This weekend has been super busy. Friday, my house was Grand Central Station, Saturday consisted of birthday parties all day, and today was a beach day (FINALLY) and dinner with Dad. By the way, anyone who knows me know the beach thing is BIG NEWS! I have lived by the beach my entire life and have pretty much not seen since we had Haley, 3 years ago (there have been a few trips, by that I mean less than 5). Also, this weekend, Friday included, has been an uncharacteristic few days of carnivorous face-stuffing.
I have been doing pretty well with portion control (thanks to my brother, I started pre-bagging my Wheat Thins into 16 Wheat Thin portions, as per the serving size on the box). Lately, I have been going as little crazy with the portions (an entire dinner place is 1 portion size, right?) and it’s starting to wear away at me. I did a pretty good job of eating the portion size (give or take) lately, so imagine my disappointment when I noticed myself eating away my weekend.
I don’t know about you guys, but it always seems so crazy to me to measure out food all day long, it’s so difficult. Then I realized that I can use the digital kitchen scale my hubby bought me for Christmas two years ago to weigh out the portions, since the weights are on the container/box/bag that the food/snacks come in. GENIUS! Then, i figured that I can use the kitchen scale for DIY baby food too! CONVENIENT! Don’t have a digital kitchen scale? Well, I can fix that!
I’m doing a freakin’ giveaway! wooooooooooooo!!
SlimKicker is sponsoring the giveaway of this super fancy digital kitchen scale! This one looks a lot nicer than mine.
What the heck is SlimKicker?! Well it’s this really fun website for people tired of trying to lose weight the boring way. It’s this calorie counter/exercise logger website that turns your weight loss woes into a fun game with levels, challenges, and rewards. I signed up and it’s definitely fun and interesting. Some of the challenges you can do are quitting soda for a week or eat a salad for a meal every day for 7 days; stuff you might even do already! You get points for logging food (more points for healthy food), logging exercise, and a bunch of points for completing the challenges. And, you upload a picture of the reward you want: new outfit, shoes, dinner for two, whatever you really want to give yourself, and when you rack up enough points, it’s yours! Want to see what it’s about? Try their calorie tracker game here!
Here’s how to win that awesome scale:
SlimKicker is looking for new and interesting challenges for you and everyone else to complete! Leave me a comment with one or two sentences suggesting a new, interesting, fun challenge. They’re going to check back here after a week, pick the one they like the most, and I’ll announce the winner (who is gettin’ a new scale)! Seeing and how both myself and the website and run out of the US, this giveaway is limited to US citizens only.
Good luck, eveyone!
mommabetic.wordpress.com 
Experiment with fresh squeezed juice mixed with seltzer water to create fun and creative healthy alternatives to soda.
This scale would work perfectly for the Martini glass diet! That’s the ultimate fun portion control challenge – eat what you want, as long as it fits into a martini glass. I’m sure that with Ozeri and SlimKicker you could create some really fun martini-sized meals!
We have talked about putting our dinner plates (11 or 12″ diameter?) away to use as serving platters and using our salad plates (7 or 8″ diameter?) for meals. We think it might be satisfying to have a full plate…just not as big a plate.
bethelderton59 at gmail dot com
We are going to try putting tiny amounts of food on the plates, leaving all the extras in the kitchen. (Out of sight, out of mind.) Anyone who wants seconds will have to get up, walk to the kitchen and serve themselves. I know I probably won’t.
great idea about reducing portion sizes… hmm.. my challenge would be to eat while sitting down and not having any distractions like watching TV or surfing the internet.
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I think a great challenge would be to only eat a serving size portion of everything you eat.
So far I’ve lost 70 pounds and the biggest lesson I learned that has helped me keep it off is knowing what a serving size of my favorite foods looks like. I’ve been using my poor scale so much that the weight button is broke so I must weigh everything in oz. It has made me better at math but I would love and really truly use a new scale. I still have 30 pounds to go.
Drinking 8 cups of water using 8oz cups and forcing yourself to go to the water cooler more often to burn off some calories in the process… since getting up is important!
How about a color challenge? It would be fun to have each day be a different color day. Such as Monday is “red” and you eat something with strawberries for breakfast, something with tomatoes for lunch and maybe a salad comprised of red ingredients (radishes, red peppers) for dinner. And then Tuesday would be “yellow”, etc. etc. I think you could even get kids in on this one.
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Use smaller plate to eat smaller portions and replace sugary drinks at dinner time with water.
a raw challenge – include 1 raw vegetable with every meal as an appetizer
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The laundry workout. Wash, dry, fold and put away 3-4 loads daily up and down 4 flights of stairs and repeat.
