I was having a conversation with a good friend recently who was asking my advice.  She’s radically improved her diet, has started exercising frequently, but is not seeing all the results she wants.  Her energy and sleep have improved significantly, (which is amazing!!!), but she’s not seen the full weight-loss results she wanted to see.

Naturally, I started quizzing her about what she eats throughout the day, and was very impressed at her lemon water, morning smoothie, and high protein afternoon snack. Everything seemed good!  When I dug a bit further, we got into portion sizes; while I am NOT a calorie counter or a portion controller for the most part, it seemed as though that might be the culprit.  For example, a handful of nuts is a great snack—but a handful of nuts 2-3x a day adds up (along with everything else).

So my recommendation to her was to be a bit more in tune with the quantity of food she was consuming. Here are two ways to do that:

1) A Food Journal – For those who like to write things out,  keep a little sheet of paper with you in your purse/wallet to track what you eat.  This isn’t something I’m going to say you should do forever, but do it for a week or so (including a weekend), just to get a feel for the quantities you are consuming…I think you’d be surprised how the mindless nibbling or the drink here and there adds up.

 

2) My Fitness Pal – For those who are more Smartphone savvy, I highly recommend downloading the free app called “My Fitness Pal”.  It is SUPER easy to track what you’ve eaten, and has almost every food that you can buy in the grocery store already programmed in.  And actually, you can track it online without a smartphone too by clicking here.