Your Ideal Form

Helping you on your journey to your best self!

Audrey D

Measuring vs Weighing Your Food

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MeasuringvsWeighingYour Food

Weight loss pretty much boils down to eating fewer calories than your body burns in a day. It’s not about just eating some random amount “less” than before, you have to eat below your TDEE. And in order to do that, you have to know how much you are eating. This is where tracking comes into play. The more exact you can be, the quicker you will see results.

The scale of food tracking, from best to worst:

  1. Weighing everything out
  2. Measuring with spoons and cups
  3. Eyeballing it and guessing how much
  4. Basic tracking where you just write down what was eaten, not how much
  5. Not logging anything at all

I’d like to make the case for weighing your food rather than measuring it imprecisely. However, if you have obsessive tendencies, and this will worsen that or trigger an eating disorder, please don’t.

Buy a kitchen scale and USE it

Having a kitchen scale will give you the most accurate picture of how much you are eating. Keep it out on the counter so it is easy to use. You won’t use it if you have to dig it out of a cupboard each time you need it. Get used to using that “tare” button that zeroes out the scale. Need to measure peanut butter for a sandwich? You don’t have to dirty a separate utensil. Just put the plate and bread on the scale, and hit the tare button. Now pick up the bread and spread on the peanut butter. (The scale should go negative) Once your bread is (peanut) buttered, place it back down on the plate, and record the amount. Now you can hit the tare button again, and add more ingredients.

Guessing just leads to frustration

There are countless articles and infographics out there about guesstimating how much food you are eating. Sometimes this is really useful; for example if you are eating at someone else’s house. (Most restaurants these days post their nutrition information online if not right on the menu, so you can just look up the numbers there) But often, these guesses aren’t very clear. How much is a “handful” exactly? Should I be able to completely close my hand around it, or is it as much as I can possibly grab without any more falling through my fingers? And whose hand? I have relatively small hands, does this mean I should grab more? Should someone with larger hands grab less? And what do you do when it tells you that a “serving” of meat is the size of your palm, but doesn’t tell you how many grams or ounces that is?

Weighing is most accurate

You don’t want to be inadvertently consuming more calories than you actually logged. This leads to slower progress, and frustration when the scale doesn’t reflect what you think it should. Certain foods can be difficult to measure. And measuring requires dirtying whatever implement you are using to measure in the first place. With weighing, you can just put things on the plate you are going to use anyway, and just use the tare button to zero out the scale between different items. Weighing also keeps you honest. You might grab a heaping spoonful of peanut butter, and mark it down as 1 teaspoon. Weighing will tell you exactly how many grams it is, regardless of whether that spoon was made by Oneida, Mikasa or IKEA.

Being honest and accurate with your logging is the fastest way to get results.

Time Keeps on Slipping, Slipping, Slipping

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Because the next few months will go by whether or not you work out. Make them count.

The next few months will go by no matter whether or not you workout. Those months will pass no matter whether or not you eat right. Where do you want to be in three months? Six months? A year? Do you want to be in the exact same place, feeling unhappy with your body? Or would you rather be more confident in your own skin?

Because the next few months will go by no matter what. Make them count.

Making Cooking Easier

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How to Make Cooking Easier

Making the actual cooking of your meals easier is the best way to avoid many of the mistakes that are made when  people try to plan their meals ahead of time.

Make use of easy cooking methods

Whether it’s one-pan oven meals, quick and easy meals on the grill, or my personal favorite, the slow cooker, easy cooking methods make cooking less laborious. Using the oven and the slow cooker might result in longer cooking times, but you don’t have to watch over them or stir. Just set a timer, and when it goes off, dinner is ready. Many grilled dishes take a bit more attention, but they are often done very quickly. Fill out the form below for three of my go-to easy recipes!

Pre-prep what you can

Mornings are often a rush. Even if you plan on making a fairly simple slow cooker dish, chopping up veggies can take time. Do some of that preparing ahead of time. Chop up those veggies and put them in containers or labeled baggies so when the time comes to use them you just have to dump them in. This is also a strategy I use whenever I buy grapes to make sure they get eaten before they turn into raisins. Buy washing them and removing the stems right away, whenever I need a snack, I can just grab a handful and they’re ready to eat. There are many recipes you can find for “freezer meals” where you do all the prep but the cooking, and then freeze the food. The day you want to eat that meal, take it out of the freezer in the morning and put it in the fridge to thaw. Then, that evening, all you have to do is cook. Many of these are even set up for slow cooker meals as well.

