Portion control

I can be a real idiot.

For the last two years, I’ve wondered why I can’t lose weight. But I finally figured it out.

Two words: portion control.

I started actually tracking my calories in food I eat, together with carbs, sugar and fat.

This sounds really basic, but if you eat double the amount, you’ll consume double the calories and nutrients.

So while that breakfast smoothie might be very healthy, if it’s too large a portion, I’m not going to lose weight having it.

Same with meat, fish or any other food. No matter how healthy, if I eat too much of it I’m not going to lose weight.

Checking my portions is really important. I just made some curry egg omelettes for work lunches this week. I didn’t realize how much cheese I was going to put on them until I measured it. What I thought was “about right” was actually about 1.5 cups of cheese. I would never have guessed that!

Now, cheese is a great food, but it’s high in calories. A cup and a half of cheese would have easily stymied my weight loss efforts for the week. And get this: I wouldn’t have even realised it.

So for the next few weeks I’m weighing and measuring everything. Sounds Draconian, I know, but it’s the best way to get my intake down to reasonable amounts.

This has been a wake up call for me.

Likewise, I would normally have eaten two egg omelettes for lunch, instead of one. Not because I was hungry enough to need it, but because it “looked right”.

That was stupid. I didn’t need two. It was just a bad habit to eat two, nothing more.

And here’s the great thing: if I cut my servings of such things in half, I’m having my calories.

While eating one egg omelette is about 250 calories, two egg omelettes is 500 calories.

And if I eat them at work every day, I’m swapping out 2500 calories and instead eating 1250 over five days at work.

Make that one small change, and I’ll be dropping 3750 calories every 3 weeks, which is a pound of weight loss.

That’s a huge improvement for something I don’t even need!

They say life is a learning curve. That’s true, but you can’t learn if you don’t open your eyes to begin with!