Tag Archives: portion control

Janet Jackson Flaunts Slim Figure at Milan Fashion Week

Janet Jackson attended Milan Fashion Week in Italy this week looking as slim as ever, proving that she knows how to lose the weight and keep it off.

Jackson, 46, made headlines last year for her dramatic 60-plus pound weight loss as an official Nutrisystem spokesperson.

Jackson lost the weight on Nutrisystem Success, which is the meal delivery program’s extension specifically designed to help members transition back into their everyday routine once losing the weight. It also holds more emphasis on daily exercise.

During her time with Nutrisytem, Jackson revealed what always stood between her and any successful weight loss attempts. “Dieting never worked for me, counting calories never worked for me, and denying myself the foods I love never worked for me,” she said. “I needed a better plan, and I found it with Nutrisystem.” (more…)

Posted on February 25, 2024 by Dana

Giada De Laurentiis’ Yoga Practice Disproves the Phrase ‘Never Trust a Skinny Chef’

Giada De Laurentiis is a household name for many foodies. Her Food Network shows and cookbooks have taken her to celebrity chef status and have earned her an Emmy for her show, “Everyday Italian,” while her books have landed on the New York Times bestseller list many times. The one thing that may set Giada apart from her other celeb chef colleagues is her figure. Great chefs are rarely thin and Giada has managed to be both. She recently revealed some of her secrets for remaining so trim in spite of a world filled with pesto and desserts.

Giada will be seen on newsstands everywhere this month as she graces the cover of November’s Women’s Health. The magazine cover highlights the questions many of us were wondering – how does she cook for a living and still manage to stay so fit? Inside, Giada tells Women’s Health writer Sarah Copeland that she’s asked that question often. So what did she say? Giada simply relies on portion control. She says she eats everything she cooks, just not much of it at one sitting.

Along with portion control, Kathryn Budig, Women’s Health yoga contributor and author of The Big Book of Yoga releasing this month, can testify that Giada gets intense yoga workouts three to four times a week. Budig is often the one who pushes Giada through these routines. She told us what those workout sessions look like. (more…)

Posted on October 17, 2023 by Lacy

Portion Reality Check: Learn How to Manage Your Whole Diet

By Janis Jibrin, M.S., R.D., Best Life lead nutritionist

You may be somewhat of a portion pro after reading my last two blogs: I’ve shown you how many starchy foods you can eat, and how many indulgent foods (sweets, alcohol and more) you can get away with. If you can get a handle on these fattening foods, half your calorie battle is won.

Now it’s time to focus on the rest of your diet: protein, fat, dairy (or dairy alternatives), fruits and vegetables. Find out how many servings you get of each using the chart below.

Keep in mind, it’s not just about quantity—the quality of these foods can make or break your long-term health, so I’ll steer you toward the healthiest choices down below. (more…)

Posted on October 17, 2023 by BestLifeDiet

Servings Size Scams Don’t Effect the Well Informed

I get a lot of emails from people that know I’m a health writer that stumble upon interesting articles. They shoot me the link, usually with a subject line of “Can you believe this!?” Today I logged in to find an article sent to me called “Serving Size Scams Can Make You Fat” from MSNBC.com. Excited to share with you all which foods are “marketed as lower in calories than they really are,” I opened the link.

Fail. This is what I found:

Serving Size Rip-Off: Campbell’s Chunky Microwaveable Soup
Listed calories: 200
Servings per container: 2
Total calories: 400

They then go on to claim it is ludicrous that one single microwavable cup is 2 servings because people will only eat it all in one sitting.

They list Pop Tarts (who only eats just one?) packages of ramen noodles, pot pies and more processed foods that anyone interested in eating healthy wouldn’t touch anyway as shady labeling offenders…because they have more than one serving per package.

Wait, wait, wait. So because most people will devour the food in one sitting, companies should change their serving sizes to one entire package? Valid point if you want to make it, but to say they are “scamming” people is making excuses for those who aren’t informed on how to properly read a nutrition label. All the information on the package is correct and legal- it is not the company’s fault you don’t know how to interpret it.

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Posted on March 7, 2024 by Kelly

Restaurant Customers Want Smaller Portions

small piece of fruit tart on a big plateEarlier this week, McDonald’s announced they will be cutting the portion of fries that come with a Happy Meal and including a serving of fruit or vegetables with every meal. But McDonald’s isn’t the only company that might see success with a strategy of portion-reduction, as a new report reveals that consumers want smaller portions at restaurants.

In the United States, many restaurants have offered huge servings to convey a sense of value to customers. But a market research company, The NPD Group, found that 57 percent of the people they surveyed want to eat smaller portions when dinning out. The firm surveyed over 5,000 adults. Smaller portions were seen to be the most important to consumers between the ages of 35 and 45, an age when many people find it easy to gain weight.

“We were trying to understand what constitutes healthy eating or a healthy lifestyle in consumers’ minds,” Dori Hickey, NPD’s director of product management, told Nation’s Restaurant News. “What we saw was a difference in where they’ve been and where they aspire to be.”

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Posted on July 28, 2023 by Health Buzz

Keeping Your Cholesterol Numbers in Check

Many things come with age. Unfortunately, some of those are narrowed arteries and high cholesterol. These days, being prescribed medication for high cholesterol is almost a given, maybe even a right of passage from middle age to senior citizen-hood. But let’s face it, no one likes to take medication and many people would like to try supplements and lifestyle changes before they jump on the prescription bandwagon.

