The Calories You Save Today Will Be The Weight You Lose Tomorrow!

All it takes is saving 250 calories a day to lose half a pound a week. While that may sound like a measly amount, it means by New Year's Eve you could be six pounds lighter! That's a dress size for some women, and certainly enough to make anyone's snug trousers fit more comfortably. You don't need to go on a diet or start jogging every morning for this to happen. Just start paying attention to those high-calorie items and either skip them or replace them with something less fattening.

Here are six times during the day you can save yourself up to 250 calories:

- Your morning coffee drink. Coffee has about 2 calories. What you put in it could have a lot more. Some non-dairy creamer labels state a serving at 12 calories, but a serving size is a teaspoon! If you use 2 ounces (that's 12 teaspoons) your coffee has 150 calories! And that's just your first cup... If you have a name-brand coffee drink that has whole milk and flavored syrup you could be downing 260 calories without even having a bite of breakfast.

Consider opting for a smaller size, or using skim milk instead of whole milk, cream, or non-dairy creamers.

- Your lunchtime soda. The typical 20 oz plastic bottle of soda has 200 calories. Not what you recall reading on the label? Check again--there are 2.4 servings in one of them! When's the last time you shared one of these?

Try substituting with water, unsweetened iced tea, or an occasional diet soda. Or share your calories with a friend :)

-Your fast food lunch. ALL of the fast food establishments post their nutritional content on the web. Check the calorie content of foods you like. A typical order at Burger King--a whopper and large fries--hands you 670 calories from the sandwich plus 500 from the fries (1170 calories total).

Now, just try having a whopper junior with small fries and you're down to a 370 calorie sandwich and 230 calories from the fries (that's 600 calories for lunch, saving you 570 calories). Most of the restaurants now have healthy side alternatives such as applesauce at burger king or apple slices at McDonalds.... just ask!

Your afternoon candy bar. Looking for a quick source of energy when you start dragging after lunch? How much does a candy bar really help? Most of them contain a high amount of fat, often from nuts in addition to the chocolate, and they can actually leave you with a sugar crash a short time later. A candy bar can have between 180 and 240 calories. That's a medium sized one. Now there are king sized candy bars. They have more calories. Read the label.

Try fending off the drowsies with a glass of ice water, a short walk, or a 100-calorie snack bag. They make some great ones!

-A nice big, juicy steak for dinner. A prime cut of meat is prime partly because of the fatty marbling that makes it tender. The fat also contributes calories, so that each ounce of meat can have at least 75 calories. That means a 16 oz steak can have 1200 calories.

Cut it in half and save 600 calories. Also save having to buy lunch tomorrow when you eat the leftovers.

-Dessert. A relatively small slice of pecan pie can have over 400 calories; other pies without nuts have slightly fewer; a serving of cheesecake over 250 calories; Chocolate cake, 240 calories.

Try 1/2 cup sherbet for 100 calories, or some of the 'light' ice cream novelties that have less than 150 calories (Skinny Cow makes great fudge bars as well as ice cream sandwiches)!

Start reading labels or going online to find out how many calories are in foods you typically eat... you can usually find a substitute you like just as well (poached salmon instead of steak? Grilled chicken instead of a whopper?) and save a few hundred calories a day. You'll be losing weight in no time without having to go on the latest fad diet!

Help for the Dinner-challenged is HERE

INTRODUCING: THE VIRTUAL DINNER COACH (available in download or hard copy)
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Shopping List Guide

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Comments from Moms who have previewed the VIRTUAL DINNER COACH

"The dinner coach has some great tips for busy Moms and novice cooks on using shortcuts currently available in the markets, plus easy, family-pleasing recipes."

(I'll keep posting comments here as they come in!)

Think Before You Drink

You may be spending a lot of time watching what you eat, but how much attention do you pay to what you are drinking? Beverages can be adding hundreds of calories a day to your intake and preventing you from losing the weight you would like to lose.

The average soft drink provides about 10 calories per ounce. This means 80 calories for eight ounces of soda, punch, juice (yes, even fruit juice that provides nutrition also provides calories!), milk (actually this is for skim milk--whole milk provides nearly double!), and even more for alcoholic beverages.
Keep in mind these number are for eight ounce servings, which people rarely consume nowadays: a can of soda contains 12 ounces (that's 120 calories), a bottle of beer 12 ounces (providing about 150 calories unless it is a light beer), and the plastic bottles of soda now contain 20 ounces--which bring the calorie content to a whopping 240! Yes, the label may tell you there are 80 calories per serving, but be sure to check what a serving size is equal to, and how many servings there are per container.

