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How to Use the Simplebean Health Guide Software
The Simplebean Health Guide quickly calculates your health statistics and
targets. To plan a healthy diet, you get important health information such as
your BMI, BEE, personalized daily calorie requirements and targets, and the
target weight for your frame size. The health guide even breaks down your daily
calorie target into carbohydrate, protein, and fat needs. It is excellent for
weight loss or maintenance.
An on-line help system guides you through the process, helping you with all
input, and defining all terms. The help system also gives you access to on-line
articles about nutritional and activity needs of a healthy mind and body.
To use the Simplebean Health Guide, fill in the textboxes with your information.
The Simplebean Health Guide will automatically calculate your health statistics
and targets. Each textbox, statistic, and target label contains a link to a
help page on Simplebean.com. These help pages contain definitions,
explanations, guidance, and tips. They will help you enter the correct
information, and better understand your personal results. It will likely
benefit you to browse all of these help pages.
Once the Simplebean Health Guide has calculated your targets, and you have
browsed the help pages, you will know what, and how often to eat. As you become
more active, and replace body fat with lean muscle, you should use the
Simplebean Health Guide again and again to calculate new targets based on your
new statistics.
Entering Your Data
Age, Height, Weight, Sex, and Units
Enter in your current age in years, current height in inches or centimeters, and
current weight in pounds or kilograms. Since you’ve been working with these
numbers for your entire life, we’ll assume you can guess these. This
application was created for adults. The Age text box will not take a value less
than 18. Be sure to set the correct sex because the Simplebean Health Guide
computes results differently for each gender. Also check the correct units. If
you put in your height at 188 (centimeters) and the units are set to U.S., the
guide will incorrectly assume that you are over 15 and a half feet tall!
Enter a value in the Target Weekly Change text box. This is the amount of
weight in pounds (or kilograms if units are set to metric) that you plan to
lose or gain each week. Enter a negative value for weight loss, or a
positive value for weight gain. If you want to maintain your current weight,
enter a value of zero. Values lower than -2 are not considered healthy, and may
even cause your body to save its fat cell supply.
An accepted method of determining your daily protein requirements uses your
current weight and typical activity. Using this method, a factor is multiplied
by your weight to determine your health protein intake in grams. For example,
0.36 is considered the correct protein ratio for a non-active adult. See the
above link for a table of additional factors.
Fatty acids are an important part of a healthy diet. Don’t confuse fat cells
(ugly) with fatty acids (some are essential). 20 is a good percentage to start
with.
Our daily calorie needs a directly linked to our daily activity level. The
levels to choose from are Sedentary, Somewhat Active, Average, Above Average,
Very Active, More than 2 hrs/day, and Professional Athlete. For more
information on choosing the correct value, see the above link.
Understanding Your Results
Your BMI is a good indication of body fat in the average person. Values lower
than 20.7 suggest indicate underweight. Values higher than 26.3 indicate
overweight. See the link above for a table of all the ranges.
Your BEE is the energy required for your basic life processes measured in
calories per day.
TDEE is the total number of calories that your body expends in 24 hours,
including all activities. Daily Calorie Target Your daily calorie target is the
number of calories you should consume each day. This may differ from your TDEE
because it has been adjusted based on the value you entered for your Target
Weekly Loss.
The Simplebean Health Guide calculates a weight range for your body based on
your height, age, and frame size. To determine your frame size, place your
thumb and index fingers around the wrist of the other hand. If the thumb and
index fingers overlap you have SMALL frame. If the thumb and index finger just
touch you have a MEDIUM frame. If they do not reach, you have a LARGE frame.
A healthy diet is the appropriate amount and ratio of carbohydrates,
proteins, and fats. Optimally,
individuals should obtain 40 to 60 percent of their total calories from
carbohydrates, preferably unrefined, or complex carbohydrates, 20 to 30 percent
from good protein sources, and 20 to 30 percent from essential fatty acids. As
you can see, there is some room here for individual adjustments.
The minimum amount of water your body needs every day. This is calculated as a
function of your weight.
It is better to have more small meals each day are better than fewer large
meals. Using your protein intake as a guide, Simplebean Health Guide can
calculate the minimum number of meals you need to fully and efficiently utilize
your nutrition. You may find it advantageous to increase this number, but you
shouldn’t lower it.
Eat Right and Achieve a Healthy Weight
To achieve and maintain a healthy body requires consistent habits in three
areas: nutrition, physical activity, and sleep. It may be difficult to eat
correctly, exercise regularly, and get the proper amount of sleep our
fast-paced lives, but it is impossible if you don’t know exactly how.
Step by Step - Healthy Weight Without Dieting tells you exactly how.
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