CNRC Healthy Me Energy

Energy expenditure is the amount of energy your body uses to carry out physical functions. It is affected by your body size and composition, by food intake and by physical activity. Review the Activity Sliders below and adjust those to see how your activities affect the energy your body uses each day. Make sure to submit the form values first to get meaningful results.

What does this mean?

Activity: The amount of time you spend doing different activities affects the Calories your body burns (uses) each day.

Sleep: Your body burns Calories during sleep. Getting the proper amount of sleep each day helps you maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Sedentary Behavior: Your body burns far fewer Calories per minute then during active times. Aim for less than four sedentary hours per day sitting or lying down.
Light Activity: Try to spend more time in these activities than being sedentary. Walk or play rather than sit and watch electronics.
Moderate Activity: The best way to keep your body physically fit is to do moderate activity. Aim for sixty minutes a day of walking or practicing in sports. One hour of walking burns 3 to 6 times more Calories than sitting.
Vigorous Activity: These activities help increase your fitness level. Along with Moderate Activity aim for more than 60 minutes every day. One hour of jogging or playing active sports burns 7 to 15 times more Calories than sitting.   Learn More

What is a Calorie?

What's next?

Now that you see how much energy your body uses each day, learn how to balance your energy use with energy intake.

Explore the Meals section to see how eating patterns can affect your energy balance.

CNRC Healthy Me Meal Balance

Identify portion sizes that best describe the amount of food you eat each day to see how close you are to Energy Balance . Try to balance the amount of Calories you burn (ENERGY OUT) with the amount of food you eat (ENERGY IN) for a balance meter reading near zero.

What you eat and drink is ENERGY IN. What you burn through physical activity is ENERGY OUT.
  (Balance = ENERGY IN − ENERGY OUT)
Your ENERGY IN and OUT don't have to balance every day, but having a balance over time will help you maintain a consistent healthy weight.
Children need to balance their energy too, but they’re also growing and that should be considered as well. Energy balance in children happens when the amounts of ENERGY IN and ENERGY OUT support natural growth without promoting excess weight gain.

Energy Balance

Portion Picker

Pick the box that best describes each meal size.

Healthy Stuff

How many servings do you eat daily?  

Tips and Insights

The USDA recommends eating five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

There are significant health benefits to getting at least 5 servings of a variety of fruit and vegetables every day.
Fruits and vegetables are a good source of vitamins and minerals.
They are also an excellent source of dietary fiber, which can help prevent digestion problems.
Fruits and vegetables can help lower your risk of heart disease, stroke and some types of cancer.
A healthy, balanced diet includes fruits and vegetables.    Learn More

If your balance was +200 Calories every day for a month you could gain over one pound of excess fat.
The opposite is also true. If your balance was -200 Calories every day for a month you could lose over one pound of excess fat.

More detailed explanation here.   Learn More

If you have a high ENERGY IN day, try to balance it the next day with smaller meals.

Overeating occasionally, like on holidays, shouldn't affect your overall weight.   Learn More

Avoid empty Calories such as soda drinks, sport drinks, and fruit drinks.
Avoid excess snacking, especially Calorie-dense snacks (like candy bars). Eat simple fruits and vegetables for snacks.

Learn healthy eating habits to maintain a healthy weight.   Learn More

The Portion Picker works with recommended calorie targets for different age groups. Children below age 5 generally eat smaller meals and snack more often. You may need to make sure to include snacks for these young children in order to balance the gauge.

What's next?

Now that you've seen how you may balance your energy intake and output, learn about fitness.

Explore the Fitness section to see how activities combine to estimate your fitness level.

CNRC Healthy Me Aerobic Fitness

Your estimated aerobic fitness level is based on your age, sex, body composition, and on how much activity and exercise you do each week. Your aerobic fitness level indicates the overall health of your heart, lungs, and blood vessels.

Fitness Estimate

Activities

Use the sliders below to indicate how much play, sports, and exercise you have done each week over the last month. Make sure to submit the form values first to get meaningful results.

Play, Sport, and Exercise are three activities that help increase your aerobic fitness. How often (Frequency), how hard (Intensity), and how long (Time) you do each activity affects your estimated FITness. Both Sport and Exercise supersede Play in boosting FITness, especially at higher intensities. Age and percent body fat also affect your maximum FITness level, so there are circumstances where raising activity levels may not show an increase on the meter.

Tips and Insights

Aerobic exercise is important. It helps keep your heart, lungs, and blood vessels healthy. It can also help you keep or get to a healthy weight. To improve your fitness level increase your amount of time and intensity during sports and exercise.

What does this mean?

Generally, fitness is assessed in four key areas: 1) aerobic fitness 2) muscular strength and endurance 3) flexibility, and 4) body composition.

Three kinds of fitness:

Aerobic fitness: Aerobic activities condition your heart and lungs. Aerobic means "with oxygen". The purpose of aerobic conditioning is to increase the amount of oxygen that is delivered to your muscles, which allows them to work longer. Any activity that raises your heart rate and keeps it up for an extended period of time will improve your aerobic conditioning.

Muscle strengthening: Stronger muscles can mean either more powerful muscles that can do bigger jobs (like lifting heavier weights) or muscles that will work longer before becoming exhausted (endurance). Weight training (resistance training) or simple exercises such as push-ups are two examples that target muscle strengthening.

Flexibility: Like aerobic fitness and muscle strengthening, flexibility is a result of physical activity. Flexibility comes from stretching. Your muscles are repeatedly shortened when they are used, especially when exercising. They need to be slowly and regularly stretched to counteract the repeated shortening that happens through other activities.
Learn More