One key to maintaining a healthy weight is to balance the calories you eat with the calories you burn.  But that’s sometimes easier said than done.

Balancing your calories sounds deceptively simple.  Eat more calories than you burn and you’ll gain weight. Take in fewer calories than you burn and you’ll shed some pounds. Keep your “calories in” and “calories out” about the same, and your weight should stay pretty stable.  So why is it that hardly a week goes by that someone doesn’t complain to me that they’re “exercising like a madman, but not losing any weight” or, “eating like a bird but the scale won’t budge”?  It simply boils down to this: when it comes to counting calories accurately – the ones you eat and the one you spend – there are so many ways it can go wrong.

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Everywhere you go, it seems, there’s pressure to eat.  Here’s how to push back.

For most of us, the last thing we need is the pressure to eat more.  But it happens all the time.  A few years back, one of the fast food chains in the US began a push to add a whole extra meal to your day –  “the meal between dinner and breakfast”.  I do understand the desire for an occasional midnight snack – sometimes you eat dinner early, you stay up late and you get hungry. But once that midnight snack morphs into “the fourth meal”, it starts to sound more like an everyday need – which just makes it easier to justify why we cave into the pressure to eat it.

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January is all about resolutions and “turning over a new leaf”.  So all this month, we’re talking about the big nutritional benefits you can get from making just a few small changes.  Now let’s take a look at ways you can start to eat less without leaving your tummy grumbling.

We started with little adjustments you can make when you’re buying food, and in the last post I suggested some ways in which you could make changes in the way you prepare your foods to shave calories and make them healthier.  You might already be reaping some benefits if you’ve been trying to make these changes – and you may even be thinking that there isn’t a whole lot more tweaking you can do.  Maybe you haven’t given it much thought, but a little fine-tuning in the way your foods are served can also affect your food intake, too.

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A “meal deal” is no bargain if you’re just buying extra fat, sugar and calories.

There’s an old joke that goes something like this:  two women are having lunch in a restaurant they haven’t been to before.  As they’re finishing up their meal, one says to the other, “You know, the food here is really terrible!” To which her companion snaps back, “I’ll say!  And such small portions, too!”  It’s so true, isn’t it?  No matter what we’re buying, we’re always looking for a good value – even if it’s food that isn’t very good…or very good for you.

Getting more for your money is generally a good thing, and we’ve been conditioned to look for the best value in everything we buy – from laptops to laundry soap.  But if getting more for your money means getting more fat, more sugar and more calories, that can spell trouble for your waistline.

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You only need small amounts of fat to be healthy.

Years ago, I had a client who was truly ‘fat phobic’.  If she could detect any trace of fat in her food, she’d reject it.  She’d dissect a piece of roast chicken into tiny pieces, teasing out any specks of fat she could find between the muscle fibers, and she dressed her salads with straight lemon juice – never a drop of oil.  She did this primarily as a weight control strategy – she was a tiny woman and intended to stay that way – but she’d also heard that people need to eat fat.  So she was worried.  Was being this finicky about fat bad for her health? And – more importantly – did she really need fat in her diet at all?

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The old saying that “men are from Mars and women are from Venus” seems to apply when it comes to nutrition. So, men: don’t let body fat be your downfall – this is the diet makeover you need.

While women tend to fret about their weight and pore over food labels, men often have a more relaxed attitude when it comes to their diets.  Maybe it’s because most guys burn through calories a lot faster than women that they figure they can get away with eating whatever they want without gaining weight.  The male assumption seems to be that as long as their weight is in check, they really don’t have to give much thought to what they put in their mouths.

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The foods you eat first at a meal can affect how many calories you eat overall.

Picture this: it’s lunchtime, and you’re really, really hungry.  You woke up late, you skipped breakfast, and you’ve been going all morning without a chance to grab a snack.  It’s finally time to eat, and you’re facing a buffet – some starchy foods, some proteins, and some veggies.  You load up your plate, sit down, and raise your fork – anxious to dig in.  Now, imagine what happens next, as you stare down at your meat, your starch and your vegetables.  Which food do you dive into first?

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Here are some reasons why you might eat when you’re not hungry – and what you can do about it.

You’re not hungry but you eat anyway:

Life and calorie control would be a whole lot easier if we only ate when we were truly hungry.  Then it would simply be a biological drive that needed to be satisfied – like downing a glass of water when your throat is parched. It’s the rare person who doesn’t eat for reasons other than hunger – most of us find ourselves doing it from time to time.  Read more »

Calories.  We count them. We curse them.

