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My Body
Losing weight, gaining weight, or maintaining weight, it comes down to calories burned vs calories consumed. Using the M2 allows you to fully understand how many calories you are burning. To control your weight, you also have to understand how many calories you are consuming. Once you have both pieces, it becomes a matter of balancing them out against each other. If you exercise more, you may not have to diet as much to lose. If you can’t get your amount of exercise up, you need to cut your diet to the point that you are consuming less than you are burning if you want to lose weight. Most people will adjust on both ends, finding a happy medium between exercise and diet.
Figuring out how many calories you are consuming can be hard, especially if you are cooking your own foods. It is a tedious job of recording everything you eat each day, figuring out how many calories were in each thing, and totalling the results. It can also be quite eye-opening. Just the act of keeping a food journal and becoming aware of what you are eating increases your chances of success on a diet. Figuring out how many calories you are consuming each day gives you powerful information by which you can change your choices.
Many people choose to follow a diet plan simply because the calories are calculated for them and they do not have to count. This may range from pre-packaged foods to a list of meals with recipies for preparaton. Following a diet plan can help you educate yourself on what a 1200 calorie or 1600 calorie or 2000 calorie diet looks like and can definitely reduce the work of tracking your calories consumed each day.
If you are cooking your own meals and following your own diet, you will need to work harder to figure out how many calories you consume. Tools in the My Body section of the MYTAK website will help you figure this out. You can use My Nutrition plan to create a suggested diet plan for yourself and you can use My Meals/Intake Analysis to track and analyze what you actually ate. You can track everything you eat or you can use the Intake Analysis to find out how many calories and nutrients are in your favorite meals. In addition to the My Body section, you will also see a My Meals section under My Profile. This section shows your maximum daily caloric intake and has a link to My Pyramid meal planner, another helpful tool (I think from the USDA) for figuring out how many calories you are eating and what food groups they are coming from. It may be a bit frustrating, as the window doesn’t resize or move and may cut off sections of information, but it is interesting to check out. It shows a graph of your progress against the 5 food groups and bars with your total calories, your "bad calories" (things that fall outside those food groups, like fats and sugars), and oils.
Intake Analysis
The intake analysis is a very helpful tool for those of you that need to focus on learning what you are really eating! It may not have the specific food you are looking for, but it will have something close. Taking a look at the calories and nutrients in something can be eye-opening. Putting in all your food for a day can also allow you to see where your diet is deficient.
If you go to "My Body" and click "View Plan" under "My Nutrition", you will see the "Intake Analysis" button on the top right of the page. Click It. You will also get to the same spot by clicking "My Meals" on the dashboard.
To give you a quick example, under "Food Group" select fast foods, then just click the search button under food description, without entering anything in that box. A list of mostly generic fast food options (some specific brands are also on the list) will show. Scroll down and select an item you might eat. With that line highlighted, click "add meal".
The item(s) you selected is now showing under food description. At the bottom of the page, it is now showing you nutrition facts and analysis of your selections. It’s amazing how fast the calories and fat can add up!
If you actually took the time to set up a typical’s day intake for yourself, you could also click the "intake analysis results" button. That will then give you a list of the areas where your diet is deficient. It will also list the types of foods you can eat to correct the deficiencies as well as tell you why it is important to correct the deficiency (ie, it tells you what happens to your body if you don’t have the deficient item).
My Supplement Plan
There are a number of supplements listed under the My Trak Supplements plan. They break the list into two sections - fat loss and muscle increase. The muscle increase section seems to be targeted more towards body builders. To give you some quick input on the ones on the fat loss list from the Curves perspective:
- CLA
The Curves position on CLA is that they have not ben studied enough to be able to say there are no negative side effects. There appears to be at least one study that said they may raise cholesterol levels. If you do decide to take them, look at how much CLA is actually in the tablet. For example, Trader Joe’s 1000 mg softgels actually yield 740 mg CLA. This is clearly shown on the back label and that is the number to base the dosage on, not the 1000 mg.
- Calcium
Curves both recommends and sells a calcium supplement.
- Green Tea
Curves recommends drinking green tea (hot or iced) rather than taking green tea supplements.
- Omega 3
Curves both recommends and sells an omega 3 supplement.
- HCA
Curves position is that there is not enough research on HCA at this time to recommend it.
- Multivitamin & Mineral Complex
Curves both recommends and sells a vitamin supplement.
- Fiber
Curves recommends just eating healthfully!
Too Much of a Good Thing?
We all know people that believe if a little bit of something is good, a lot of it is better! While you want to get enough to be healthy, you do not need to go overboard on adding vitamins and nutrients to your diet. If you find a good article talking about this balancing act, let us know.
Getting Too Much: Vitamins And Minerals What You Need To Know - AOL Health
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