The Three Necessary Gauges of Fitness by John LeMasney via http://lemasney.com
This is an infographic I made to try to explain the simplicity of the approach I used in order to lose my hundred pounds. All it takes is a dashboard.
If anyone is looking to shed pounds (for free, without a gym membership, with whatever food you like) it requires gauges.
Your body is like a car, and food is like fuel. If you’ve ever had a broken or missing gas gauge, you know what it’s like to be the average eater, putting in too much gas, not having enough, not knowing when you are about to overfill, run out, or underfill. I also like the analogy of having a budget where you have, let’s say. 1800 calories to spend. No one likes being broke, but if you got a few hundred bucks for taking a walk, that would be great.
If you have a recent smartphone, it probably has a pretty good pedometer built in. That’s your output gauge. I use Google Fit. Many gauges exist, but this one is free.
If you count your calories, using an app, a notepad, or a very good memory, that’s your input gauge. I use MyFitnessPal (MFP), which has a fabulous food database. Many gauges exist, but this one is free.
The only thing remaining is to know your weight, height, sex, and intent. The nice thing about MFP is that if you plug these things in, and track your weight, it will tell you exactly how many calories you need on a given day to lose, gain, or maintain your weight.
Without it, it’s easy to overfill. With it, you have a reliable way to know how much you should be eating to have certain outcomes.
Quality of food is a different matter. My philosophy is to eat what you wish, as you like, but count it, and stop when you run out of calories. Pizza? Donuts? Soda? Have what you like, but understand that higher nutrition will lead to better health, function, and thought.
Knowing is better than not, and these tools help you know.
This content is published under the Attribution 3.0 Unported license.