Feb 18, 2009 My Diet and important things to consider

February 18, 2009

Hey, so yesterday I found a website that allows people to input their information and find out the nutritional values and calories of their foods. It was fairly labor intensive the first time but because I eat the same stuff everyday it’s pretty easy to add the same foods.

Here is the link to my diet:

http://fitday.com/fitness/PublicJournals.html?Owner=nutritionfitnesshealth

On the right side it will show what I ate the previous days or most recently

In addition, I plan to make my exercise log available once I figure out the best method.

Yesterday’s workout went a little like this.

I walked to the library (about .5 mile away) and dropped off a near-due book. This took about 10 minutes and served as my pre warm up. After getting there, I looked for the other books that I put on hold online (it’s really easy and efficient), they weren’t there so I left and began to lightly jog for 10-15 minutes. I stopped by my friend’s house and stretched while talking to him about his school and how his test had gone. After those 10 minutes I proceeded to Reach which took about 10 more minutes. At Reach I ran for 7:30 minutes at a 7:08 pace (it’s slow to start and I wasn’t going too fast at the beginning), and did 15 push ups. After that I left and jogged back home, which was approximately 15 minutes.

When I got to my street I decided that to go walk in the park instead of going inside. I walked around, and ended up in the community garden which by then was completely soaked and muddy and took a bit of finesse to stay clean. I picked up a few pieces of trash and recycled a can, which I think is ridiculous that people don’t clean up after themselves.

Anyway, so I went through the garden and then went home, stretched for about 15 minutes and then showered and waited for a call that was coming shortly after.

What I realized during my run were a few important things.
• We need to be accountable for our own happiness, obviously it helps to be around positive people, but if you don’t put yourself in those places, or don’ maximize your time, it’s a little more difficult to be fulfilled.
• Earning our meals and sleep is important. What I mean is that if you don’t exercise the entire day, what makes you think that you need 3,000 calories. It just doesn’t make sense. Being sedentary is what happens when your body thinks its sick, or resting and needs to conserve energy. Plus if you’ve been resting all day, why would your body still need to sleep, and you’ll get really low quality sleep.
• If everybody made their diet public, I bet obesity would go down. The reason, we are already a little self-conscious, so if people could actually see with full honesty what others and themselves are eating, it might encourage them to 1)educate themselves and others on healthy habits 2)change their own diet 3)just simply be aware of their habits and be willing to change.
• Use your time wisely; during my workout I accomplished at least 5 things: Returned a book, talked to a friend, exercised, let my mind roam, stress release.
• And the last thing, a question for you

When did you feel most physically fit and active?

My assumption is that most of you would say middle or high school. This is because we are for the most part constantly surrounded by exercise of some sort, or being required to do physical education. In addition, our bodies are functioning efficiently due to eating fairly nutritious foods that our parents provided and sometimes force-fed. Why do these habits stop? Because it’s easy to lose sight of our health, and it unfortunately feels good to be lazy. Thankfully it feels better to be active; most people just don’t remember what it really feels like.

In terms of physical fitness, it was either sophomore year of high school or now. At that time I was training in the off season at the Stanford Track running stadium stairs, sprints, and working out for hours preparing for varsity baseball. And right now I’m training at least an hour a day, getting ready for a marathon. But when taking diet into account for how I actually FEEL, it’s most certainly right now. I’ve never been more aware of what’s being consumed and how it will benefit my over the training and my entire life.

Think about your food and exercise exponentially. If you drink a soda and a cheeseburger and don’t exercise more than walking to a car, getting out and walking into an office, and the same routine home, the health damage isn’t just immediate, it stays with you until you burn it off, leading to higher cholesterol which will lead to medication or obesity, leading to diabetes, leading to heart disease or heart attack and eventually premature death. This is an exponential and theoretical time line, but none the less important and quite real. Now imagine doing that everyday.

• Get at least 1 salad per day, it’s really easy, and usually very good.
• Eat some fruit; find some that you can eat everyday and eat it everyday, variation is better, so find a couple you trade off.
• Get enough water, more than you think, yesterday I had 7 glasses and I was still extremely dehydrated this morning, also due to exercising, but I’m going to have at least 10 today.


Take care and be healthy and happy,
Ryan