How many calories do you drink?

Add comment March 23rd, 2009

We pretty much know the conventional healthy eating advice — cut down on the fatty meats and cheeses, consume more fruits and vegetables, switch to whole-grain breads and pastas and be mindful of realistic portion sizes.

The main idea is to take in high-grade fuel and leave out the excess calories that will weigh down performance.

Well, don’t forget to count the calories in what you drink. While it probably doesn’t make a significant difference that you order the diet soda to go along with your double cheeseburger with bacon and extra sauce, it is a saving of 140 to 150 calories.

In fact, sugared soda is the number one source of refined sugar in the American diet at 10 to 12 teaspoons in a 12-ounce can. That’s enough to earn it the nickname of liquid candy.

Here, according to a chart I found in ”Take Charge of Your Health” by Aileen Ludington and Hans Diehl, are some other drinks and their calorie counts:

1 cup of coffee with cream and sugar — 75, 1 cup of orange juice — 110, 12 ounces of diet soft drink — 0, 12 ounces of fruit punch — 140, 1 cup of nonfat milk — 90, 1 cup of whole milk — 160, 12-ounce milk shake — 425, 12-ounce beer — 150, 1 cocktail — 150, 12 ounces of mineral water — 0.

Plain water also has no calories and doesn’t irritate your system — but it is PLAIN.

So, if you can’t stick to water, drink what you want but remember to count your liquid calories in the total. 

Spring workout, take it out

Add comment March 16th, 2009

Unless we have some decidedly un-springlike weather, I’ll be somewhere on the Sinnissippi Bike Path when spring officially arrives at 6:44 a.m. Friday.

I’ve been getting outside to run in a — mostly — straight line now for a couple of weeks after spending the winter going around in ovals and abusing my hips on the YMCA’s indoor track. When I gave up racing — not like I was a threat to beat anyone in my age group — a little over five years ago I also gave up running outdoors in anything colder than 20 degrees above zero.

I’ve read several articles about how exercising outdoors in cold weather helps build your resistance to wintertime ailments — and when I ran outside in winter, I rarely had a cold or the flu — but just couldn’t continue to push myself out the door when I knew I wasn’t training for anything specific.

Now, instead of just feeling the moderating temperatures, spring running is kind of a jailbreak for me and that makes it all the more fun. My hips sure appreciate it, anyway.

So let me encourage you to take your workout outside. It’s getting to be that time.