This product was mentioned in 33 comments, with an average of 1.09 upvotes
my husband cooks without recipes! i’m the baker and it’s more chemistry so amounts matter more! we got this one off amazon many years ago and it’s still going strong. it reads in both grams and ounces so it works for most recipes. i bake bread a couple times a week. i put my bowl on the scale, tare (zero) it, and start adding ingredients by weight. nothing to clean up after but the one bowl and much more accurate for flour. (there may be newer or better options - you might look at some reviews.)
The most important factor to losing weight is to make sure that you're consuming fewer calories than you're expending. The number one thing that helped me the most was counting calories. Make an account with MyFitnessPal (or someplace similar) and get a food scale (I use and like this one).
The food scale is important - if you have to get out a tablespoon measure every time you make a peanut butter sandwich, you're not going to do it. If you try to eyeball how much peanut butter you have on your sandwich, you're going to do a horrible job. Get a food scale. For real.
If you have trouble meeting your calorie goal, you can try eating according to a diet. I did keto (/r/keto) for a while, and it was good at keeping me from feeling cravings. Other people swear by paleo (/r/paleo) but I've never tried it. All these diets are are tricks to helping you not go over your calorie limit; counting calories is still the number one thing you need to do to lose weight.
Two things will help a lot towards changing this.
Don't go shopping for groceries when you're hungry. Your stomach is insidious and will convince you to buy those unhealthy snacks if you're hungry, if you've eaten recently you'll have much better self control.
Count your calories using My Fitness Pal (or something similar). Something that will help so much with this is a food scale - no one will get out a tablespoon measure when making a peanut butter sandwich, but weighing the sandwich before and after putting peanut butter on it is trivial. This is the food scale I use, and it works great.
In my experience, counting your calories will help you realize just how much you're consuming, and that realization (3500 kcal of chips and salsa??) can stave off a lot of the hunger. Also, another bonus if you use MFP is that you can plan what you're going to eat ahead of time so you can avoid any "oops" moments.
If you're experiencing a lot of cravings, definitely look into /r/keto. It helped me a lot when I upheld it, and after a week or so you don't miss the carbs nearly as much.
I really do wish the best of luck to you. I know it's not easy, but the beautiful thing about weight loss is that it's simple. All you have to do is burn more than you eat.
I'm a parent with 2 kids now, still in my 20's with no health problems, and I can't imagine going through cancer on top of anything else. If you ever need someone to talk to or vent, hit me up. Random internet strangers can be nice.
Also, EatSmart Precision Pro Digital Kitchen Scale, Silver [link] excellent food scale here.
First and most importantly, congratulations. This is a life long journey. Be proud of yourselves for finding the motivation to even start.
The first thing I bought, and will never live with out again, was this: [link]
There are tons of models and tons of options. Target, Costco, Bed Bath & Beyond, Walmart - will all have choices for whatever your budget allows. A digital kitchen scale is essential to counting calories.
It's simple and works great for me! Measures in grams, ounces, pounds.
You may benefit from a scale that weighs more food. This one's done me good for 5 years, still going strong, and weighs up to 11 lbs.
There are tons of scales out there... I use this one. I have one at home and one at my office.
As for recipes, if it's easier to stay away from overly complicated things, do so! Are you vegetarian? If not, nothing gets much simpler than meaty protein and vegetables bathed in butter!
phookin ell m8 ima go buy one lol
I'm using it for weight loss, hence, doing Insanity. It's funny cuz I'm way willing to spend $20 on things that aren't good for me, but when it comes to healthy options, I'm like mehhh should i get it? Smh
You really do need to invest in a food scale. [link]
Read the back of the package and it will tell you how much is in each oz / tsp / tbsp / cup etc. At first it will be tedious but after awhile you will fly through making your lunches.
this is highly rated on amazon. I also found a decent one at walmart the other day for $20, but they don't have it online.
Well....maybe you're overestimating some of your serving sizes? Do you think you really ate two whole large potatoes? Because that's a lotta potatoes! I noticed the grilled veggies were entered with a pretty high calorie count, too. Were they covered in butter or sauce, because veggies like broccoli or carrots usually don't come in close to 500 calories. Maybe you were over estimating the serving size?
When I started counting calories I found it really helpful to measure everything. Get some measuring spoons, measuring cups, and a kitchen scale like this one.
It's impossible to measure or weigh things when you eat away from home (and who'd want to?), but if you measure things when you're at home, then you get good at "eyeballing it" when you're eating out.
edit: typo
>Question everything you can - don't take no for an answer, have it explained to you step by step. Learn to count carbs, learn what to look for, question every bit of advice you get and make sure it's completely accurate.
This, 1000 times over.
Some more practical advice (assuming you're in the States):
Order a food scale on Amazon tonight so it will be waiting for you when you get out of the hospital. It doesn't need to be anything fancy. Something like this is fine.