I challenge you to put together 100 calorie snacks or under 500 calorie meals so that everyone can see actual portion sizes and meal ideas.
Using a scale for each portion is helpful when you serve your foods and when you save some for later meals.
How about having only Cereal as a brunch and no lunch at all. cooking half of usual food, Changing bigger plates to smaller plates. Avoiding coffee, soda etc and drinking plenty water. Thanks for the giveaway 🙂
I think a good challenge would be to create a laminated poster (it could become one for purchase or download) that has actual true-to-size correct portion sizes of various food for hanging in the kitchen for immediate reference and use every day.
drinking more water
The Up Down Challenge- eat high (within your range) calories one day, low the next and keep alternating for 6 days- on day 7, eat anything you like (within reason). Why I like this- your body doesn’t get used to any one pattern so it doesn’t go into starvation mode and store the fat like on very low cal days. It is best of course if you go mostly healthy foods, I personally try to ascribe to the 80/20 rule as in 80% healthy, 20% satisfying my cravings.
Another great thing about this is that you are never more than a week away from your favorite foods so you don’t feel deprived. I lost a decent amount in a short time doing this and have kept it off for 17 months. (I detailed exactly what I did, ate, etc and how on our food blog if anyone is interested.)
The ‘lazy fork’ challenge… Your fork is lazy, so you have to let it rest in between bites. This helps us slow down when we are eating… and know when we are really full! A problem I have 🙂 It could also be a ‘lazy fork so you have to eat with chopsticks every other day’ … that’s more difficult than you realize!!!
I have three young boys so I think finding a challenge that would be family friendly and not take away from them is important to me. One idea I have is to involve them in the menu planning. Everyone chooses a healthy recipe and gets a hand in dinner panning for that night. Another thing would be staying active as a family. Play outside, have a family relay, host a neighborhood olympics. The results are endless
I think we all know that 10,000 steps is what we’re supposed to walk daily to keep our fitness at an acceptable level. Keep that goal, but add 20 flights of stairs, as well…if your knees can handle it. Might as well keep this up for a week. If you can handle it, try another goal the next week of 11,000 steps and 22 flights of stairs. Keep adding!
Lift your laundry detergent 10x, 5 reps per half hour of tv you watch
I think a great challenge would be to eat every meal using only a spoon close to the size of a salt or condiment spoon, which would force you to eat smaller bites and to eat more slowly.
I think a fast food challenge would be cool! You could post links to the various fast food sites that have the fat and calories listed for each chains respective items and the challenge could be to go to that place and order something healthy, take a pic of the item, upload it and then have a small reward or points for self control and at the same time eating healthy. It is practical and something that everyone can do!
I would like to suggest a My Plate challenge. Obviously the people at Slim Kicker know that My Plate is the government’s new version of the old ‘food pyramid’. My Plate includes fruit, vegetables, grains, protein and dairy. The CHALLENGE would be to create a recipe/meal that contains ALL of the recommended groups in roughly the correct proportion. Recipes could be posted and judged on a number of categories, such as best overall, most creative, lowest calorie, etc. If you had 7 different categories, the winners from each could be featured in a “My Dinner/My Plate Menu” of 7 dinners to make that week that include all the recommended groups from government recommendations 🙂 I hope I developed this idea enough for you to see the vision behind it 🙂
we use smaller plates!
GET MOVING !! Instead of being sedentary and sitting at my computer and watching tv, I now get on my treadmill and walk at a very slow pace and check email. chat with friends and family, and even do skype. It’s allowed me to keep moving and lose 17 lbs in a month — YES..17 lbs. and the only thing i changed was my activity level. I realized I had to just MOVE. Now if I want to get on the computer to goof off..I have to WALK for it. It’s great – I’ve lost weight, my back feels great and not stiff (from sitting so much) and it’s not strenuous at all, so great for all sizes!
I think a good challenge would be to eat only fast food for a week BUT make it healthy and within your calorie range. I am always on the go and this would be so welcome for me because then I would know what choices there are out there.
i love a fun biggest loser challenge with weekly weigh ins and the highest percentage of weight lost wins over a period of about 8-24 months
In addition to portion control, we’ve started upping our veggie and fruit intake by drinking them! We have a juicer that we use to make various shakes/juices that we drink throughout the day. It helps us stay full, and increases our vitamins and nutrients!
A fun challenge would be to find new and unique ways to get moving every day for a week. For example, dancing with your kids for 20 min or trying something new like getting a softball game together. The idea is to try something new and step out of your comfort zone. I have always wanted to try Zumba!
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