Other high-calorie beverages include sweet tea, which may have in excess of 200 calories per eight-ounce serving depending on how sweet it is; egg nog at 340 calories per eight-ounce serving, and a Starbucks Latte (16 oz) at 272 calories. If you order your latte with skim milk (and no whipped cream) that will bring it down to 220 calories.

Check out the measurement of the glasses you use in your home. Use an eight-ounce measuring cup and fill your favorite glass with water to see what eight ounces looks like. You may be pouring yourself a whole lot of extra calories by filling your glass with milk, juice, or a sweetened beverage. Many glasses hold 20 ounces and the calories add up quickly!

What are some lower calorie alternatives? Water, of course, has no calories and may be flavored with lemon or a flavored tea bag steeped for a few minutes. Diet soda has zero calories, but there can be draw backs to drinking excessive amounts. Tomato juice has only 41 calories per cup, and vegetable juice (like V-8) 46 calories per cup. Coffee and tea have less than two calories per cup and can be flavored with artificial sweeteners. However, if you add non-dairy creamers--even sugar free-take note of the serving size (in most cases one teaspoon) and see how fast the calories can again add up!

To prevent gaining weight (or to help with weight loss) keep a few rules of thumb in mind:
1. 100 extra calories per day may cause near a pound weight gain each month, so rethinking your beverage choices and take note of serving sizes.
2. Milk and juice are great sources of many vitamins and minerals but the "serving size" recommended is often 8 ounces or less. Even though they are 'good for you' the calories can turn into 'too much of a good thing' when you drink large servings.
3. Many containers of sodas, sweetened teas, and coffee drinks contain more than one serving. If the calories per serving seems reasonable, be sure to check how many servings are in the container before you drink the whole thing.
4. Even gatorade and other sports drinks are sweetened and contain nearly 10 calories per ounce. No free ride here!
5. Restaurants that serve 'sweetened tea' give you no control over the calorie content; ask for unsweetened and add your own sweetener (there are about 20 calories in a pack of sugar, so use accordingly!)

Bottom line: start paying attention to beverage labels the same way you do food labels. Check out the calorie content and what their serving size is equal to. You might just find this to be the secret to your own weight loss success!

How Fast Can I Lose Weight?

How do they lose over ten pounds in one week on these extreme weight loss shows? The answer is, extreme measures. Not only is it easier to lose weight quickly when you weigh over 250 pounds, as most of these participants do, but it's easier to cut calories when you usually eat over 3000 calories a day, which most of them do as well. If you are not 100 pounds overweight, you should expect to lose quite a bit more slowly.

The other end of the equation that helps these people lose so quickly is the amount of activity in which they are participating each day. You see them working with their personal trainers, but did you know they are exercising for up to six hours each day? All they do on this "campus" is eat a light breakfast, then go out and exercise for three hours; eat a light lunch and go to the gym for another three hours. They get a light dinner before having to video tape their thoughts for the day and then collapse into bed! So unless you are planning on an exercise program that includes several hours of activity each day, along with a lower calorie meal plan, you should not expect to lose weight in the double digits.

So what is reasonable? If you can eat 500 fewer calories each day than you normall eat (or exercise to burn 500 more calories than you normally burn each day) you can expect to lose one pound a week. It may be easier to eliminate 500 calories a day from your intake than it will be to work this much off at the gym: It takes about an hour of intense activity for most people to burn this number of calories. It's more likely you can take a look at the labels on a few of the snacks or desserts you eat and find 500 calories to take away from your diet fairly easily.

Here are some typical examples of food portions that provide 500 calories: A slice of pecan pie; a cup of haagen daz ice cream; a 'big grab' bag of doritos chips; a large (or in some cases 'medium') order of fries; four reese's peanut butter cups. A Hardee's thickburger, among many other fast food restaurant sandwiches, provides over 800 calories! So there are plenty of ways to either eliminate these extremely high calorie snacks and desserts, or find much lower calorie selections to replace them.

If your goal is to lose a pound each week you should take note of foods like these in your diet and plan for ways to substitute them with items that are lower in calories. Perhaps while you're at it you will even find some foods that will provide you with more vitamins, minerals, and fiber as well (such as choosing fruits, vegetables, string cheese, yogurt, or a bowl of cereal when the afternoon or evening hungries hit).

