How To Fix Sneaky Weight Gain

This post hits close to home!

Recently, I thought my dryer was ruining all my clothes....

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed my pants getting a little snugger.

I didn't think I was eating very differently so I just could not figure out why that would be!

Like I'd have chips...and wine...and guacomole...and more chips.

I just had NO IDEA why my pants were getting smaller.

{ENTER SOUND OF CRICKETS}

Clearly, my dryer was shrinking them.

Keep in mind: I'm a dietitian. I should know better.

But as you'll see, I'm also human 😉

I decided I better do something about it. What did I do?

I starting tracking my food intake.

It really opened my eyes. I chose the MyFitnessPal app.

Although I thought it would be cumbersome, it actually wasn't that bad.

Once you do it for a couple days, your "recent" and "frequent" food lists make entering food super simple.

I probably spend 5 minutes total each day entering things in.

But this did two things for me: it showed me exactly where my calories were being spent and helped me see what I wasn't getting enough of (for me, it was protein).

It was such a great reinforcement of the lesson: if you find your garments are getting a little more snug than you'd like, look into food tracking apps and see if there are some small changes you could make the halt any weight gain in it's tracks.

After just a few days with this detailed look into my food intake, I was able to make better choices and had smaller portions of some of my indulgence foods so I could maintain my weight but still have the foods I love.

(As we know, you don't "diet" to lose weight: you eat FOOD!)

In addition to tracking my food intake, ddding in some exercise has helped too - more on that another time 🙂

Let me know if you start to track your food intake and what you were surprised to find out!

If you use MyFitnessPal, "friend" me: april_saunders_nutrition. See you there!

~April

PS On a related note: check out my post on the importance of protein and how I found out I wasn't getting enough.