So first, let’s define a few things. When you get a lipid panel here are things you will see and what your target numbers are:

  • HDL=good cholesterol Goal: Greater than 40 mg/dL for men, greater than 50 mg/dL for women
  • Total cholesterol = combination of your LDL/HDL and other components Goal: Less than 200 mg/dL
  • Triglycerides = Fat that your body stores Goal: Less than 150 mg/dL

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Posted on July 25, 2023 by Sarah

Ten Ways to Enjoy National Ice Cream Day

National Ice Cream Day is July 17 and though one of summer’s favorite snacks can be heavy on the sugar, fat and calories it can also be a nutritious way to consume healthy vitamins and minerals.

If you look in the freezer section in your local grocery store you might be overwhelmed by the plethora of ice cream varieties that tout various health benefits for all dietary needs.

If you’re Gluten-Free…
Try Good Karma Organic Rice Divine Chocolate Chip. Made with organic ingredients and rice milk, Good Karma offers nearly a dozen flavors of non-dairy dessert based on rice. Keep it simple with Chocolate Chip but if you like more creative flavors, opt for Key Lime Pie, Coconut Mango or Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge.

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Posted on July 16, 2023 by Maris

NutriSystem Flex Offers Dieters A Flexible Meal Delivery Diet

For those who want to lose weight, but still enjoy some flexibility in your diet, NutriStystem Flex could be the answer for you. This new program from NutriSystem offers you five days of prepackaged meals each week. The other two days are your flexible days, making it the most convenient and lowest price program that NutriSystem offers.

On the days that you eat the prepackaged meals, you will be eating breakfast, lunch, dinner and a dessert. You can select your own meals, or choose to have some of the most popular items sent to you. A lot of the guesswork is eliminated because you will receive a Flex Meal Planner with your food. This planner will tell you what to eat, when to eat and how to balance NutriSystem meals with your own recipes.

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Posted on July 5, 2023 by Descygna

SnackWell’s Introduces New Higher Calorie Treats

Remember SnackWell’s snack cakes? Think back to the mid 90s and you might remember the distinct green packaging and popularity of their Devil’s Food Cookie Cakes. Nabisco SnackWell’s came along in 1992 and grew enormously popular as the go-to brand for low-fat snacks. Unfortunately, other brands caught on to the low calorie snack craze and forced SnackWell’s to stop advertising in 2005.

Now SnackWell’s is reintroducing the brand with several new snacks that are higher in calories than the popular 100 calorie portioned snacks that are widely available. The new offerings from SnackWell’s will have a very different packaging and will vary in calories but range from 130 to 150 calories per serving.

Although these snacks offer a low calorie count, all calories are not created equal. This product line is still very highly processed. The new products from SnackWell’s include Cinnamon Raisin Cereal Bars, Peanut Butter Cereal Bars, Chocolate Cereal Bars, White Fudge Drizzled Caramel Popcorn, Fudge Drizzled Caramel Popcorn, Vanilla Crème Brownie Bites, Fudge Crème Brownie Bites and Fudge Drizzled Double Chocolate Chip Cookies. A closer look at the ingredients on these new products reveals that most of them have brown sugar, sugar, maltitol syrup and corn syrup listed in the first five ingredients. They also include things like fructose, which is also a form of sugar, and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil which is trans-fat. The products are still allowed to make the claim of being trans-fat free if they contain less than 0.5 grams per serving, which is the case with the SnackWell’s products. This new product line proves the importance of reading nutrition labels.

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Posted on June 12, 2023 by Descygna

Foodily.com Calculates Nutrition Information for Homemade Recipes

I love cooking my own meals. There are many benefits to cooking at home: it’s cheaper than eating out, you can alter ingredients to suit your tastes and dietary needs, and you can control your portion sizes more easily.

However, there is a downside: it can be difficult to know the nutrition information for the meals that you are cooking. You could spend hours searching for the nutrition information for every ingredient you use to cook with, combining the totals for each ingredient in each recipe, and then dividing the totals by portions. Honestly, that sounds like a lot of work to me. So, you can imagine how excited I was to discover Foodily.com.

Foodily.com is a cool new recipe search website that offers recipes from popular websites such as All Recipes, The Pioneer Woman, Martha Stewart, and many more. Users can search the entire database for recipes that they want to cook based on ingredients, keywords, and even ingredients that they do not want to cook with. You can also filter your results by recipes that originally appeared on a blog, ones that contain high levels of fiber, are low in fat, or are considered to be low carb. Now, you can search many Internet recipe website at one location to find one that meets your dietary needs or satisfy that late night craving. Think of it as the Google for recipes.

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Posted on May 19, 2023 by Health Buzz

Carrie Fisher Drops 30 Pounds with Jenny Craig Diet

Photo: Star Wars Wikia

It’s been nearly 35 years since Carrie Fisher first made the hearts of science fiction nerds all around the world skip a beat as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy. But even a Princess can’t stop the sands of time and the weight loss difficulties that come with aging.

Since last November, Fisher has been endorsing the Jenny Craig diet and has apparently been reaping the diet’s benefits – she has reportedly lost 30 pounds.

“I feel much better,” Fisher, 54, tells People. “My blood pressure is down.”

Back in her Star Wars heyday, Fisher was a very petite 105 pounds, but like anyone else who goes on to live a sedentary lifestyle, the pounds began to pile on.

Last year Fisher decided to go public with her weight issues. In her autobiography, Fisher reveals that she has suffered from bipolar disorder and drug issues. However, it wasn’t until she went on tour to perform her autobiographical play entitled “Wishful Drinking” in 2024 that her weight started to go up. (more…)

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Jason