Tips for Weighing In

When I started a few weeks ago, I had to guess my weight. We didn't have a scale as our last one had broken and I hadn't been able to find one that went high enough.

I am not sure exactly what my starting weight was, but I am guessing it to be right around 450 pounds, or 205 kg.

Just over a week into my new lifestyle my hubby found a scale that goes to 440 pounds on Best Buy so he ordered it for me. I was ecstatic and terrified when it arrived - ecstatic that I would finally be able to track my weight, but filled with trepidation that I might have been off on my starting weight and would still be too heavy for the scale.

I was filled with great relief when I stepped on the scale and got a reading of 193.4 kg.  That weight was after twelve days of Atkins.

I have since weighed twice more. My weight after three weeks is 186.4 kg. Still nasty, but I am moving the right direction. I also had the delight this week of having my BMI (body mass index) fall below 60.

Here are my tips for weighing in:
1) Always weigh the same time of day. It doesn't matter whether you choose morning or night but your weight changes over the course of a day so keeping your weigh time consistent helps you get a more accurate picture of what your weight is doing.
2) Weigh once a week. It is tempting to hop on the scale more often but small fluctuations in weight are normal, and we are more likely to end up playing mind games with ourselves.
3) Dress in the same type of clothing each time, or better yet, your birthday suit.
4) Weigh twice. I find this helpful as some scales can be really finicky, and if you don't stand on it properly, they can give a wrong weight. If I get two rather different weights, I step on the scale again.
5) If you use a manual scale, make sure it is set to zero before you climb on. You don't want to be adding pounds because your kids played with the scale!
6) If you are buying a new scale, I recommend digital. Digital scales make it easier to see small losses, something that gets to be very important when you hit plateaus or are close to your goal weight.
7) Track your weight on a graph. When the weight loss seems slow, that slow downward trend can add extra encouragement.

Have a great week and happy weighing!

How to Choose the Right Tools for Your Meals

Every job we do is easier if we have the right tools. When I started doing Atkins I was very diligent in my menu planning to make sure that I was going to be able to keep within my carb limit. However, menu planning is only the first step. Next, we must actually eat our food, and often we have very misguided ideas of what a portion really is.

I have found several handy tools that really help me make a difference:

1) Measuring cups and spoons - these sound boring, I know, but they are very effective in letting us see what a cup of lettuce or a tablespoon of dressing REALLY looks like, not just what I think it looks like.

2) Kitchen scale - I have found this to be an awesome help for those foods that are either hard to measure by size, or that it's hard to find the carb count listed by cups. I love my Starfrit Electronic Kitchen Scale, but any good scale will do. The features I found most important to have include:

a) digital display - much easier to get an accurate reading that scales with a needle

b) zero button - this button lets me put a plate or bowl on top to keep my scale clean and then reset the scale to zero so I can start weighing; it also lets me measure one ingredient then add another without having to empty my bowl between ingredients

c) ability to switch units - if you find carb counts for one thing in ounces and another in grams, it's nice not to have to do the math in your head

d) reasonably high total weigh ability - my scale holds 5 kg; I used to have one that only held 1 lb. and I remember I was forever maxing it out. What a pain!

3) The final tool I am sharing today is an app I found called Carb Diet. This great little app keeps track of my carbs, protein, fat, water, exercise, and weight. It also has a database of thousands of food items and hundreds of restaurants, plus it allows me to customize entries for other foods I buy and for recipes I make. This app has made keeping track of my food intake SO easy!

What tools have helped make your menu planning and food tracking easier?