This is a good starting list of carb factors and an explanation of how to use them. Learning this method will help you have a more normal life as soon as you're home from the hospital, and it is is crucial for pumping.
Ask for a Multiclix lancet. It is by far the easiest and most pain-free lancet for kids.
Tomorrow, call your local JDRF and ask that they send you a "Bag of Hope." Inside will be a great book on Type 1, a stuffed bear your son can give shots to, and the most accurate BG meter as well as another Multiclix
Order this book. While the ones already suggested by others are great, this is the best book specifically for children, IMO. The older edition is just as good, and less expensive, but is lacking some updated research citations and pump info.
edited to add: if you have other children, ask for them to be enrolled in Trialnet
Good stuff! I wrote something similar in the new keto'er thread yesterday! > >If losing weight were easy, then we wouldn't be in the middle of an "obesity epidemic". Keto is not a lose weight, get skinny quick diet. It's a long term commitment and a lifestyle change that you need to work at constantly. However, it also has tools that help us to achieve that, like vast amounts of energy, complete satiety and low gastric impact. You will have to put work into this, a guide is great, but you can't rely on that long term. > >So, here is my advice. It worked for me, but this isn't a 100% surefire way either. > >First, register an account at myfitnesspal.com and if you would like a support network, join the keto group here > >Second, read caveman keto guide to mfp so you can properly setup your macros. > >Third, if you don't already own a kitchen scale, get one, Amazon > >Now you can make any recipe you want, and plug in the values quickly into MFP to get an idea of what you are eating on any given day. You can preplan meals this way very easily. Or you can keep a little notepad and pencil in your kitchen and just jot down the grams to anything you make, and plug them in later. You won't have to do this forever, but it's a great way of getting started and knowing what you should eat, and what you should avoid. > >I'll also share with you my personal keto cookbook with some of my favorite recipes. I am the laziest bastard in the world, so anything I put there is probably very simple to create and has all of the nutritional facts listed. > >In the end, only you can make this work for yourself. You took the first steps, but you need to make a leap now and decide how committed you are to changing. For me, 215 lbs later, there have been ups and downs, i've fallen off and gained back weight, then lost it again, but I wouldn't change any of that because I feel better today than I have in the last 10 years.
This for the last 4 years [link]
Here's Etsy's shipping info area: [link]
The Etsy Seller Handbook How To: [link]
Blog post on packaging inspiration: [link]
Here's what I did: Buy a cheap kitchen scale instead of a $150 mail scale [link]
Pick out packaging materials which will prevent water from harming my items if the package gets wet. I got mine on eBay.
Pick out shipping materials which will protect my item. I got mine from eSupplyStore in bulk to save on a per item piece.
I then fully packaged one item and weighed it on the scale. I then did USPS calculate a price calcs from my ZIP to 33101 (Miami), 04401 (Bangor ME), 60606 (Chicago), 77007 (Houston), 90001 (Los Angeles). If you're shipping first class package your rate to all of these places would be the same. If you ship priority it will be different. Calculating the rate will also give you an estimate of days to delivery for each method of shipping. I decided to ship first class so I just put in the first class rate for all my items and enough in the "with another item" box to bump it to the right rate.
Then I did the same for cities in canada, england, germany, spain, australia, japan, south africa, brazil, russia. I set up these countries individually with their price + $2 for handling. For everywhere else I doubled the highest amount here. I should note that due to my product being mostly sold for parties I ended up removing international shipping as no one was ordering with enough lead time for me.
Not who you asked but I really like this one: [link]
I have this little guy, but there are cheaper with just as good ratings:
This little guy is what I have. Still going strong with daily use since 2011.
I have this one: [link]
Nothing fancy, but works just fine. Only thing I wish it would do is half grams, but maybe THAT is overkill. lol
Glad I could help, this is the scale I got.
If losing weight were easy, then we wouldn't be in the middle of an "obesity epidemic". Keto is not a lose weight, get skinny quick diet. It's a long term commitment and a lifestyle change that you need to work at constantly. However, it also has tools that help us to achieve that, like vast amounts of energy, complete satiety and low gastric impact. You will have to put work into this, a guide is great, but you can't rely on that long term.
So, here is my advice. It worked for me, but this isn't a 100% surefire way either.
First, register an account at myfitnesspal.com and if you would like a support network, join the keto group here
Second, read caveman keto guide to mfp so you can properly setup your macros.
Third, if you don't already own a kitchen scale, get one, Amazon
Now you can make any recipe you want, and plug in the values quickly into MFP to get an idea of what you are eating on any given day. You can preplan meals this way very easily. Or you can keep a little notepad and pencil in your kitchen and just jot down the grams to anything you make, and plug them in later. You won't have to do this forever, but it's a great way of getting started and knowing what you should eat, and what you should avoid.