If you have a relatively small amount of weight to lose (say, less than 35 pounds) and do not find that you are including very high calorie foods in your diet each day, you may find that you need to watch what you are eating more closely and plan to lose weight more slowly. The current recommendation for healthy weight loss is 10% of your body weight over the next six months. This means if you weigh 180 pounds, for example, you should aim to lose 18 pounds in six months, or approximately three pounds a month. I know this sounds terribly slow, but the plan is you will not be dieting and restricting and suffering to get there. And from there you will continue to lose weight because you have developed healthy new eating habits. Take a look at this equation:

Fast and Temporary = Deprived and Miserable

Now, think about how many times have you gone on a diet, deprived yourself, lost a few pounds, and then gained it back. You know now that way doesn't work! This time do it differently. Make small changes, include more nutritious foods in your diet, pare down the high calorie 'junk' foods (like cakes, candy and cookies, for starters), and learn some new habits! Six months from now you can be thankful and keep heading on your way down to your ideal weight!

Let Me Count the Weighs

Weighing yourself on your bathroom scale every morning isn't the only indicator of how you are coming along on your quest for achieving and maintaining your ideal body weight. There are other ways you can measure your progress, and a few things to keep in mind that the scale doesn't tell you. Here's a list of things to know when you are tracking your weight loss:

1. The scale does not tell you that your weight includes the two glasses of water you just drank (which actually weigh exactly one pound). Try to weigh yourself at the same time every day: for instance, first thing in the morning.
2. The scale does not remind you that you were naked yesterday when you weighed yourself and this morning you are wearing flannel pajamas which weigh exactly 1.5 pounds. Remember to wear the same type of clothing each time you weigh yourself.
3. A typical bathroom scale does not differentiate between water weight, fat weight, and muscle weight. How are you to know when you are a few pounds down that you are not just dehydrated? If you are a few pounds up that it might be water retention because you had a high sodium meal of chinese food yesterday evening? The answer ... a special scale that measures your body composition. There are several brands and types of these scales. See the website of a company called Tanita for one brand of scale and an explanation of how this works. No more guessing about whether you've put on muscle or fat!
4. BMI is another measurement that shows you how close you are moving to a healthy weight. Go here to calculate what yours is, and see how close you are to a healthy weight. A great goal is to move out of the 'obese' and into the 'overweight' numbers, or out of the 'overweight' range and into the 'healthy' range. This gives you an idea of how realistic your weight goal is and how meaningful it can be.
5. Waist circumference is another way to assess your progress towards a healthy body weight. Current recommendations from national health organizations determine at what waist measurement men and women suffer from increased risk of chronic diseases.
Go here for information on waist circumference

Using more than one measurement can give you a better view of how you are doing when you feel like things aren't moving quickly enough. Keep in mind that every week you are moving toward a healthier you. Keep heading in the right direction and don't worry so much about how long it takes. As long as you are eating better this week than last week, better this month than last month, you are successful!

Questions About Sodium

I hear so many misstatements about sodium, including its relationship to weight gain, I'm taking the time to address the facts to clear some of the confusion. One of the first things to understand is the amount of sodium humans need on a daily basis, and then what the recommended limitations are. Once you have an idea of what the numbers mean you can make sensible decisions based on the facts you are reading on the food labels.

First of all, sodium is an essential element in the diet. We have sodium in our body and it must be kept within a specific concentration in our bloodstream for normal body functions. So we definitely need it. In fact, if a person were to try completely eliminating sodium from their diet, the consequences could be quite harmful--even fatal!

That said, the minimum recommended sodium intake is about 500 milligrams. Milligrams are the units found on food labels in regard to sodium so it's easy to find how much sodium is contained in any food with a label. Once you start reading labels you'll find that canned and processed foods do contain quite a bit of sodium. However, foods many people talk about being high in sodium (like soda, for instance, which somehow got a terrible reputation for being high in sodium and terrible for causing fluid retention) are not. Soda averages 25-50 milligrams of sodium--NOT a high source! Bread averages 120 milligrams of sodium. Baked goods will all have at least 100 milligrams of sodium because salt and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) are used to make them. Again, not a number to worry about. Why?

Because the recommendations for sodium intake are to limit this mineral to 2400 milligrams per day. Two-thousand, four hundred milligrams each day. Now you can see that a food with 100 or 200 milligrams is not very high in sodium, even though we think of 100 as a high number. In this case, it's not!
Anyone with normal and healthy kidneys, normal blood pressure, and a good daily intake of fluid will be able to flush out all the excess sodium ingested during the day. Eating a hot dog one day is not a likely cause of any fluid imbalance or organ damage in a healthy individual--you usually find yourself more thirsty later on and naturally drink more water to help eliminate the extra sodium.

