
Overall, just be conscious of what you’re eating. If you really are hungry, it’s fine to eat…and you should eat, but if you’re mindlessly snacking, even on something small, it does make a difference!!
To your health,
Kimberly
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