Just wanted to post a photo of my gorgeous friend Meg on her wedding day. You may have read about Meg on my blog before here and here. Although I ran out of time to actually post Meg’s food diaries, our grocery store tour, and follow up meetings, I documented it all with photos and may someday backtrack it and blog it all. In the meantime, I just wanted to say how proud I am of her and all of her hard work.

As I mentioned yesterday, I asked Megan to keep track of her intake and exercise for one week so I could assess what changes we could make to achieve the 1,ooo daily calorie deficit she’s striving for in order to lose 2 pounds/week. Whenever you take a close look at anyone’s diet, there will always be many different areas for improvement. I find it easier to just pick one or two things at a time to focus on. So here’s Megan’s intake/exercise for her ‘baseline’ week: As you can see, for her baseline week, Megan decided to “kick-start” her diet instead of just keeping track of her usual intake.  She tells me she was aiming to consume ~500 calories/day. This is contraindicated as it is very difficult to consume adequate amounts of nutrients when the daily caloric level is below 1,200. Besides, it’s just not realistic long term. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but when you are losing weight, think of it as a new way of eating forever, not just until you reach your goal weight. If you think you are just going to do this one crazy diet until you reach your weight and then try and figure out what to do to eat healthy at that time; chances are you will gain the weight back and feel very discouraged. To help you visualize what a healthy and well balanced diet looks like you can take a look at the new icon the USDA has just released. Here’s a link to MyPlate.gov So besides eating a realistic amount of calories, here are the two things that I asked Megan to focus on and master for the next two weeks: Don’t be afraid of “carbs”. You may have noticed that “carbs” did not make an appearance during Megan’s baseline week.  Carbohydrates definitely need to hire a new publicist. The “bad carbs” have given an overall negative image to all carbohydrates and that’s just not true. “Good carbs” are essential to a healthy and well balanced diet that will help you achieve and/or maintain your healthy body weight. Plus the B vitamins present in whole grains are a big part of your metabolism. Be physically active every day. Yes, that includes Saturdays and Sundays too. And of course, you need to be consuming an adequate amount of calories to have enough energy to exercise. And ~50% of your calories should be coming from carbohydrates. This week I’m going to the grocery store with Megan to answer her questions and will be posting that on here too. Go Megan!!