"Little pickers, big knickers", "A moment on the lips, a life time on the hips"
I think that I generally eat well, but these last few weeks I have been paying a bit more attention and its amazing how much I nibble and eat during the day! Making breakfast - picking cereal out of the kids bowls, finishing up their leftovers, having a bit of this and that, eating the ingredients as I make dinner - the list goes on!
Sometimes we only think about the main meals and forget (or block out in my case) the other stuff. I think that knowledge is very important when dieting. You need to understand what food you are eating and what nutrients it contains. I also think it is important to understand what your own body needs. For example, the average recommended calorie intake for a woman is 2000 calories. If I ate 2000 calories per day I would gain weight. I recognise that I need to make sure I am knowledgeable about everything I eat so I have re-installed MyFitnessPal, the app that lets you track the food you eat. I find it really useful to see exactly what I am eating and how much it adds up to! I have set my current weight and my weight loss target on the app and it tells me how many calories I should eat a day. I have linked my Garmin account to MyFitnessPal so any calories earned from exercise, steps, etc, which is picked up on my watch, is transferred over. Knowing that remaining calories for the day will go up It's a great motivator to get you exercising.
Also I like the approach MyFitnessPal has taken, if you try to submit a complete diary for the day and you haven't eaten the recommended calories, including those earned for exercise, MyFitnessPal warns you that you haven't eaten enough. It advises on safe weight loss, it wont post your day to the news feed and it wont show you a five-week projection.
I think this is a really positive and important message.
MyFitnessPal lets you create a community to provide even more motivation. Friends can comment on items posted on your news feed - offering support and encouragement and it also offer projections, so when you are eating well it will advise you what you should achieve if you keep up the same intake of food.
I am obviously using it for weight loss but it can also be used for weight gain, to support a consistent steady gain to a target weight.
Do you use MyFitnessPal?
