A calorie (the technical term is “kilocalorie”) is the unit used to measure the energy content of food. We need a base number of calories just to run our body systems (this is called a Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR). On top of that we need calories to absorb and digest food (this is called the Thermal Effect of Food, or TEF), and then we need calories to power any activity we pursue in our lives.

While it is possible to undergo clinical testing to determine your specific caloric needs, a more cost-effective and time-efficient method is to estimate your daily caloric needs through standardized metabolic equations. If you are starting to rummage through your drawer for a calculator and your brow is furrowing with the thought of having to solve an equation, rest easy. Put your calculators away and try this resource:

Calculating Caloric Needs

Now that you have an idea of how many calories you need to fuel both your body and your lifestyle, let’s circle back to my blasphemous statement above. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. It’s true. All calories are the same in that they are just a unit of measure for the energy content in food. But this is where the source of your calories starts to matter. Consider this:

• The average empty human stomach is about the size of a fist.
• A fist is roughly the size of 1 cup.
• 1 cup of raw broccoli is 30 calories.
• 1 cup of Peanut M&Ms is 880 calories.
• The average adult who is moderately physically active needs between 1,800 and 2,200 calories per day.

Hmmm……

Interesting, eh? While I’m not advocating for a broccoli-only diet, this illustrates how easy it is to fill up on calories that will also make you “fill out.” Now, if only you could find broccoli in the vending machine….

Speaking of broccoli… now that you’re an expert on your own metabolic needs, stay tuned for the next Integral Advisor blog post as we dive into what “super foods” are and why adding these key foods to your diet builds physical stamina and mental acuity.

Enjoy your cruciferous snacking!!

Share your comments and ideas at Seeing Green

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• Artificial Sweetener = Real Fat

When you feel like this, your focus is fractured and everything, even the lint in between the keys on your keyboard, is more interesting than the task you have before you.  Sound familiar? That’s stress.

Bless us. The power inside each and every one of us is inspiring. However, like the excess of anything, that same power can be self-defeating. Sometimes we allow ourselves to believe that our greatest asset is our ability to “pony up”—to keep our eye on the prize and not stop pushing until we get there. And, sometimes it is. But not always.

The Gift of Stress

Stress is a gift. A what? Yep, it’s a gift. When used appropriately, it helps to “rally the troops,” to gather our mental and physical resources and focus them with laser-like precision. It fuels creativity, action, and immense productivity. The problem is not with stress, but with our seemingly diminishing ability to oscillate between periods of stress and recovery. To know when to leverage our stress response in support of a goal and when to allow our bodies the grace of recovering and repairing from the onslaught of cell-damaging stress-related hormones. In fact, many of us are so chronically stressed that we’re unaware of the level of stress we’re experiencing this very moment.

A 60-Second Experiment

Sit back in your chair. Put two feel flat on the floor. Roll your shoulders back and away from your ears. Close your eyes (well, finish reading the experiment first…). Now, take three deep breaths. Pull air all the way to the bottom of your belly, hold it there, and let it go. Try two more, just for good measure.

Feel any different?

Deep breathing is one of the fastest and most effective ways to mitigate the effects of stress, bring oxygen to your brain, and regain your focus and clarity. Do you think there’s any coincidence that “inspiration” is used to describe both the inhalation of air as well as a timely and brilliant idea?

So, when cleaning the lint from your keyboard becomes more compelling than the proposal you’re in the midst of writing, be gentle with yourself. Your lack of focus isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s your body’s way of telling your brain to take the backseat for a minute. Your body is smart—trust it and it will certainly continue to inspire your brilliant brain.

Share your comments and ideas at The INSPIRE-ation of Stress

Sit back and imagine that sitting before you is a big juicy burger topped with melted cheese and nestled in a delightfully soft bun.  Is your mouth watering?

Now imagine that the burger is synthetic.  The cheese is imitation.  And the bun is pulverized cardboard.

Is your mouth a little confused?

If research on artificial sweeteners is any indicator, not only is your mouth confused, but your brain and your body are too.

Fat Rats

Researchers out of Purdue University’s Ingestive Behavior Research Center are reporting that “rats given yogurt sweetened with zero-calorie saccharin consumed more calories, gained more weight, put on more body fat, and didn’t make up for it by cutting back later” than rats that were fed their calories in the form of sugar.

