Blogging vs Websites

Great Monday Everyone! I hope the weekend went well for all. Mine was party city! I went to a Young Life Capernaum end of year party, followed by a graduation/birthday/goodbye to Beirut party! Too much fun and too much eating! No so good for a Healthy Diet Habits blogger and website maker!

 I have not been around in the blogging arena for the past three months and I have so missed blogging.  I have been developing a website about healthy diet habits with my lovely sister. I have seen diet after diet fail and this is disheartening.  Being overweight is about both, "what you eat" and also "how and why you eat", which is rarely examined in dieting. I have a great start on a website dedicated to this with over 150 pages so far and into the top 1% in Alexa. I thought I would spend a few minutes talking about website writing vs blogging, in case you are thinking of doing either one!

Blogging is simple. Find a topic you are passionate about, and share your thoughts and feelings about it. Try to make people think and laugh at the same time. Get your point across in a positive manner without offending anyone, although every now and again a good kick in the pants is okay. You can be random, scattered, and jump all over the place, as long as people can follow! Blogging is a blast! The key to a good blog is great organization. People need to be able to find your blog post again. It is good to enter excellent key words and have great titles. Clever titles may be good for a laugh, but may not allow the blog reader to find your post again! Blogging is personal and can be about sharing your story. It's about teaching but being known to others, and letting them see the real you. You can be in the story which is fun. I love blogging because I love to give details in story form. Just ask my poor husband!

Websites on the other hand require planning right from the start. For those of us used to blogging, they can be a serious challenge. There is no sitting down and just writing to your hearts content. There has to be a plan. An overall plan. Where are you going, what are you including, what are your keywords, what is your tiered system. How are you going to link all of your pages together and how will they relate. A good website leads readers from place to place and is easy to follow. This can get difficult and complicated when you add hundreds of pages. And once you get started and into your topic, you should have hundreds of pages! You have to. You have to find a niche within your topic that will give people what they need to know. They must like your website to come back. You must build great content, content, content which will drive more readers to your site. The trick is to provide this great organized content in a manner that is entertaining within your framework. I think most of us want practical information but most websites are not practical. What good is information if you do not understand how to use it. I have tried to keep this in mind as I have written my website. How can I make this topic practical for my readers who want to get off the diet treadmill, eat for health, lose weight, and keep it off longterm. It is a tall order but doable. My site is a work of love in process so check it out! http://www.healthy-diet-habits.com/index.html

Great to be back! Hope that everyone has a great week!

Kerry

Farmers Market Guide

Happy Saturday Everyone! Saturday in Woodinville means only one thing! Which farmers market do I wish to attend? Hummmm? Woodinville or Redmond? Today Redmond won out. It is bigger with more venders and at this time of year when fresh veggies are still sparse, bigger is better! Grabbed the go to guy, Dan, and off we went!

Why would we want to spend part of our weekend at the Farmers Market? Plain and simple. Fresh food tastes better and we want to be healthy. We want to support our local farmers and encourage them to keep growing the fresh food that we love!!! Plus we wanted to pick up the 2011 Puget Sound Farm Guide that just came out. It has everything we need to locate local farms, CSA's, Farmers Markets, Food Co-ops, and all of their information such as times and dates. Worth the trip to the market alone :)

This time of year at the market was sparse as expected. My favorite fresh fruits and veggies were not very abundant yet! But the atmosphere was still exciting. We had a great lunch of a fresh tamale and French bread stuffed with sausage, onions and tomatoes. Both were great! I love simple fresh ingredients and the sandwich will become a staple at our home. Just stir fried sausages, onions, and tomatoes stuffed in a French baguette. Super easy and my kind of a meal. Just fun to be outside and to get excited for what the next few weeks will bring.

The market also brought the motivation we needed to get our own garage hydroponic garden up and running. Seeing how much money we could save growing our own specialty lettuce spurred us on to renew our vision for our own harvest! I hope to have my own fresh salads in a few weeks! Yeah!

All in all a great day at the market! Can't wait for next Saturday! Be sure and grab a 2011 Puget Sound Farm Guide and check out all of the farmers markets in your neighborhood. You, like me will not be disappointed!

