doing everything right and not losing....

Not me, thank the gods, but maybe worse -- my daughter.  :-(  We're having to start tweaking HER diet, because at 36 she's starting to get into the difficult-to-lose age.

She's comparatively new to the low-toxin-and-carb, higher-fat dietary plan.  In the past, she's lost weight with the CW technique, but i've convinced her that a real-food diet is important for herself as well as her kids.  Having eased into low-carb from low-calorie, L has even learned to add more good fats.  But for some yet-to-be-determined reason, the scales are resisting her.

So we're tweaking!  I've suggested that the first thing to do is drop dairy for a week and see what happens.  I think i'll suggest next that instead of her usual workout she try tabata sprints.

I also need to get her to use a tape-measure more than scales, now that i think of it!  I wouldn't be surprised to find that she's putting on muscle as fast as she's taking off fat, and therefore getting a "false negative" in the loss department.  ...I can hardly wait for L to get back from her lunch break so i can ask her some new questions!  :-D

NOT blogging on the red meat "news"

Everybody in the blogosphere has been VERY busy this week, weighing in on why the headlines condemning meat consumption are full of ... ahem ... "horse hockey."  (They're right and they are, respectively -- but if i belonged to the opposition, i'd probably say "methinks thou dost protest too much.")

What I want to say, however, was inspired by the best debunker the world may ever have seen, the redoubtable Denise Minger, guest-posting at MarksDailyApple.com.  She points out various studies in which people are shown to REPORT vastly different quantities of food, compared to what they're actually using.  It's true:  it's VERY easy to make mistakes in that direction, even if you're trying hard to get it right.  Cooks with a great deal of experience may be able to "eyeball" quantities, but most people aren't that good.

Getting around to my point ("FINALLY" my husband would think, but not say...) -- most people don't have a good grasp of how much they actually consume.

If you're having trouble with weight-loss and you don't know what's going wrong, investing in measuring devices is a VERY good idea.  Weigh that meat, before and after cooking -- you'll be surprised at the difference as well as how much/little animal protein you really end up with, and how much of the fat is left behind in the skillet.  A pound of spinach cooks down into a pathetic little mound.  Measure your liquids:  mugs and glasses usually don't have predictable volumes.  Use FitDay.com or NutritionData.self.com, and let them do the calculating for you.

Try measuring EVERYTHING you put in your mouth for a week -- could be a revelation.