Nutrition
Before you pick up that slice of pizza, grab your morning bagel or a hand full of crackers, you better know exactly what that’s costing your waistline. These foods have little nutritional value yet they are loaded with calories and sugar that are ruining your Heart Smart Minute fitness and nutrition goals.
You can have a fantastic workout, burn hundreds of calories and ruin it all in about 20 seconds. A one hour fitness routine can burn the average person around 300 calories. Those 300 calories are less than what’s in a plain bagel with lite cream cheese (500 cal). A bagel has little to no nutrition in it and cream cheese is nothing but fat, so you’ve worked hard for an hour only to throw it away on food that does nothing for your body but leave you hungry a few hours later.
One of the worse things I hear clients say is, “I’ve had a killer workout, now I can eat whatever I want for the rest of the day.” That is the biggest misconception about fitness. Fitness does speed up the metabolism, making it easier to burn fat, but calories are still calories and weight loss is still all about math. You have to burn more than you take in…that’s the only way to do it. Just to break even after eating a Big Mac meal, which has a little over 1000 calories, you would have to run over 5 miles at a solid speed, all for something you devoured in under 5 minutes.
The foods with the most nutrition are the ones with the fewest calories. An apple has under 40 calories, a 3 minute walk around your street, and is loaded with antioxidants and vitamins, a much better choice than a 200 calorie handful of crackers which is about 20 minutes on the stair master! Which would you rather do?
Heart Smart Minute Nutrition TIp:
Keep your counter tops clear of snack foods. Get rid off all the crackers, nuts, and candies from your countertops. If you’re walking past nuts or crackers in the kitchen you will grab for it–hungry or not. Keep bananas, apples, or grapes in easy reach. They are loaded with fiber and potassium which keep you full longer and have a fraction of the calories.
Heart Smart Minute Nutrition Tip:
Do the Math. This isn’t college algebra, this is simple stuff. Restaurants are required to have nutritional information on hand and most places now post it on their website. If you’re going out for dinner, look at the menu a head of time and find the healthier, less caloric choices.
Heart Smart Minute Fitness Tip:
Knowledge is power–Only if you apply it: Know how many calories you’re burning during your workout. Get yourself a heart rate monitor so you know exactly what you’re burning. This way if you burned 300 calories in an hour you won’t eat 2 slices of pizza (800 cal) for lunch. The more you know about the food you eat the better nutrition choices you will make. Take a look at these popular foods and how long it takes to burn them off! You will be shocked!!
Snickers Bar: 271 calories, about 1 min to eat and over 30 mins of cardio to burn
1/2 cup Bryers Vanilla Ice Cream: 130 calories, about 2 mins to eat and 20 mins of intense cardio to burn
1 serving of Doritos (11 chips): 140 calories, about 1 min to eat and 20 mins of intense cardio to burn
2 slices of Cheese Pizza: 860 calories, 5 min to eat and over 90 mins of intense cardio to burn
1 (12oz) can of Coke: 140 calories, 2 mins to drink and 20 mins of intense cardio to burn
1 Plain Dunkin Donuts bagel with lite cream cheese: 500 calories, about 3 mins to eat and over 60 minutes of intense cardio to burn
1 Big Mac Meal: 1,010 calories, 5 mins to eat and over 2 hours of intense cardio to burn
3 Soft Taco Bell Tacos: 540 calories, 5 mins to eat and over 60 minutes of intense cardio to burn
1 Dunkin Donuts Reduced Fat Blueberry Muffin: 410 calories, 3 mins to eat and 45mins of intense cardio to burn