EASTER EATS

The focus of many a holiday, is the family meal? We have our generational menu that has been passed down through the ages. Healthy or not, our kids cannot make it without the famous Jell-O salad with the vanilla ice cream, or the starchy carbohydrate array! Easter is no exception! Most of us will be making ham, potatoes, corn, bread or rolls, Jell-o, and maybe a token green salad or green veggie and pie. I am dining with my wonderful friend’s family. That is our meal plan, the traditional Easter meal! My friend asked me to bring a green salad, because in her words, “You guys like green stuff.” Too funny!

Should we just accept this traditional meal or look for some ways to make some changes? Well? My choice is always: “Follow the half plate rule when possible.” How would that look for the Easter meal? How about this menu plan:

·        Ham

·        Roasted Potatoes drizzled with olive oil, sea salt, pepper

·        Chopped salad full of colorful veggies (Easter is colorful)

·        Asparagus-cooked how you love it!

·        Sliced melons

·        Lightened dessert of choice

This would be a great meal, enjoyed by all. It’s similar to our traditional meal, but half of our plate would be full of veggies! Yeah! Usually melons would be our dessert of choice, but because this is a special holiday, we will add in the dessert. I guarantee that you would be satisfied and even feel better than the heavier filling meal.

Let’s think outside of the box with our meals. Changes do not mean doing without, just adding some new tasty, healthier foods! Change tastes better!

FOOD DYES DRAW SCRUTINY-LINK TO HYPERACTIVE KIDS?

I read an interesting article, in the Seattle Times Sunday March 27th issue, about food dyes. It was a scary article showing that the use of artificial dyes by food makers is up by half since 1990. A British study found that children given food dyes showed  increased hyperactivity. Food dyes are used to make our foods pretty. If foods look colorful, we will eat them more. Many foods contain up to 9 different food dyes. Even healthy sounding foods like fruit roll ups are full of food dyes. Europe requires that foods containing dyes have warning labels on them. American food makers like Kellogg and Mars replaced the dyes with some natural dyes to avoid the labels there. America does not require food manufacturers to put warning labels on products containing dyes.

There have been studies that link dyes to hyperactivity in children, and cancer. In 1990, the FDA banned a red dye in cosmetics because it was linked to cancer, but permitted its use in foods. Go figure that. Not safe on your face, but you can eat it! Food Industry officials say that the dyes are safe and British studies are inconclusive. The FDA and the Grocery Manufacturers Association say these dyes are safe! Many companies are developing natural dyes, which is a step in the right direction.

My advice to everyone will always be the same. Whenever possible eat real foods over processed ones to avoid these chemical dyes. If we avoid foods that contain many dyes we can force large food companies to change their ways and clean up their foods. Do we really need to eat neon orange Doritos?

100 Calorie Snacks

Today I went to the store on a hunt for new 100 calorie food snack packs to recommend. Portion Distortion is the reason that most of us gain weight. Our culture has experienced the super-size me mentality, in a big way! Anything that helps us to control our portions is an idea I can recommend! Sounded good to me! I like to try items before I recommend them because sometimes foods that sound good are not. E.G. The 100 calorie chocolate chip cookies should be delish, but are terrible. So my plan was to purchase a few of the new 100 calorie food choices, try them, and recommend them! Sounds like a fun day to me!

I started in the dairy aisle and came upon the Jello pre-done Mousses and Puddings.  Yummy! I had heard that they are really good. I added the Jello dark chocolate mousse to my cart, but I glanced at the ingredients. Bad move. The first ingredient was water, then xylitol, and then some form of milk, followed by a bunch of ingredients I did not recognize. I was bummed! Dark chocolate decadence, I want you! I slowly put them back because I want to be healthy, and I want you to be healthy too. The 100 calorie snacks are made from junk, literally. They are not healthy, so eat them sparingly. Maybe buy your favorite box but don't plan on buying them by the pallet!

A Greek yogurt with a few almonds and an apple would taste great as well as give you nutrition! That is what I would recommend. Alas, except for buying a box of Lorne Doone 100 calorie cookies, that are my favorite, I came home empty handed. It is just hard to pay good money for junk, especially when the first ingredient is water!

I will post my healthy snack list in the next couple of days, so check back. Real food tastes so good and fills you up!

Happy Healthy Snacking!

