Saturdays with Shal, Calories and Destressor Week

​Hey, how’s your Saturday going? This is Saturdays with Shal, where I will be talking about calorie consumption today. But before I do, I wanted to make an announcement… THIS WEEK STARTING ON MONDAY IS DESTRESSOR WEEK! That’s right, the week of March 20th to 24th is Destressor Week where we have lots of fun and destressing events planned for you! Now… back to calories!

I feel this is fitting since restaurants in Ontario have recently displayed calories on their menus. Under the Healthy Menu Choices Act, “new Ontario regulations require any restaurant with more than 20 locations to include calorie counts for all food and drinks” (Ontario Government). But how many calories do you need? Males ages 17-18 should be getting anywhere between 2450-3300 calories a day depending on a sedentary vs. active lifestyle. Ages 19-30 are between 2500-3000. For females ages 17-18, it is 1750-2400. And lastly, ages 19-30 is between 1900-2350. So now you have the number of calories you should be intaking per day, you have access to how many calories are in majority restaurants. But how do you keep track of your calories? My favourite app to use is called MyFitnessPal, available for iPhone and Android (https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/calorie-counter-diet-tracker-by-myfitnesspal/id341232718?mt=8). Owned by Under Armour, it’s an incredible app for calorie and exercise tracking. You can search by food if you went to a restaurant, or each ingredient if you cooked at home. If your phone has a pedometer in it, this app will even use your exercise taken from that and adjust how many calories you’ll need accordingly. Not only is this a good food tracker, but it also helps you lose weight, maintain weight, or gain weight. It takes your personal info and uses it to help you reach whatever weight goal you are reaching for. I strongly suggest downloading it and giving it a try if you own a cellphone. That is all for this week, Daniels, hope I see you in studio on Monday for Colouring & Jigsaw Puzzles during the day, and it’s Board Games Night starting at 7! Keep it classy out there.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/revealing-facts-about-calories-menus
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/basics-base/1_1_1-eng.php