By all means, I don’t mean that fat loss is exactly ‘simple’.  You do have to eat well and exercise.  But over the past 2 years, I’ve done a couple of simple strategies that has made fat loss a lot easier and decreased a lot of the guesswork.  I think a lot of people give up on their healthy eating plans because they aren’t seeing the results and they aren’t sure how much they should be eating for their body frame, weight and goals.

For me, when it came to fat loss, measuring is a simple strategy that I use that’s helped me get results a lot quicker!  I wasn’t even calorie counting.

Even though I’m a very visual person, I still have NO IDEA how much meat would be in the size of a “deck of cards”, or how many almonds would be considered a “handful of nuts”.  We all probably have a different idea of what these portion size would be.

That is why for me, I started noticing significantly quicker fat loss when I started using a food scale.

There are hundreds of different types of food scales out there. Prices range from cheap to expensive.  In my opinion, they are all the same, all you need it for is to weigh your food (primarily meat).  The scale above is what I use, and its actually marketed as a letter scale!!!  So really, it doesn’t matter at all!!

For my size (5’6, 130lbs) I need between 4 oz of lean protein 5-6 times per day.  The reason I don’t like eyeballing protein portions especially is because 4 oz of white fish is much different than 4 oz of red meat (since red meat is more dense, you get less).

I also find it difficult to “eyeball” salad dressing.  I have no idea how much 1-2 Tbsp is by pouring it out.  Same goes for peanut butter/almond butter.  So for that I use measuring spoons. 

FYI, this is NOT what 1 Tbsp of peanut butter would be! (even though I wish it was true!)

….. it needs to be a leveled off measuring tablespoon.

For cooked grains, measuring cups come in handy.  The difference between 1/2 cup and 1 cup is quite a bit, but visually, its hard to tell.

So, first things first, if fat loss is your goal, best way to start is to find out how many calories you need to meet your goals (based on activity, starting weight etc)

My favorite site to determine that is here.  From there, come up with a simple meal plan using whole foods, limiting packaged foods, sugar and saturated fats.  A great site to calculate calories is Spark People.  Once you get an idea of how much food you should be consuming in a day, you can choose to count calories or not.  Just be sure to measure so you know your not over-estimating your portion sizes.

It isn’t complicated at all once you start doing it.  Hope this helps!

xo Kristine