*Just a note. I did find other 100 calorie snack packs of more healthy choices like cubed cheeses,  popcorn, nuts and craisins. I would recommend these because they are real foods and not processed ones :)

Calories by the Pound

I was flipping through some of my great books this week and I found a chart I had not noticed before. Calories by the pound. Very interesting! I had never thought of calories like that before. It clearly shows why certain foods cause us to gain weight and others don't. Here it is! Check it out!

FOOD	CALORIES PER POUND
Vegetables	65 to 195
Fresh Fruits	135 to 420
Nonfat dairy foods	180 to 450
Potatoes, pastas, brown rice, sweet potatoes, corn, hot cereals	280 to 650
Legumes: peas and beans, such as pinto, garbanzo, black and lentils	400 to 750
Seafood, lean poultry, lean red meat	400 to 870
Dried fruit, jams, fat-free muffins, and all breads, including sourdough rolls, bagels, pita breads, and baguettes	1200 to 1400
Dry cereal, pretzels, fat-free cookies, fat-free potato chips	1600 to 1780
Regular salad dressing	1800 to 2000
Chocolate bars, croissants, doughnuts	2200 to 2500
Nuts, regular potato chips	2500 to 3000
Butter, margarine	3200
Olive oil, corn oil, lard	4010

*From “The Pritikin Edge” by Robert A. Vogel and Paul Tager Lehr

There is a big jump between Seafood and Dried fruit, which is where the processed foods begin. Big surprise there? It really makes you think about the foods that you eat. How about eating a large bag of potato chips. That is almost the same calories as eating straight butter. Would you ever do that? I sure did not pick up that fact, when the bag of Chips that I was eating, listed the calories as 10 chips for 120 calories. Tortilla chips, my favorite are about the same as chips. Tears, tears, tears! You can still eat your favs., just need to be careful with them. Eating real food will pay of for you in weight control! Eat Healthy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Check out the website! I have been working hard! http://www.healthy-diet-habits.com

Great weekend to all! Kerry

Obesity and Next Generation Food Pyramid

Are Obesity and the Food Pyramid related?

I wanted to let you know about some new changes taking place out there. I have never loved the USDA's current food pyramid. It is heavily into grains and people use it to justify eating junk food. Well, I need grains, but alas cookies do not count! Well, the USDA has made some new guidelines and will publish a new food pyramid later this year! Wow, I won't have to recommend the Mediterranean Food Pyramid anymore! Maybe? Well, here are their new recommendations:

•  Enjoy your food, but eat less.
•  Avoid over-sized portions.
• Make half your plate fruits and vegetables (The half plate rule)
• Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk.
• Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals – and choose the foods with lower numbers.
• Drink water instead of sugary drinks.

These healthy diet habits are not difficult to incorporate into your life!

Another very scary piece of info I ran into was on the Obesity.org site. There have been a lot of studies done on children and adults and exercise does not seem to help in the development of obesity. Eight year old kids that exercise heavily do not seem to be thinner or have better BMI's than those eight year olds that do not exercise. That does not mean exercise is not important because it is very important for your general health, but not that helpful if you are overweight or obese or hoping not to become. What are we to do as a society?

I believe that you are what you eat! It is of extreme importance to eat healthy, avoid sugar and processed foods, develop a meal plan for calories and follow it with your family, and follow the above guidelines by the USDA. Practice portion control, eat less, follow the half plate rule, go for low fat milk products and watch salt intake and stop drinking sugary drinks. Please do not buy them for your family. The average person drinks 450 calories of drinks per day and that adds up to 45 pounds of weight gain per year! Each person needs have a food policy that says, "I don't drink calories!" I was at a dinner last week and there were various sodas, and only one diet soda that had caffeine. When the hostess asked me what I would like to drink, I said "I would love a glass of water!" It was not that hard. This one "food policy" that you develop for yourself, could be the difference between obesity and health!

Yes, I do believe that Obesity is related to food choices more than exercise habits. It is hard to make a general rule, because I believe that there are other causes too. Obesity is complicated, and I do not believe that scientists totally understand what causes it, at this point. Dieting and Genetics and Hormones are all factors to be considered too!