And ask the average person to define ‘calorie’ and you’ll usually hear something like, ‘they’re things in food that if you eat too much of them, you’ll get fat’.   Even though we think of them this way, calories aren’t really ‘things’ in food – you can’t see them, touch them, pick them out or push them to the side of your plate.  Calories are actually a measure of the energy in your food, and no matter what activity your body is performing – whether it’s pumping blood or pumping iron -  it needs energy – in the form of calories – to make it happen.

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We’re not always aware of everything we eat, and those extra calories can really add up.

I’ll never forget a client I had years ago. He brought in a ‘perfect’ food diary. He followed his meal plan to the letter, and every calorie (or so he thought) was accounted for. But his weight just wasn’t moving the way he’d hoped. As we talked, I noticed that he kept popping breath mints in his mouth. When he started unwrapping his second roll of mints, I just had to ask –exactly how many mints was he eating every day? “These little things? – I don’t know… maybe 5 or 6 rolls.” Who knew that “those little things” added up to more than 300 extra calories a day? Read more »

Even though I’m a dietitian, my clients frequently ask me about exercise as part of their weight loss plan.

Since managing weight effectively depends on calorie balance, it makes sense that we talk about not only diet (calories in), but exercise (calories out), too.  Most simply want to know how much…or, sometimes, how little…exercise they need to do in order to lose weight, or to keep off weight that they’ve already lost. So here are some of the key things I tell them about exercise and body weight: Read more »

We eat more oatmeal now than at any other time of the year (January is actually National Oatmeal Month) – maybe that’s why it looks like it’s popping up on menus all over the place.  Lately, it seems as if nearly every coffee place and fast food joint is jumping on the oatmeal bandwagon.  And why not?  It’s quick to make, it’s tasty, it’s comforting and it’s inexpensive. And, since it’s viewed as a health food, it’s a pretty easy sell.  But in looking at the nutritional value of some of these new products, oatmeal’s health halo is getting a tad tarnished.

Oatmeal’s reputation as a healthy food got a big boost about 20 years ago, when studies began demonstrating that oats (specifically, the bran) could help lower cholesterol levels.  In response, food manufacturers began trotting out oat bran-laden garlic bread and brownies, and oat bran-dusted potato chips and donuts.

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Generally, this isn’t the time of year that most people are watching their weight – because if they were, they’d probably be watching it go up. But you’d be surprised. It’s not unusual for people to call me in a panic mid-December – realizing they’ve got a big New Year’s eve event coming up – and wondering what they can realistically accomplish in a couple of weeks. Of course, this comes up at other times of the year, too. An upcoming wedding, a cruise or a graduation – all can spark the question: How much can I lose in a couple of weeks?

Let me start by saying that there’s no simple answer that applies to everyone. For one thing, a lot depends on a person’s starting weight. The larger a person is, the more calories it takes for them to maintain their weight. So heavier people can cut their usual calorie intake back quite a bit, and will usually lose more weight in two weeks than a smaller person will.

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Yes, you can pack on five pounds between now and January – and it’s easier than you might think. Most people only add a pound or two over the holidays, but when you look at what a few extra indulgences can cost you, the calories add up fast. To gain five pounds, you’ll need to take in an extra 17,500 calories or so between now and January Here’s how to get the job done.

First, turn the clock back a couple of weeks – to October 31. The average Halloween bucket holds about 250 pieces of candy at about 35 calories each. If you’re like most people, you bought too much – so you’ve been putting away a couple of pieces a day for the last two weeks. That’s given you a 1000 calorie head start.

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Sometimes when I talk with people who struggle with their weight, they’ll tell me that the reason they can’t lose weight is because they eat too much at night – “I eat,” they’ll say, “and then I just sit around and I don’t burn it off – that’s my problem”. While intuitively this might make sense, it doesn’t really work this way. Taking in too many calories – at any time of the day – is going to lead to weight gain.

The body just doesn’t micromanage calories that carefully. And here’s why: we evolved under conditions of food scarcity – in order to survive, we had to be able to store extra calories if we overate – whenever that might be – and then be able to call them up when we needed them. Our ancestors foraged for food all day long, and they needed to store (or use) all the calories they could get – whether they were eaten at dawn or around the fire at night.

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