While the hypothesized correlation between increasing obesity and the increasing use of artificial sweeteners isn’t new, past research has explored the possibility that the cause might be psychological.  Remember the “Snackwells Effect” of the 1990s when we over-indulged in low-fat treats just to have our expanding waistlines remind us that “low-fat” doesn’t mean “low-calorie”?

But, as this newer research has shown, the cause may not be all in our heads.

Calorie Confusion

According to Purdue researchers Susan Swithers, PhD, and Terry Davidson, PhD, sugar substitutes backfire because the body’s natural link and response between sweetness and calories is broken causing two significant effects:

1. Trouble Regulating Calorie Intake–The brain gets confused by the false sweetness and sends hormonal messages that increase appetite.
2. Lower Metabolism—As the body becomes trained to expect false sugar, it doesn’t “gear up” as effectively making it harder to burn off other calories.

Take home message?
When the link between sweetness and calories is severed,
we eat more and we store more.

Yeah, But I’m No Rat

True, at this point the statistically significant study has only been performed on rats, but the data does match emerging evidence that people who drink more diet drinks are at higher risk for obesity and metabolic syndrome.

It’s a good thing those smarty researchers are out gathering more definitive data for us.  In the meantime, do you really want to be ingesting anything we refer to as “artificial”?

Satisfy your watering mouth with something your brain and body will know how to handle.  When in doubt… eat real food.

Share your comments and ideas at Artificial Sweetener = Real Fat

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• Seeing Green

If so, you’re not alone. I’m often asked by new clients what is the number one thing they can do to increase their performance and support their overall health. Most people expect I’m going to respond with some equation of diet and exercise (which, of course, are foundational to high performance), but my response?

“How much are you sleeping?”

Sleep Quiz

And the woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

(Excerpted from Robert Frost’s
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”)

Do you:

• Fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow?
• Need an alarm clock to wake in the morning?
• Often feel drowsy while driving?
• Feel slow or frustrated when faced with critical thinking, problem solving, and creative tasks?

If so, you’re most likely not getting enough sleep. While your afternoon sluggishness may seem like a minor inconvenience-an honorable testament to the incredible drive you possess-it is likely that your willpower is undermining your potential. According to Dr. James Maas, author of Power Sleep:

“Often we are totally unaware of our own reduced capabilities because we become habituated to low levels of alertness. Many of us have been sleep deprived for such a long time that we don’t know what it’s like to feel wide awake.”

If a bit of sleep deprivation seems like par for the course to you (heck, it’s reported that at least 50% of Americans are chronically sleep deprived, right?), consider that even just a slight sleep deficit has been proven to result in decreased cognitive functioning (including processing time, ability to perform complex tasks, creativity and memory), weight gain, loss of coping skills, increased anxiety, and decreased immunity.

Finding Your Sleep Quotient

So, what are your nightly sleep needs? Maas recommends the following experiment:

1. Select a bedtime when you will be able to fall asleep easily. Try to make this bedtime at least 8 hours before you need to wake up. Maintain that bedtime for a week and note the time you wake up. If after a week you need an alarm clock to rise or if you find yourself at all tired during the day, you haven’t slept enough.
2. If you’re not sleeping enough, keep your waking time constant and go to bed 15 to 30 minutes earlier for a week. Repeat an even earlier bedtime if, after a week, you’re still showing signs of sleep deprivation.
3. Once you’ve established a correct bedtime, try cutting back by 15 minutes and track whether that produces feelings of daytime drowsiness.

Once you are able to wake without an alarm and no longer experience the daytime drowsiness that most of us assume to be natural, you have found your individual sleep requirement.

Beware: You may well find a whole new level of “you” that you didn’t know you had.

Share your comments and ideas at Miles To Go Before I Sleep

When did our ability to fracture our attention across time and space become such a badge of honor? A perceived trait of the successful?  Is multitasking really such a beneficial skill to cultivate?

The Value of a Fast and Nimble Thinker

There’s no doubt that the best and brightest are able to handle multiple inputs, shift gears quickly when necessary, and be nimble enough to jump into whatever task or problem is in need of attention.  There is also no doubt that this constant “channel changing” mode of operation takes its toll—physically, emotionally and mentally.

What genius is lurking in the depths beneath your darting thoughts and chronic distractibility?