I'll also share with you my personal keto cookbook with some of my favorite recipes. I am the laziest bastard in the world, so anything I put there is probably very simple to create and has all of the nutritional facts listed.
In the end, only you can make this work for yourself. You took the first steps, but you need to make a leap now and decide how committed you are to changing. For me, 215 lbs later, there have been ups and downs, i've fallen off and gained back weight, then lost it again, but I wouldn't change any of that because I feel better today than I have in the last 10 years.
Well, he is what works for me.
I do IF and usually only eat once a day. This really kind of came about naturally. I would go longer and longer without eating without really meaning to, and then eventually I only started to get hungry about 7:00 PM, so I started only eating a large dinner. Now I will basically add in a little more protein for breakfast because I stared heavy lifting, but the idea is still the same. It is really hard to actually over eat if you are only eating one real meal a day.
I bought a food scale. I use this one. It is fairly inexpensive, goes up to like 12 pounds (way more than I need) and down to 1 gram. It takes guess work out of my measurements. I mainly use it for carby type stuff, like ranch dressing. I just basically put a container on it, tare the scale, and pour my ranch or whatever in the container until I get within a couple grams of the serving size. I also now use it for meats just so I know my food logging is correct.
Once I got the scale, I started premaking my servings of meat. Different sizes for different things obviously. But what I did was put each individual serving in a small non zipper type sandwich bag, then put all the bags in a large freezer bag. Then I just grab the smaller bags out for a meal, and put the freezer bag back in my freezer. I do about 4 ounce patties for ground beef. For one meal, I will probably eat 2 patties. But having them in 4 oz servings gives me the option to eat less. Plus eating 2 patties even if they are smaller makes me feel like I'm eating more. I do about 5-6 oz for non ground beef. A whole breast for chicken breast. About 4 oz or so of sausage, etc.
I don't precook the food before I freeze it. Why? Two reasons really. For one, I think it tastes better if I cook it right before I eat it, whether that is on the stove, or oven or whatever. To me, that tastes better than cooking it weeks before, then microwaving it later. For two, it takes longer. I know that seems counter intuitive. But think about it: it is just enough of a hassle that I don't feel the urge to just eat all the time. It takes me just enough time that it isn't worth doing over and over. So, after I finish my meal, I don't really want to go back and cook more. If it is as simple as remove from freezer and place in microwave, it is simply too easy to have a second or third dinner every night. It still saves me a lot of time by freezing, but the main thing is everything is already portioned out. All I have to do is add in some veggies or cheese or bacon or something and I have a meal.
Log all your food. Everything. It makes you consciously think about what you are eating. And that is what will stick with you forever even if you go back to regular eating.
Some various mental tricks I have used: Use a smaller plate to make you think you are getting more food. Drink a bottle or two of water IMMEDIATELY before eating anything. Eat a larger salad (without a lot of dressing) before your meal. Exercise about 30 minutes before your meal.
that's what i use.
I picked up this one last year, I still use it all the time. Pair it up with fitday and you are set.
I've had this one (in black) since 2011. Best ever.
> Yes, sort of.
If you only "sort of" track your calorie intake, then you will only "sort of" see results. Because you don't have a whole lot of weight to lose, it's a bit harder for you to maintain a solid caloric deficit than for someone who weighs, say, 100 pounds more.
Get yourself a decent food scale and start weighing/measuring your portions for a few days. Be meticulous about it. Odds are, you may think that you've cut out a couple hundred calories, but until you've taken the time to determine what your actual consumption looks like, you may be way off :P
Hey friend,
Reading posts like yours always strikes a chord with me -- once upon a time, I was a 17 y/o male weighing in at at least 220 pounds (100kg). I say "at least" because I didn't weigh myself for at least two years after I saw that number back in 2007, and it's entirely possible that I gained more and was too afraid to acknowledge it). Being overweight my entire life, I never thought it would be possible for me to be at a weight that bears any semblance to fitness, but I tip the scales around 145lbs (65kg) nowadays :)
I came to the realization that the reason for my weight gain and constant tiredness over the years was from lack of portion control and all the refined carbs I was eating (despite getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night). I just want to share what I've learned from LoseIt over the last year:
Weight loss is 80% diet, 20% exercise. In short, you can't out-train crappy nutrition. Even if you hit the gym fairly regularly, your results will be stunted by what you are fueling your body with. Start taking control over what you eat -- lean meats, eggs, fish, legumes, and VEGGIES should take priority.
