1. Read Labels
2. Following Serving Sizes
3. Measure
4. Write It Down
5. Stop When Satisfied
Labels are there for a reason! It will tell you the calories you are about to ingest, how much sugar there is, protein, and ingredient lists. This helped me to make better decisions. When you read the ingredients list they are put in order of highest amount to lowest. So if sugar is listed first, that means there is more sugar in that food item than anything else. Always make sure the "good for you" stuff is listed first.
Follow the serving sizes! On the food label not only does it list the nutrient information, but it gives you a suggested serving size. Now, some serving sizes may seem reasonable and others might seem ridiculous. Examples... Peanut Butter is usually listed as two tablespoons for one serving. However I only use one tablespoon for a sandwich. The serving size for ice-cream is 1/2 of a cup. Who only eats half a cup of ice-cream?! No one I have ever met. Except for my daughter who is extremely young. So I feel free to have two of the recommended servings.
A key to following serving sizes is to measure your food! I have a drawer devoted to my measuring cups and spoons. I don't have a food scale, but would love to invest in one. The only way to make sure you exactly know what is going into your body is to measure! It can be time consuming and you can look like a dork. But your eyes can deceive you. I've learned that what I think is 1/2 a cup... is not half a cup. It is more like 3/4. And when counting calories, it ends up being a lot extra!
Write it down! If you are using a food app this is where to do it. I mentioned in the last post that I use MyFitnessPal. This app makes adjusting how much you have eaten really easy! It does all of the math for you! So if you eat 3/4 of a serving, you write down 3/4 and the calories will be adjusted accordingly! It is beautiful! Writing down what you eat can also help you curb your eating throughout the day. Once I started seeing that I had eaten 5 Oreos a day... Well it helped me to cut down.
My last tip is to stop eating when you are SATISFIED. Not when your jeans feel like they don't fit, and not when you feel like you can't move. Not when you start to feel sick, and not when your plate is clean. Once you start to feel satisfied, put down the fork. You DO NOT have to clean your plate despite what you may have learned growing up. Eat until you are SATISFIED.
Watching your diet will help you get in shape faster than exercise alone. I have not stopped eating all of the junk food that I love. There is ice-cream in my freezer, there are Starbursts in my candy jar, and last week I indulged at Olive Garden. I knew that completely cutting out sweets would not help me at all. I eat them in moderation. Instead of having 5 cookies, I only eat one or two. I heard somewhere that the less you eat sweets, the less you crave them. That has held true for me! I haven't cut anything crazy from my diet. Some people will tell you to cut dairy, carbs, sugar, red meat, and so on and so forth. I can't handle crazy restrictions like gluten free, vegan, and whatever else is out there. Some people can. More power to you. But that's not for me.
I love this quote. This really expresses what I've tried to do with my eating habits. Little changes everyday. Life time changes. Changing my daily routine to fit into a healthy lifestyle that I can keep up. It's not about extreme changes that will be dropped in a few weeks. Permanent healthy lifestyle changes!
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