The problem is, the average sodium intake of most Americans is near 4000 milligrams of sodium daily, and some take in amounts near 10,000 milligrams each day. Over time, consuming large amounts of sodium can contribute to elevated blood pressure in some people. This, surprisingly, is rarely from people salting their food. A teaspoon of salt (the main source of sodium) contains 2000 milligrams of sodium. If you were to measure a teaspoon of salt into a shaker and use that to salt your food during the day, the average person probably wouldn't use most of it.

Then where does most of our dietary sodium come from? Start checking the labels on your canned food and frozen foods; start looking up the sodium content from fast food restaurants (frightening!); check out sodium content in processed foods such as lunchmeat (bologna, hot dogs), corned beef, pickles, and olives. Here is where you will find single servings that are providing 500 milligrams of sodium, 1000 milligrams of sodium and even more! One trip to a fast food restaurant can easily put you up to the recommended 2400 milligrams before you include anything else you eat all day! Look at a can of soup, a diet frozen dinner entree, a pizza. This is where Americans are getting their excess amounts of sodium.

It's not a bad idea to watch your sodium intake, and it is certainly a great idea to read labels. But both these efforts are wasted if you don't know what you're looking for or what the numbers mean. Stop worrying about the 40 milligrams of sodium in a diet orange soda when you're having it with a corn dog that contains over 900 milligrams of sodium. Stop worrying about the 240 milligrams of sodium in your high fiber breakfast cereal when you're consuming 800 milligrams in a can of soup for lunch! Don't even think of giving up your morning glass of milk because it contains 120 milligrams of sodium... especially when you pour diet Italian dressing on your salad at dinner to the tune of 470 milligrams of sodium! What about spaghetti sauce you use from a jar? Check it out--one half cup contains over 800 milligrams of sodium!

My point here is not to worry you about the amount of sodium you take in. My point is that a healthy, low calorie food that provides a concentrated source of nutrition should not be avoided because it contains a few hundred milligrams of sodium (like milk or cereal). Especially by someone who is going to have thousands of milligrams of sodium later that day in a sandwich of lunchmeat (which is also high in fat) or a chinese buffet (during which they are likely to consume far more calories than they need as well).

Finally, sodium does not contribute to or cause weight gain. If you eat a high sodium meal you will retain fluid weight until you have consumed enough extra water to flush out the extra sodium (yes, drinking more water will help flush out the sodium faster). So, yes, the scale will reflect a higher body weight for a number of hours. This has nothing to do with how much fat you are carrying, which is presumably what we want to lose when we want to lose weight! Your sodium intake has no effect on your body fat content, or on how difficult it is to lose fat weight.

For now, keep reading those labels, but first know what the numbers mean! Don't ignore the highest sodium foods with a low nutritional content (like a fast food breakfast sandwich with sausage or bacon and 820 milligrams of sodium) and then turn around and avoid a healthy choice (like low fat cheese) because it has 200 milligrams of sodium!

Color Your Thinking

One major reason people go 'off their diet' is a consequence of black and white thinking. We set ourselves up with the unrealistic goal "to eat perfectly forever," and as soon as we depart from the ideal, we feel like we failed. So we stop. We stop trying to eat healthy because once again we are telling ourselves, "I can't do it. I tried again, and I failed again. I'm just destined to be overweight forever," and so on and so on.
You end up telling yourself you failed again, when all you did was eat something that wasn't the very best choice. It's not the end of the world! You don't have to wait until Monday to 'start again'. You can start this very minute. "From this moment on," you can reassure yourself, "I will continue to make healthy choices for the rest of the day". Not for the rest of your life, just today.
Give yourself goals that are doable and you'll be more likely to succeed. Keep succeeding and you're more likely to feel successful. Feel successful and you'll keep making the best choices. What a colorful cycle you can start for yourself!

So, from now on, no black and white thinking; no "on" or "off" your diet; no "good" foods and "bad" foods. Only better choices more often! Start giving yourself positive reinforcement. Listen for the negative comments you tell yourself and challenge them right back with a positive one--or two! Instead of "I can't stop eating chips", you turn right back around and say to yourself, "I will be fine without the chips" and "I am making smarter choices about what I eat every day". When you hear yourself complaining, "I just can't lose any weight" remind yourself, "I am eating more healthy and the weight will come off" and "I am learning new and healthy habits and I feel better about myself--my body will be more fit as a result".

It may sound silly to try to talk yourself up at first, but give it a try and you will notice in a short time that you really can make yourself feel better. You really can be your own cheerleader! Live in a world of colorful thought and keep making better choices every day.