Various Health Tips

One of the most helpful qualities in life is the love of learning! Read everything you can get your hands on, because there is so much helpful information out there! I was at my local pharmacy today, and they had free booklets you could take. I took them and learned lots I did not know! Did you know:

• If you eat a daily serving of nuts (about a handful) instead of red meat you can lower your risk of heart disease by 30%. Don't overdo this because they are fattening. 
• Walking for just ten minutes at a fast pace delivers immediate benefits in burning calories and fat and maintaining healthy glucose levels.
• Vit D supplements may get you through the winter flu-free.
• Water-soluble cinnamon extract decreases fasting glucose in prediabetes, according to a recent USDA study. 
• Start your day with oatmeal. It will move unhealthy LDL cholesterol out of your bloodstream.
• If you do not like fish, take an algae-based omega 3 supplement that contains the same omegas as fish oil.
• Break your multivitamin in half and take half at breakfast and half at dinner to get a steady supply of vitamins and minerals all day long.
• Control Diabetes with a good nights sleep.
• Black rice, which is a whole grain with a nutty flavor is loaded with healthy antioxidants and is a new superfood. It may better than blueberries and you can get it at health food stores and Asian food markets, and some supermarkets!
• If you eat flaxseed, whole grains and berries, you can drop your risk of breast cancer if you are post-menopausal by 14%.
• 3.5 ounces of fish food on your plate twice a week will lower depression.
• Count your blessings each day and write down something you are grateful for. Your gratitude journal will help you be more optimistic, healthier and exercise more.
• Eat at least one cup of cooked dark green leafy veggies (Kale, spinach and chard) or four cups of raw each day. This can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 14 percent. Cook them in a pan over low heat in a bit of olive oil until wilted.

Well, I am off to write in my gratitude journal, that I am glad I picked up these health brochures today and took the time to read them. I want to try black rice. Yummy! I am encouraged to eat more kale and spinach, which I love and try chard! Be a learner, it could save your life one day! Blessed to be a blessing! Kerry

Long term weight loss

Most of the people who diet, gain their weight back. The national weight loss registry reports that only 5% of people keep the weight off long term. Here is a list of the qualities found in people who did keep the weight off long term:

• They expect failure and keep trying.
• Do not deny themselves; they eat some for taste but not to get full.
• Weigh themselves often.
• Exercise for 1 hour a day. One out of four people walks briskly.
• They add extra bits of physical activity into their daily routine.
• A high carbohydrate/low fat diet works best for most of the people in the registry.
• Eat five small meals per day.

If you have lost weight and do not want to gain it back these are some ideas that have worked for successful people who have kept their weight off long term!

Food Policies for Kerry

This is my list of food policies that I try to practice. I call it my cheat sheet and review it often because these are the areas I most often fail in.

1. Flip my calories and try to eat most of my calories early on in the day. I feel a lot better eating this way.
2. Eat smaller meals and 2 snacks rather than grazing to keep my blood sugar more balanced. Remember that big meals spike blood sugar and I will be hungrier.
3. Eat breakfast when I first get up to speed up my metabolism and I will eat less later on.
4. Work on not eating after dinner. Use strategies from my list of other things to do besides eat, if I am struggling.
5. Pay attention to whether I am emotionally or physically hungry and practice eating until I am satisfied and not stuffed.
6. Don't deprive myself of the foods that I love but eat them in moderation with no guilt attached and be flexible.
7. Use the half plate rules and make sure I prepare enough veggies and salads to fill our plates half full.
8. Know proper portion sizes for the main foods that I eat and choose wisely most of the time.
9. Use my restaurant/fast food guide for the restaurants I visit.
10. Cut out most white stuff and processed foods and eat more whole grains. Ditch the empty calories most of the time because there is no place that they fit in on my meal plan.
11. Be in touch with my feelings and do not eat when I am emotional but solve my problems rather than eating my way through them.
12. Check out the markets for lower calorie foods that I love if I do not want to do without them. Safeway angel food cake and strawberries/cool whip is awesome and less than 150 calories!
13. Get rid of thinking that there are forbidden foods. If I want it, I can have it but just a small piece. I can eat it again whenever I want.
14. Try and walk daily for thirty minutes and do weights and the ball 3 times per week.
15. Take calcium and Vit. D daily.

This is a simple list but it has a solution for most of the areas that I struggle in. It is kind of a changing list and if an area is under control, I will delete it. I would suggest that everyone develops their own food policy list similar to mine, that has their polices on it. It takes a lot of pressure off to know what your policies are, rather than having to make the same decisions and face the same struggles over and over. 

