Food For Thought

Food planning...

This week as part of the Weekly Weigh In I will be looking at food planing.

The benefits of meal planning:- 

• You will eat out less
• Less tempted to eat pre-packaged meals
• Save money
• Less waste 
• Less trips to the shops
• Good for busy days
• Keeps you in a routine

The first place to start when meal planning is to work out how many calories you need per day.

Now this can be very complicated to work out if you follow the equations:-

Men	BMR = 88.362 + (13.397 x weight in kg) + (4.799 x height in cm) - (5.677 x age in years)
Women	BMR = 447.593 + (9.247 x weight in kg) + (3.098 x height in cm) - (4.330 x age in years)

Little to no exercise	Daily calories needed = BMR x 1.2
Light exercise (1–3 days per week)	Daily calories needed = BMR x 1.375
Moderate exercise (3–5 days per week)	Daily calories needed = BMR x 1.55
Heavy exercise (6–7 days per week)	Daily calories needed = BMR x 1.725
Very heavy exercise (twice per day, extra heavy workouts)	Daily calories needed = BMR x 1.9

I prefer the alternative way :)

Calories Per Day Calculator.

Once you have your figure for the amount of a calories you need per day its time to start planning with this in mind.

A great place to find food plans is here.

Find the Calories you need according to your age and work to the principle shown.

Now the best way to to track the calories of the food that you choose:-

myfitnesspal 
Follow @MyFitnessPal

This is basically a Food Diary.

• A searchable food database of over 3,202,000 items - and it's growing everyday!

• Your own personal food database - add your own foods and recipes at any time and access them from anywhere with an internet connection

You can sign up here or the website for FREE or alternatively download the APP.
It is available on most platforms; iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows.

The great thing about the APP is its there with you everywhere you go, so you can keep track of what you are eating on the go, knowing how many calories you have left with stop you skipping important meals.

Give this a try and keep track of your weight adjusting your plan as you go.

Sam.
FitandFull.
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