I had fun this morning tracking more of my “consumption and expenditure”. In this case, the amount and quality of my food consumption and physical energy expenditure.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a detailed online tool to calculate your physical activity and also food intake. (choose “Check It Out” at the bottom to try without registering) Some other fun health-related calculators are here. In Canada, of course we have our old (1992) Food Guide, but no cool online tool like this… A new, “controversial”, updated version of the CFG is expected any day now. Hopefully the new Guide will offer a similar calculator (though perhaps it’s better for most people if they just “keep it simple”). We also have “Canada’s Physical Activity Guide to Healthy Active Living” (phew, that’s a mouthful), but again no online tool. Now that I think about “old Canadian health initiatives” — how I long for those innocent, optimistic days of ParticipACTION (”Get with the action”)!

Anyhow, I found I’m doing okay, food- and physical activity-wise (at least, according to the Americans…does that mean I should be concerned? ;-). My relatively inactive (or so I thought) life still scored a Physical Activity Score of “100″ (out of 100). The only trick, according to them, is to do at least 30 minutes of moderate activity or 20 minutes of vigorous activity every day (for an adult; children need twice as much). And “moderate” includes a brisk walk and serious house cleaning, so — how hard is that? Seems they set the bar pretty low. In the end, because I burned well over 500 calories in activities rating 3 “METs” (three times resting energy expenditure) or more, so they tell me I am a “very active person” who “will acquire…the health benefits of physical activity.” Hmm.

Of course, they didn’t factor in all those peanuts I eat… Food-wise, it turns out that (yesterday, at least) I didn’t eat enough vegetables (even though I had a salad for dinner) or milk products, but was okay on fruits, meat/beans (hello peanuts!), and borderline on grains. I did eat a tad too much fat (was surprised to see it mostly came from my handfuls of dry-roasted peanuts!). Still, I expended more calories than I consumed, so I’m doing okay…but no wonder I feel so hungry all of a sudden, as I type this! (-; Time for lunch…guess I’d better have a salad (with tuna and cheese and, of course, peanuts).

For old times’ sake, enjoy this (video and song here):

Don’t just think about it,
Do it, do it, do it!
Do it with a friend, you both can bend,
Do it for your muscles, it’ll make them hustle,
Do it for your feet, it’s kind of neat,
Do it with some action, ParticipACTION!
Don’t just think about it,
Do it, do it, do it!
PartcipACTION — get with the ACTION
Do it, do it, DO IT!

And finally…

If your girlfriend says: “Take a hike, Warren,” what flattery! You must look strong enough to climb hills in Canada’s outdoors, the greatest natural fitness facility in the world. “Here goes, chick!”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 13h22 and is filed under Just...life!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.