Check out the website! It has a few more pages every day! Kerry

 

New Products

KerryHey there everyone!

 I was at Trader Joe's today looking around for inspiration! Found some new products, at least I had not seen them before. They were all one serving and located in the freezer section:

Reduced Guilt Mac'n Cheese        270 calories                             $1.99

Reduced Guilt Sole                       190 calories                             $2.99

Reduced Guilt Roasted

Vegetable Couscous                     250 calories                             $2.69

Reduced Guilt Baked Ziti              320 calories                             $1.99

All of these entrees would be great lunch choices that you could just stick in the microwave at work. They all looked good especially the couscous and sole. They are way healthier than eating fast food and less caloric. They must be good because people were loading up on them!

Also started looking at the rest of the freezer section and there are many great entrees for lunches or dinners in a pinch. They may seem more pricey than cooking from scratch but they are cheaper than eating out.

They had some single serving items that looked great!

Garden Vegetable Lasagna for 290 calories and it serves one but I could not find the price.

Spinach and Vegetable Lasagna for 340 calories for $1.99

Chicken Lasagna for 290 calories. It is the same size as the Garden and Spinach Lasagna so I assumed that it was one serving but when I checked it was actually two servings so I was almost tricked. It would be almost 600 calories for the serving. I would think most of us would eat the entire thing. I would much rather go for the garden or spinach lasagna and get a double portion! I like volume!

Watch the serving size because the manufacturers try to trick us by making the stats look really low and hope that we miss the serving size.

Check out the new website that my lovely sister is making for me!!

Kerry

Week 6 of Simple Lifestyle Changes

Well everyone! It is the end of the 6 weeks of Lifestyle Changes. I hope that you have all incorporated a few of these simple changes! I would advise you to create a Journal Roadmap sheet using the information you have garnered from the previous weeks. You should have identified your helpful and unhelpful behaviors, activities, situations, and times that are hardest for you, and your triggers and feelings that are difficult. Fill out a cheat sheet for all of the ideas and helps that most apply to you.

Also, include on your cheat sheet the main changes that you hope to make in the coming months. Even if you are only working consistently on a few of these changes, you should see success as you are more aware of your choices, habits and patterns. Remember a great idea is to work on three habits per month as it takes a month to create a new habit. If you do this for a year, you will have 36 new habits incorporated into your life fairly easily.

I will share my personal cheat sheet with you tomorrow to give you an idea of how to do this!

Blessings!

Kerry

Journal Questions

I posted some questions a couple of weeks ago that you could begin to ask yourself when looking at your journals. Here are some more questions to ask yourself. If you are not journaling about what and why you eat, I would encourage you to try to journal at least a couple of times per week for awareness purposes. Your observations can give you areas to work on to change rather than dieting!

Did you try to decrease portions a little bit?
Did you observe the 20 minute rule or eat a few nuts or soup before your dinner?
Did you try to increase fruits and veggies and observe the half plate rule?
Did you eat breakfast daily, add a protein source, healthy grain or a fruit?
Did you try to cook healthy meals rather than grab and go?
Did you eat healthy pre-plated snacks rather than grazing?
Did you clean out your cupboards of all junk food?
Did you try to eat your meals on smaller dishes and bowls?
Did you try to come up with any strategies to help with emotional eating?
Did you notice the times during the week where you ate when you were not hungry?
Did you try to eat 100% whole grain bread and healthy cereals or try any new grains like quinoa or couscous?
Did you try to increase fiber in your diet?
Did you try any new salads or stir fry your veggies with fresh herbs?
Did you find that your cravings were improving?
Did you notice any new food triggers?
Did you notice any situations that were difficult food wise?
Did you try to address your feelings in a manner that did not involve food?
Did you look for lower calorie versions or recipes for foods that you love to keep them in your life?

There are tons of questions that you can ask yourselves when you journal. Your journal provides a road map that shows where there are detours. If you can learn the detours, you can devise strategies to avoid the detours. We are all different and there is not one set plan that will work for each of us but great strategies will trump willpower every time.

Journaling is the best predictor of weight loss! As you ask yourselves these questions, you can begin to understand yourself and develop a personal plan!

Happy Weekend Everyone!!!

