Mynetdiary.. A great free site to help with weight loss

My new favorite site: mynetdiary.com. It's also an app for IPAD and IPHONE. And it rocks. Here's why:

1. Depending on your weight loss goal, it estimates how many calories you should be eating daily calculated based on your height, weight, and activity level.

2. It then provides you with an easy online food diary whereby you enter the foods you eat and it tracks your calories, fat, carbs, and protein levels.

3. The diary is super easy to use because almost any food you can think of is already loaded into the database. For the ones that aren't, you can enter them yourself (I've entered most of my favorite foods into the database).

4. Ummm. It's free. You go to www.mynetdiary.com and sign up, entering a username and password. Done.

Here's how it looks in pictures:
                                                                                                  

Here's an example. For a 140 lb woman, lightly active, who is 5"4 who wants to lose 20 lbs by Mar 1 (4 months from now), she'd have to eat 1331 calories per day, which would result in 1.5 lbs loss per week. Remeber, it's your goal. If you want to lose a pound of week, set it up as such. If you want to lose 2 lbs, per week, go ahead. I don't recommend more than 2 lbs per week though.. slow and steady wins the race to a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.

Next, you hit food and your food diary appears:

Now's the fun part. Start typing the food you ate and you'll see that it's probably there. It can be frustrating in the beginning to find the food that best matches, but you'll get the hang of it quickly. The database is huge. Almost all foods can be found. And the ones that aren't there, you can enter into the database yourself. I'll show you how in a minute. First, let's enter one of my fave breakfasts when I'm in a rush (I also have this as a bedtime snack sometimes **I'll often have egg white poppers on the side to up the protein content ** see my first blog entry for recipe):

As you can see, I've entered Nature's Path Kamut Puffs cereal (1 cup) which has 50 calories; 3 tbsp blueberries which has 15 calories; and 1/2 cup Blue Diamond Almond Breeze unsweetened vanilla almond milk which has 20 calories. So, this meal has a total of 85 calories (pretty good hey.. considering most cereals have double that before you even add the milk..)

Let's say, you can't find the food you ate. No prob. You just enter it yourself. You click new food and then you enter the nutritional info for the food and voila, it's in the site for everyone to benefit from. As you'll see, I've added a lot of my favorite foods recommended in The Rebel Diet so they should be easy to find.

This is a really helpful and user-friendly program/app. It can really help you keep track of what you're eating and may help reveal certain problems in your diet (i.e. too many unaccounted for calories or too little protein or too many carbs, for example). You may realize that you're eating nutritiously but consuming way more calories than you think; or maybe your ratio is all off and you're eating way too little protein and this is throwing off your hormonal balance. I'd recommend you play with the program and experiment. You have nothing to lose. Well... maybe a few pounds. Ha ha ha.

Have fun!

p.s. Thank you to one of my patients who introduced me to this program. Very cool.

Eclectic eating..

Alright, so in this post I'm going to suggest Kraft Dinner. Yes, good ol' KD. But.. I'm going to mix it with some other ingredients to design an overall healthy, delicious meal. No longer is the art of mixing and matching high end with low just for fashion and design. I mean it's not fair. If the best stylists and interior designers can do the 'H&M with Lanvin' thing with praise, so to can the best diet foodies. A few mass produced items won't ruin a look, nor a palate, nor a healthy body and trim waistline.

K, so here are a few of my fave things to do with KD:

KD with Shirataki:

Here are the two ingredients I start with. One microwavable KD Original (I like the microwavable because it's portion controlled and so easy to grab on the go). One bag House Foods Tofu Shiritaki Noodles (I buy at Whole Foods or Longos/Grocery Gateway or www.lowcarbgrocery.com).

* If anybody has read my last book, The Rebel Diet, you know I LUV shirataki noodles. They're awesome. A whole bag of House Foods Tofu Shirataki noodles has only 40 calories and is basically carb free, consisting of protein, water, and fiber. It keeps you full for virtually no calories and it can take the place of pasta in any recipe*


 I make the KD according to instructions. Remove lid, put cheese packet to the side, add water to fill line, nuke for 3.5 minutes.

While this is in the microwave, I make shirataki. I cut open the bag, dump the noodles into a strainer and rinse with warm water. Done. Then I pat them dry and cut them because they're really long.

This is how you rinse the noodles. You should rinse them for a minute or so tossing so that by the end the noodles basically taste and smell like nothing so that they'll take on the taste of any dish you put them with.




 


When the KD is ready and the noodles are washed, you simply add the cheese packet (I only use half) to the KD and then mix the two sets of noodles together...

And Voila!

This bowl of pasta is quite big so it's filling, yet it has only 260 calories! To up the protein content, mix in half can of tuna (total now is 320 calories). It's delicious. Or enjoy a piece of fish or chicken on the side.
 
When I'm in a rush, I let KD be the the H&M of my Whole Foods world.

In my books, I often suggest a lot of fresh and high quality food products. But I'm no snob. I think it's important to learn how to make cheaper, easier foods work for your health and diet as well. I'd way rather someone grab this on the go than a fast food burger and fries citing no time to cook as the excuse.. (although burger and fries sounds good too.. future post.. healthy twist but of course..)

I

Kickstart Breakfast - Cheesy Egg Muffins and Toast.. Delish!

There's no doubt that egg whites are a super food when it comes to weight loss. Ask any bodybuilder trying to lean out to virtually no body fat before a show.. egg whites are a diet staple. They're basically a combo of protein and water, which means they fill you up and keep you full for hours for very few calories. Further, the high protein content keeps your metabolism nice and revved. FYI: Typically in an egg, the yolk has the fat (about 60 calories worth) and the whites have the protein (about 20 calories).

When trying to lose weight, protein is essential and I see so many clients who are eating few calories yet not losing weight and often it's because the ratio of protein is simply too low. Adding egg whites to the diet is often a simple fix that can really help. But.. who wants to constantly be cooking omelets or harboiling eggs.. no one.. too much effort. So here's a simple solution. Make Egg Muffins in the microwave.

 * This muffin tray is awesome. I bought it fom Loblaws.. silicone.. so it's floppy and goes in microwave and then I just throw it in the dishwasher to clean.

* Spray muffin pan with Pam cooking spray. Pour 1/3 cup liquid egg whites into each. Add 1 tbsp shredded Part Skim mozza/cheddar cheese into each. Add salt, pepper, spices to taste.

* Put in microwave for 5 minutes. Done!

Here's how cheesy egg white muffins come out. Delicious! I put two of these on a bed of spinach and voila.. a high protein, low calorie snack. I keep them in the fridge and grab one on the go. They're great to pack for work.

Kickstart Breakfast Idea (280 calories; approximately 40% protein, 30% fat, and 30% carbs):

Have 2 of these cheesy egg white muffins with 2 slices of low calorie Weight Watchers Wheat bread (or any thin sliced lower calorie bread) toasted and topped with 2 tsp of any lower calorie butter or non hydrogenated margarine (some of my faves are light Becel or PC Celeb or Gay Lea Light Spreadables). Enjoy with a tbsp of ketchup.

This is a great and easy breakfast or lunch on the go that will keep you full and satisfied and it's cheap and easy so no excuses!!

Ingredients Recap:

- Liquid Egg Whites
- Park Skim shredded cheese
- Cooking spray
- salt, pepper
- Ketchup
- Thin sliced bread like Weight Watchers
- Reduced calorie margerine or butter