Looking Good (for a mom)

When you have a hectic schedule like I do, with a full-time job, two kids (and their activities), and a husband, trying to keep up with an exercise program and plan meals can be difficult to manage. The one thing that always seems to be sacrificed for me is sleep. I’ve been recently reading about the importance of sleep and its effects on weight loss, muscle building, and health... Read More

Last week I talked about how much red meat is too much, and I promised I’d track my meat intake over the course of the week. So now it’s time to share the results. I had a grass-fed steak (Delmonico cut) one day, and a cup of chili another day. I estimate that I hit just about 1.5 servings, maybe just a bit more. It was good to be mindful of my red meat intake, and substitute in chicken or fish (or beans) when I could... Read More

Continuing my one-year lookback, I thought I’d take a moment to share some of the ways my body has physically changed over the past year. Now, I don’t have baseline measurements for everything, and that’s because when I started my journey I didn’t have any idea that this was going to be a life-changing experience. I figured I’d drop a few pounds, look better, and that would be that... Read More

Many women (and even some men) that I know have figured out how to lose weight by eating healthy. They might be using Weight Watchers, or a program like Jenny Craig, or maybe they’re just being successful counting calories. But once they lose the weight, then the really difficult part starts: How do they keep it from coming back?.. Read More

Using USDA values for the whole foods, and the package information for the cottage cheese, this meal should be 349 calories, with 24g of protein, 11g of fat, and 42g of carbs.

• Half a mango, sliced – I thought this was one serving of 165g, but it was actually a whopping 250g! I suppose a typical mango is much smaller than the ones I bought at the store.
• 6 blackberries – These fit in a 1/4 cup, but by weight were 1/3 of a (one cup) serving
• 3/4 C lowfat no salt added cottage cheese – 3/4 Cup should equal about 170g. However, depending on how I pack the measuring cup, I found I could put up to 200g in the measuring cup. That’s another 25% of a serving.
• 7 walnuts – My walnuts must be larger than normal, because it turns out I had half an ounce at only 6 walnuts

So, by using USDA reference statistics (such as 14 walnuts to a serving) and measuring cups, I ended up with a breakfast that was 100 calories (nearly 30%) higher than I thought – and that was with doing careful measuring and tracking of what I was eating! Once I weighed my food, I realized that the portion sizes I thought were accurate were actually far from it. Why did I try weighing my food to begin with? I did so after watching this video:

Can you imagine what would happen if you underestimated your calories by 30% at EVERY meal? Let’s say you needed 2000 calories a day to maintain your current weight, and you thought you were eating 1500 calories per day – a deficit of 500 calories per day. However, if you underestimated your calories by 30%, you’d actually be eating 1950 calories per day. You could do this for weeks and you wouldn’t lose any weight at all, getting more and more frustrated as each day went on.