If you feel like you're starving yourself, then you're doing it wrong. Diet-wise, lean protein and fiber are your best friends. You'll stay full and be more satisfied than if you ate a bunch of carbs and starch. Lean meats, eggs, nuts, lentils, greek yogurt, quinoa and veggies are staples in my kitchen now. Whatever it is you're eating, though, start logging it all. You're much less likely to want to gorge on a double-cheeseburger or hot fudge sundae if you force yourself to log it and watch it blow up your calorie numbers for the day. MyFitnessPal (website/smartphone app) is a great tool that takes almost all of the guesswork out of food journaling. Of course, you need to tell it how much food you're eating, so I highly recommend making a small but worthwhile investment in a digital kitchen scale and use it in conjunction with a tool like MyFitnessPal in order to provide you with the most accurate results and insight into your personal calorie consumption :D
In the first couple of weeks, you may find it difficult to wean yourself off of certain unhealthy foods that you may have grown accustomed to. Here are a few simple substitutions that you might be able to make to your daily meals:
Breakfast - Instead of cereal, have two eggs and fill the rest of your plate with steamed vegetables. Sprinkle a bit of cheese and salsa over the whole thing. The healthy fats and proteins from the eggs and cheese, coupled with the fiber of the vegetables will keep you full and happy all morning.
Lunch - A better alternative to sandwiches is just to try taking what you would normally make a sandwich with and put it on a salad instead. A big spinach salad with turkey breast or tuna on it saves you a great deal of unnecessary carbs. When it doubt, wrap it in lettuce.
Dinner - Try switching up the traditional "meat & potatoes" meals. The meat can stay, but try giving mashed cauliflower a try. When made properly, it tastes just like the real thing :D
If you are constantly hungry, you may not be getting enough protein, fiber, or healthy fats to keep you satiated -- this ultimately causes that uncontrollable urge to snack. Make sure you're eating a fair amount of lean meats, leafy greens, nuts/legumes. Once you start filling your stomach with things that are satiating, you'll probably find that the urge to snack will subside considerably. In absence of that, try keeping some healthier snacks around the house if possible -- I buy 5-pound bags of baby carrots to munch on constantly :)
In terms of drinks, you should be limited to water, tea, black coffee, and milk. No soda -- even diet. I know that the diet soda has zero calories and most likely won't affect your weight, but it's still laden with so much unnecessary crap that your body will be happy to not have anymore. If you're used to drinking soda or other sweet drinks and find that the sweetness is a difficult thing to give up, try cutting up some citrus fruits and putting letting them steep in a pitcher of ice water. The refreshing hint of sweetness is usually enough to satiate your cravings! It also helps you to meet your daily water intake goals, which should be at least 72 oz. per day -- it's very common for the body to misinterpret thirst as hunger. You'll also find that staying hydrated will give you more energy to work out / study, etc.
If you find that you want to make your own meals, nothing is easier than getting a pack of boneless/skinless chicken breasts and brushing them down with a little bit of olive oil and herbs/spices and throwing those bad boys in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes. Serve with a heaping helping of frozen vegetables, and you've got yourself a cheap, filling, nutritious meal :D
While running and other cardio is decent for getting fit, I would advocate strength/weights/resistance training as soon as you think you're comfortable with it. The extra muscle you'll build not only helps you look better, but it will burn more fat/calories as it sits on your frame.
I've been using the program outlined in the book The New Rules of Lifting. It gives you detailed instructions, pictures, and a 52-week workout schedule. I started noticing amazing progress in both strength and appearance after about 2 weeks, and just began the fifth phase in the series. I've never felt better!
To help monitor your progress, continue to take photos of yourself in various poses and states of undress every few weeks or so -- you'll be happy later that you have them for reference. Because you look at your body every day, it's often difficult to notice small, incremental change. Having the "before" photos handy will definitely allow you to more easily see the progress you're making down the line. I would recommend an official weigh-in once or twice a week. Make sure it's under the same circumstances (first thing in the morning, in the buff, after you've expelled any waste, before a shower, and before you eat/drink anything). This will give you the most consistent (and flattering) results.
I'm so proud of you for acknowledging that you want to make change and taking the first steps towards making that happen. It doesn't get any easier as time goes on. I went through all of high school obese, and all of college overweight. I always thought I was a reasonably happy person, but after graduating college, losing weight and looking back on the last 6 years of my life, I realized how unhappy I actually was and how much happier I probably would have been. After losing the weight and starting to see my body take on a shape I thought it would never have, I have such incredible confidence, happiness, and exuberance for life that I never imagined possible. I have no doubts that you could easily experience similar results if you stick with it :D
Like I mentioned before, getting healthy should be more like a marathon rather than a sprint -- you're in this for the long haul.
Please keep in touch and don't hesitate to reach out to me if you need any more advice -- diet/exercise tips, meal ideas, a crying shoulder, you name it. I wish for nothing more than to see you succeed.
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
~ Ernest Hemingway
So go forth and kick ass, friend :D
Cheers,
Dave
I bought this scale from amazon.com and love it. I also have their bathroom scale. Both are great quality and work just fine.