What Would Brooke Say? i.e. The one where I share my nutritionists tips because I have clearly fallen off the wagon

The RULES according to me... er, Brooke are not hard to follow. They’re common sense. Straight forward, possibly even “simple”.

And yet....

So the first of The Rules...

WEEK 1:

#1 Set a SMART goal... it has to be specific. attainable. Time sensitive. (m...and r....)  So, “lose 2 pounds” is not a goal.  That’s an idea.

A Goal would be, “eat 5 salads each week with only half a serving of dressing and no high fat cheese on each one for the next month”. Or “Go to the gym 4 days a week for one month”.

#2  You also need to weigh yourself and write it down. I usually write it in my food diary.

#3 Get a Food Diary. Brooke likes SparkPeople’s food diary because it does all the math for you, but also a little lined notebook works too.  A Brooke trick to “I forget what I eat and I’m not always with my computer” is to take a quick picture of your food with your phone before you eat. Then you have a record of your intake (talking like a nurse over here...).

also there’s no need to make any drastic changes the first week or two. Just keep a diary and see what you’re eating, carefully noting how much of any given food you’re eating.

#4 Finally, after the 2 weeks you should have an idea of your average daily calorie intake. Take 3 days (pick a weekend day and 2 week days) and average up the calorie amounts. This is probably your baseline. We'll be digging into that soon, so don't worry about what the # is... really.

#5 Track your goal. I can’t tell you what to do, exactly, because your goal will be different than mine. My goals are X1 Dessert Per Week and Track the calories in Snacks for 4 weeks.

Simple, right?

(yup. But life’s in the details.... I’ll get into THAT in my next post)