1 Measure the circumference of your waist (at the narrowest point), hips (at the widest point) and neck (at the narrowest point).
2 Take the measurements twice and follow the same guidelines that I discuss in the “Gauging your inches to link your weight and health” for measuring your waist.
3 To calculate your body fat percentage, go to the online calculator (http://fitness.bizcalcs.com/Calculator.asp?Calc=Body-Fat-Navy), enter your gender, weight, height, and your measurements.Voila. Your percent body fat estimate.
Here is an example using Debbie from the earlier “Guesstimating accurately” section:
Debbie is a female, weighs 150 pounds, and is 5-5. Her waist is 35 inches, her hips measure 38 inches, and her neck is 12 inches. According to the U.S. Navy formula, her body fat percentage is 36 percent. By referring to Figure 2-2 and using her age (50), you can see that Debbie’s body fat percentage puts her in the overweight range — meaning her weight could put her at risk for numerous health problems.
If you determine that you’re not happy with the category you’re in, then you can use that info as another means to motivate yourself to exercise and stick to your intermittent fasting plan.
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 2-2: Percent body fat categories.
Chapter 3
Verifying Calories As Your Last Resort
IN THIS CHAPTER
Calories … you hate them, you don’t want to hear about them, and you certainly don’t want to count them. You may even be a bit taken aback by a discussion of calories when you thought intermittent fasting didn’t count calories. After all, intermittent fasting is about when you eat, not so much about what you eat, right? Yes and no. The beauty and simplicity of intermittent fasting plans lie in the focus more on timing rather than the nuisance of counting calories.
It’s up to you: You can immediately skip this chapter, or you can instead use this chapter as your backup tool kit to refer to if your intermittent fasting plan is not giving you the results that you had hoped for. Or, perhaps, you’re just interested in calories.
This chapter is a tool to help you grasp the concept of weight loss and the role calories play in losing and gaining weight. If one of your intermittent fasting goals is to lose weight and body fat, then the following illustrates why intermittent fasting works.
Examining How Your Intermittent Fasting Plan Is Going
People who try intermittent fasting and fail, lament that it doesn’t work. The overwhelming reason why intermittent fasting doesn’t give results for these people is because they use their fasting windows as a license to eat anything and everything they want. Bottom line: They eat too many calories during their eating windows, an action that will prevent weight loss and perhaps even promote weight gain. If you find yourself in the same situation, then press your panic button and do the calorie calculations in this chapter to see what and where you’re overeating and/or underexercising. What I can tell you from my years of experience helping people lose weight is that 99.9 percent of people underestimate the amount of food they eat.
Never fear! I don’t advise counting your calories each day, each week, or each month. I do encourage you to do the occasional calorie calculations to make yourself more aware of what you’re eating. Knowing this information can help you make better choices around food and meal selection during your eating windows as well as help you reach your weight and fat loss goals.
The next few sections take you on a whirlwind science exploration tour — the laws of physics (simplified). The goal is to clarify the misinformation that you may have been bombarded with regarding the basis for all things weight related (both weight gain and weight loss).
Explaining calorie surplus and deficit
Search for “calories and weight loss” online, and you’ll find: “Not all calories are equivalent. “A calorie may not be a calorie.” “A calorie is of course a calorie.” As you can see, a lot of information is out there about the role calories play in weight loss.
LOOKING TO PHYSICS TO EXPLAIN CALORIES
In an effort to clarify the calorie science, this calls for a refresher on Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of physics to help you understand calorie deficit. Newton’s first law of thermodynamics (in physics) is the law of conservation of energy. This states that energy can’t be created or destroyed in a closed system. Translation: If the calories in the foods you consume (even those foods you may consider to be clean) are more than the calories you burn (your resting metabolic rate and all your activity in a day), you’re creating a daily calorie surplus and you’re going to gain weight (fat). Simple. What about the other way around? If you eat fewer calories than you expend and create a daily calorie deficit, you’ll lose weight.
Calorie surplus: You eat more calories than you expend and create a daily calorie surplus, you gain weight.
Calorie deficit: You eat fewer calories than you expend and create a daily calorie deficit, you lose weight.
All diets