Make bigger batches

It can be tough to carve out a big chunk of time to prepare your food, but if you do, then the process of making those meals during the week becomes significantly easier. Take the time to prepare all your lunches for the week, so that during the week it’s just grab-n-go. If you are going to make a marinade, quadruple the recipe, and store the rest in a bottle in the fridge. Next time you make that meal, you already have the marinade made, and can just pour it on to whatever meat or veggies you are making. If you are making a soup or stew, again, double the recipe, and then freeze half of it for a couple weeks later. Multiplying a recipe takes very little extra time now, but will save you a ton of time in the future!

Be sure when freezing things to label what it is and date it! Hopefully these tips will help you stay on course to reaching your goals!

For more tips on making cooking easier, check out my Ultimate Guide to Meal Prep.

“I” is the only difference between fit and fat.

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-I-Is the only difference between

Any obstacle can be overcome on the road to fitness. It might be really hard, but it is possible. Just head over to Pinterest and do a search for “what’s your excuse” to see hundreds of images of people who overcame all kinds of hardships and still managed to be fit.

Now, you might decide that it’s not worth it. You might come to the conclusion that you don’t want to put in the work. It might just not be a priority for you right now. That is perfectly okay too, just remember that it was your choice.

Meal Prep Mistakes

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Are you making these meal prepping mistakes-

After taking all that time to plan out your meals for the week, I want to caution you about a few meal prep mistakes I’ve seen others make.

Wasting Food

You need to commit to this meal prepping thing. If you buy food but then when the time comes you don’t follow through and cook it, the food will spoil and you’ll end up just throwing it away and wasting food and money. And then you’ll have to buy something else to eat, which wastes even more money. And it is likely that in the moment, you’ll order take out or make something that’s not as healthy as you would have otherwise.

Trying to be too fancy

One of the ways to avoid wasting food is by NOT getting too fancy with the recipes. Roast leg of lamb with an apricot reduction and a side of zuppa toscana sounds a-maz-ing. But it’s not really practical for an every day dish. Keep your weekday meals simple and quick and you will be far more likely to stick to your plan. See the end of this article for three recipes you can download that are quick and easy to add to your meal rotations.

Not knowing “thine self”

In our household, when we prep our lunches for the week, it’s the exact. same. meal. And it’s the exact same meal for months at a time. In colder months we have steel cut oats with ground turkey. In warmer months it’s salad with grilled chicken. That’s it. Keeping it simple lowers the barrier to preparing those lunches ahead of time. And that works for us. However! If you can’t handle eating the same thing for lunch for months on end, DON’T. Don’t prepare a week’s worth of salads, and then on Wednesday decide you’re sick of them and make a run up to Chipotle instead. If you need some variety, try making extra food when you make your dinners so you can have enough left over for lunches during the week.

Keep a backup meal handy

Even the best laid plan only lasts until the first arrow leaves the bow. Maybe despite the planning, you forgot a critical ingredient. Or perhaps due to traffic you are running late and don’t have time to cook the meal you had previously planned on. Or you’re just having a horrible day and spending time cooking is NOT what you want to do. This is when having a backup meal is really handy. A backup meal should be something that you can cook up quickly, but also lasts a decent amount of time should you not need it right away. On days we are “not feeling it”, we turn to chicken sausage that we heat up on our Foreman Grill. Just grill them up for a bit, and eat with ketchup. Not the healthiest meal in terms of micronutrients, but because it is chicken, it’s lower in fat than bratwurst, and much lower in calories. Still super delicious and satisfying though!

Hopefully these tips can help you stick to your meal plan. Don’t forget to download your free recipes!

For more tips on avoiding meal prep mistakes, check out my Ultimate Guide to Meal Prep.

Going to the Gym on a Bad Day

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Going to the gym when you've had a bad day still burns calories. Remove the excuses and go.

Going to the gym when you’ve had a bad day still burns calories. Remove the excuses and go. In fact, going to the gym when you’ve had a bad day is a great idea, and I highly recommended it. For one, it will vastly improve your mood. Even if you have a crappy workout, you’ll feel better that you went and did something. Getting those endorphins going will really help elevate you. Also, it is fantastic stress relief. If you’re angry, grab a slam ball and throw it as hard as you can against the ground repeatedly. Pretend it is your bosses/SO’s/that person that cut you off at your exit’s head. So cathartic.

I’ve even found that working out when angry makes me push even harder and I’ve gotten some of my best lifts and fastest times when I channeled all that rage into my workout. So don’t let a “bad day” be an excuse to avoid working out when it should be just the opposite! It’s an opportunity to let it all out, channel it in a healthy manner, and feel much better afterward.