Tapping Your Genius

In the book The Attention Revolution—Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind, author B. Alan Wallace explores the potential of a mind practiced in sustained focus.  He writes,

“… geniuses of all kinds excel in their capacity for sustained voluntary attention.  Just think of the greatest musicians, mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers throughout history–all of them, it seems, have had an extraordinary capacity to focus their attention with a high degree of clarity for long periods of time.  A mind settled in such a state of alert equipoise is a fertile ground for the emergence of all kinds of original associations and insights.  Might “genius” be a potential we all share–each of us with our own unique capacity for creativity, requiring only the power of sustained attention to unlock it? A focused mind can help bring the creative spark to the surface of consciousness.  The mind constantly caught up in one distraction after another, on the other hand, may be forever removed from its creative potential.”

Makes you think twice about answering emails on your Blackberry during your next project brainstorming meeting, doesn’t it?

Cultivating the Focused Mind

Chronic mental stimulation (agitation?) is such a common and expected mode of operating that, for many, it can be uncomfortable to even experiment with “uni-tasking.”

Interested in exploring what genius of yours may be skirting the edge of your distracted mind?  In the next two days, challenge yourself by selecting a project that is begging for your attention.  Shut your office door.  Turn your email off.  Let your phone go to voicemail.  Now, commit to yourself that you will focus solely on that project for 1 hour.  Notice what happens in that hour—is your heart rate lower?  Do you work more rapidly?  More creatively?   With more satisfaction?

Hmmmm… maybe it’s worth creating more uni-tasking time in your day.

Share your comments and ideas at Multitasking Yourself to Mediocrity?

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• Move Your Ideas from Mediocre to Magnetic

1. Would you buy a new car without first researching what you wanted? Figuring out what options would give you the best combination of performance, room, functionality and still fit your budget?  And would you question the sales person if he told you that you might want to buy both compact and an SUV, “just to cover your bases”?
2. If you were given a million dollars at birth to cover all your expenses in your lifetime, would you just cross your fingers and hope it would last until your final breath?

If I were a gambler, I’d bet:

• You wouldn’t show up to buy a car without knowing what you want, why you want it, and what you can afford.   …and you wouldn’t walk off the lot having taken the sales person’s suggestion and bought both a compact and an SUV (you know, just in case you need the extra room sometime next summer).
• If you were given a chunk of change to cover all of your lifetime expenses, the strategist and optimizer in you would certainly not ignore the potential power in that million dollars.  You would find a way to make that original capital work for you—you’d find the highest return investments, you’d contribute more money over your working lifetime to your lifetime “expenses account,” and you’d rest assured knowing that you’d been proactive in building that asset.

So, why do we treat our health differently than any other asset?

Our collective level of disengagement may stem in part from the best of intentioned systems: employer-sponsored health care. Health insurance hasn’t always been a part of an “employment compensation package”– it was born out of a World War II wage-freeze. Employers began looking for  “fringe” benefits to attract employees, and health care eventually become a national benefit of employment.  While this system originally increased the numbers of people who had access to health care coverage, for many of us it has also functioned in loco parentis, training us to defer to those in the system “who know more than we do,” perpetuating an alarming lack of engagement in our own health and health care consumption.

But health care changes are brewing, and with the advent of more economics-based models, such as consumer-driven health plans, we have the opportunity and the impetus to become re-engaged and to begin treating our health as the asset it is.  Sure, it can be a little intimidating (it’s like learning to play a new sport or navigating a new city… it’s challenging, but once you have the basics, you’ll love the feeling of empowerment and wonder why you ever thought managing your own health would be hard).

What do you need to know before you can treat your health like an asset?

1. Know Your “Bank Balance.” Just like not knowing the balance in your checking account, if you don’t know your cholesterol, fasting glucose, blood pressure, BMI, weight, and lifestyle/genetics risk factors, you can’t know when there has been a change that should concern you.  Don’t wait until you’re overdrawn to find out what your balance is.
2. Get Informed and Ask Questions. Before you visit with a health care professional, know what you want to get out of your appointment.  Do your own research and have an idea of what you think will work for you and what won’t.  Your health care provider is your partner in building/maintaining your health and will most likely appreciate your level of engagement.  One thorough and reliable resource for health information on the Web: www.mayoclinic.com.
3. Build Your Capital. Treat your health like the asset it is.  Commit to taking daily actions that build this form of capital.  The little actions (parking farther from the store entrance) and big actions (ready to quit smoking?) all matter–the power of compounding doesn’t just apply to your IRA.

Share your comments and ideas at 3 Steps to Increasing Your Health Capital