Living Fit: Some simple choices can improve your health

As attorneys, we are members of the “death by desk” club. I know you don’t recall signing up for this membership, but you were unknowingly indoctrinated into the club when you passed the bar exam and became a lawyer. We sit … a lot. We also tend to eat … a lot. Usually at our desks or while entertaining clients. This is a double-whammy and makes it imperative to our health, happiness and longevity to consider and reconsider the choices we make. What about your calorie choices? We carefully consider how we’re going to spend the money we earn, but do you ever think about how you’re going to spend (consume) the calorie burn that you earn? I didn’t think so. After all, it’s not billable time. Many of us are not truly aware of how many calories we “earn” through our daily activities and exercise versus how many calories we “spend” (consume) in the many choices we make each day surrounding food. According to research conducted at Cornell University, it is estimated that the average adult makes 227 decisions about food every day.

After gaining a few unwanted pounds over the holidays (does anyone ever gain “wanted” pounds?), I decided to seriously look at the number of calories I was burning during each workout. I am religious about a few things, and daily exercise is one of them. I knew I was putting in the work, even working harder than during previous winters. However, I also had the occasion to be invited to more than my usual number of holiday gatherings, which brought with it a multitude of choices — significantly more than 227 a day.

On Jan. 1, I set off on an adventure with my Apple watch snuggled tightly on my wrist as always, but this time I was going to pay attention to the calories burned during exercise after I hit the “done” button on my watch. My first fitness adventure of the new year was swimming with the masters swim group for the annual New Year’s Day practice. It is a ritual that we look forward to … kind of. The goal is to swim as many 100s as you can (four lengths of the pool = 100 meters). I swam 50 100s, or a total of 5,000 meters. This was the most I had swam at one time in a few years, and I was thrilled to have completed the effort with just a few aches and pains. I hit “done” on the watch and wearily climbed out of the pool, a little bleary-eyed from the effort. I scrolled down the face of my watch with excitement to see the large number of calories I surely burned during that workout. It had to be 3,000-plus. The thought of blueberry granola pancakes with butter and maple syrup was delightfully bouncing around in my mind. I was aghast with disbelief to see I burned a mere 792 calories. I rubbed my eyes and looked again — same number. Certain the watch was wrong, I ventured on with my buddies to the restaurant — pancakes here I come! — which came at a cost of 1,450 calories, not counting the calories from butter and syrup.

Day 2 was a two-hour indoor bicycle (CompuTrainer) class where there is no coasting and no stopping. Sweating the very blood out of my body resulted in burning only 630 calories. Day 3: Back to the pool, because I was certain my watch was wrong about the New Year’s Day workout. I swam 2,700 meters, so about half of what I had done a few days before. And I burned 437 calories. My days and workouts continued, along with my disbelief. A 3.3-mile, 60-minute walk earned 210 calories. An outdoor 25-mile bicycle ride provided a burn of only 818 calories. I’d been spending (consuming) a lot more than I had earned. No wonder the jelly belly was growing and the Buddha belly was in progress. Time to get real.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and a dose of educational realism. What was I putting into my body that had become normal fare instead of special holiday treats? My research was frightening — or more like sickening. A 6 oz. sirloin filet has 890 calories; grilled chicken sandwich 1,100 calories; chicken Caesar salad 660 calories; shrimp scampi pasta 950 calories; black bean and veggie fajitas 660 calories; two beef tacos 620 calories; chicken flatbread 1,450 calories; 6 oz. glass of wine 140 calories; Snicker’s candy bar 260 calories; molten chocolate cake (heaven on earth) 1,160 calories. We should rename this Satan’s cake.

I was spending a lot more on calories than I earned during my exercise and daily activities. The holidays had gotten the best of me. I cannot imagine how much worse it would have been if I had not been exercising daily. You very well know the legal profession is one of the most stress-filled and least-satisfying jobs in the country. Combining this with unhealthy food and sedentary lifestyles, we as a profession are a recipe for health disaster. Let’s turn this around. It’s all about choices. Simple, right? In addition to making an average of 227 food decisions a day, we make an average of 35,000 decisions every day — if you are lucky enough to sleep soundly seven hours a night, that leaves about 2,000 decisions an hour, or one every two seconds. This may seem like an over-inflated number, but think about all the decisions you made just reading this article. First, whether to open the Indiana Lawyer, then deciding which articles to read, whether to continue reading, whether to stop for a sip of coffee, whether to answer the text buzz you just heard. You do make a lot of unknowing decisions each moment of your day. When it comes to your health and calorie consumption, slow down and think about your choices. Here are a few steps to aid you along your path:

Step one: Choose to plan a daily exercise routine and stick with it. If that means you choose to leave an event early the night before or choose to turn off the TV in order to get in bed and make it to the gym before work or have the energy to do it after work, then just do it.

Step two: Choose to have your breakfast, lunch and dinner options set for the week. If that means you choose to spend Sunday cooking and making sandwiches and oatmeal for the week while watching TV from the kitchen instead of sitting on your butt, then just do it.

Step three: Choose to take a deep breath and give “temptations” a second thought before imbibing or participating. That includes cocktails, late nights, fattening food, sweets, too much food, sitting when you could be standing and standing when you could be moving. The good that will result is you saying “Bye-Bye, Buddha Belly.”•

• Sharon Buechler is an attorney and certified personal trainer, health fitness specialist and life and wellness coach. Opinions expressed are those of the author.