Want to know Carrie Underwood's secret for staying slim?
I was surprised when I discovered it while reading "A Day in the Food Life of Carrie Underwood" in Every Day with Rachael Ray. (Some people want to know the intimate details of your sex life, but I'm much more interested in learning about your food life.)
Underwood, American Idol's fourth-season winner, put on 20 pounds during the show's airing, but then took it off and learned a thing or two about keeping her weight under control in the process.
So, how does she do it?
Sensibly, just like Weight Watchers suggests, although I've never read anything linking Underwood & Weight Watchers. She watches what she eats, drinks lots of water, and begins most days with an hour-long workout in her home gym.
But the biggest revelation was that she has been tracking what she eats in a food journal for six years. The only time she doesn't is when she's on vacation.
Sound familiar? If you're a Weight Watchers member, you know how important tracking your food intake is on the Program. And that's because Keeping a food journal works.
In an online interview Carrie said, "I discovered that writing down everything I eat makes such a difference, because you never realize how much you're consuming unless you read it later in the day," she says, pulling out a colorful 8-by-10-inch notebook from her purse. "I take this with me everywhere." She opens the journal to the entry from the day before and begins reading: "I had two whole-grain waffles for breakfast. Then I had a sandwich for lunch, which I put down as bread, fake meat [she's vegetarian], and cheese." The key, she says, is checking the calorie count on food labels and jotting down the details immediately after a meal to avoid food amnesia. "I'm a big nighttime eater," says Carrie. "When I can look at my diary and see how many calories I've consumed during the day, I'm able to figure out how much I can eat at night."
Doesn't that sound like a typical exchange from a Weight Watchers meeting? Paying attention and tracking our food intake helps us become aware of all kinds of behaviors we have been mindlessly engaging in.
Jennifer Hudson said something similar when questioned on the Dr. Oz show about the "pain of tracking." She laughed and said, "Are you kidding me? In exhcange for tracking what I eat and drink, I get to wear these cute clothes and look and feel like this! It's a small price to pay."
Weight Watchers makes it easy to track so there's never an excuse not to do it. They provide you with a weekly paper tracker every time you attend a meeting. If you'd rather keep a longer more detailed log, there's an Ultimate 3 Month Tracker for sale at participating meeting loctions. And eTools, makes it fun and easy to track with your computer, iPad or smartphone.
Are you a faithful food tracker like Underwood? As you can see from her results it's works! So, if you're not, what's stopping you? Remember your life doesn't get better by chance. It gets better by change.
If you liked this post about Carrie Underwood's Secret for Staying Slim, check out these links:
- My post about drinking fewer high PointsPlus value beverages and weight loss
- My post about managing your portions and weight loss
- Interview with Carrie Underwood (Women's Health)
- Findings from a Kaiser-Permanente weight loss study that showed people who tracked their food intake lost twice as much as those who didn't (Science Daily)
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