My friend ‘Bob’ shared this website with me. We were talking about our weight loss journey, efforts at better health and the various changes we had each made in our diets and respective lifestyles. ‘Bob’, who is Type 1 LADA (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood), he’s made many changes in an effort to keep his blood sugar and health stable.
After we talked about weight loss and how we each had established and tracked our weight loss goals, he followed up with a text message, suggesting that I take a look at this website, which he was using, and said it might be a useful tool to help me with my goals.
The website is from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (whew- that’s a mouthful!), and it’s called Body Weight Planner.
The program asks rudimentary questions – age, sex & weight.
Then, it asks you to estimate your level of activity- both at work and during leisure time.
What I really like is that the program helps you determine your activity level by giving examples of what different activities would be. This allows for better accuracy in the results.
In the next segment, it asks you what you want your goal weight to be, as well as the time frame in which you want to reach that goal weight.
Then the hard part: the part where desire and ambition end and accountability begins.
It asks how much you are willing to change your activity level (in percentages) in order to reach your goal.
While that might sound nebulous, the program provides options to help you outline specific changes in your physical activity.
As you add and remove various activities, it constantly recalculates the percentage change in your activity level.
Once you have decided how much (in percentages) you will change your physical activity, and then determined what activities will be incorporated into your exercise regimen, you move to the next stage: Caloric Estimates. What we put into our bodies matters as much as exercise (maybe even more),
The program takes into consideration your expected activity level and estimates what your caloric intake should be in order to maintain your current weight, reach your goal weight, and maintain your goal weight (once achieved), however you have to fuel it properly to gain optimum results.
Food is fuel, but the right kind of fuel is essential.
Although the Boy Weight Planner doesn’t go into dietary recommendations, it does provide a few links to resources with tips for eating healthy.
The Body Weight Planner is an excellent tool, but tools have to be used, and used properly to be effective. Your results will be based on the effort and daily choices you make- choices about what you put into your body, and how you choose to treat it.