Week 5 of Simple Lifestyle Changes

Another Happy Monday Everyone,
The goal of this 6 week mini tutorial is to help you make some simple lifestyle changes and to help you to see that a total diet redo might not be necessary. It is all about keeping the really great foods in your life that you love on a limited basis and looking for those triggers in your life that cause you to look to food. Keep working on being aware of what triggers you to eat. Develop some great strategies to use when you are in a situation that triggers are bombarding you!
Some other Diet Advice would be:

• Add more fish into your diet and lower-fat protein sources.
• Limit fat to between 20% to 30% of your foods. (Basically cut way down on the processed foods and add more veggies. We eat by volume which is great because veggie dishes and salads take up a lot of room on your plate. Your visual brain will be happy!)
• Continue to decrease eating fried foods. Never a good idea!
• Do not fall prey to deceptive advertising. Remember that low fat does not mean low calorie. A bag of fat free licorice is very pricey calorie wise and will start the cravings. Skip entire aisles of the market and shop the outer edge where the healthy foods are placed. 
• Continue to work on seeing processed foods as poison. They literally poison your body and cause you to experience severe cravings for sugar.
• Eat smaller meals to keep your blood sugar under control. This will keep you full longer and help with cravings.
• Continue to experiment with meatless meals, soups, healthy bean chilies, and new veggie type salads or Mediterranean dishes.
• Choose low or non fat milk, yogurts and cheeses. Non fat cheese is not great but the lower fat versions are fairly good. Watch yogurts. Some are very caloric. There are some great Greek yogurts with 100 calories a serving. Many of the yogurts are very high sugar. Try other milk sources also. The Soy light Milks and Almond Milks are great choices.
• Buy ready made or prepared fruits and veggies rather than junk food or chips. Many people tell me eating healthy is too pricey. But have you priced out some of the specialty chips per pound that we all load up on. You could be eating steak!
• Review previous weeks as a reminder and make sure you are incorporating some of these changes into your life.

If you have any questions, contact me through facebook and I will be happy to answer them. 

http://www.facebook.com/lifestylesoln

Have a great week everyone! Kerry

FEAR OF THE MIGHTY SCALE

Many people are afraid of their bathroom scale. It holds great power over them and the thought of finding that the scale shows a few extra pounds is so overwhelming that they do not weigh. I wanted to clear up a few misconceptions about your scale weight.

1. Your weight is not a fixed number but varies daily. Yeah, we all know that. Why the freak out then? Most of us find that our weight will fluctuate within a few pounds. This is simply a product of how much salt you ate or your hormones most days and not true weight gain. Do not freak out and binge eat!

2. The best way to control your weight is to know yourself. What is your weight range. If you normally weigh between 140 and 144, then do not freak out at 144. Consistently track your weight weekly and as long as you are in that range you are ok. When you need to worry is when your weight is consistently 142 to 146. You probably have gained two pounds. So there are times when you feel lighter at 142 when you are in your lower 4 pound span, than 142 when you are in your upper 4 pound span. Claim a four pound block that is your range. When you are hitting the upper range and going a bit beyond, that is the time to clean up your eating for a bit.

3. The best way to tell if you are gaining a few pounds is by your clothes. Are they tight? You could be 142 and your pants fit great or 142 and your pants are tight! If they are tight, you probably gained a few pounds, even though the scale does not register it.

4. WEIGHT GAIN DOES NOT SHOW UP OVERNIGHT BUT TAKES A FEW DAYS TO HIT. I believe this fact is not known or we ignore it. Most people weigh the day after "pigging out" and say "Whew, I did not gain any weight!" Then they purposely eat healthy for a couple of days and weigh. They have gained a couple of pounds. They say "I may as well eat because when I pigged out I did not gain a pound, but when I ate healthy I gained. I am soooooo depressed. I must make myself feel better by eating a bag of my comfort chips!" A little exaggeration but isn't this what we do?

5. If you track your weight gain or loss it will not be a straight line but a zig zag line going up and down. That is just how our bodies work.

6. The important thing is to claim your pound range. Most people stop weighing when they reach their weight goal and then hope for the best. Keep weighing weekly and do not live in a dream world!

If your pants are tight you are probably gaining weight even if you scale does not register it yet (Unless you accidentally put your jeans in the dryer!) The most helpful hint I have for not gaining weight is to never buy bigger clothes. When you hit the high end of your weight gain, add more veggies and be mindful of your carbohydrates and you will be a winner!