400-Calorie Spring & Summer Recipes!

Warmer weather brings cravings for light, low-calorie meals that fill us up and help us look sexy in the season's show-off styles. Welcome spring and summer by stocking your menu with recipes from Prevention's new 400 Calorie Fix Cookbook.

Each dish here uses simple ingredients and offers "make it a meal" suggestions for sides and desserts that keep your meal in the 400-calorie range. Remember: eating four 400-calorie meals is a no-fail way to lose weight and rev metabolism — just in time for sundress season!

Get inspired for breakfast, lunch, and dinner now! 

Frittata with Asparagus, Basil, and Romano Cheese

In-season asparagus stars in this brunch frittata while chopped potatoes make it a filling meal that curbs afternoon cravings. Ready to eat in under 30 minutes.
Calories Per Serving: 270
CLICK HERE for the recipe

Golden Roast Chicken with Lemon, Garlic, and Rosemary

Juicy, tender, and seasoned with simple ingredients, this chicken dish couldn't be more delicious.
Calories Per Serving: 150
See the full recipe — and what to pair it with!



Excerpted from 400 Calorie Fix Cookbook. For a listing of more "under 400 calorie meals, click HERE!

Resetting Your Stomach’s Internal Clock

It’s noon. Are you hungry? Many of us have become conditioned to eat “by the clock,” taking our meals at the same time every day, with little regard to our body’s natural hunger signals. While eating on a set schedule is generally more convenient and socially acceptable, relying too heavily on your watch instead of your stomach can lead to mindless eating and overeating.

The Evolution of Mealtimes

Thousands of years ago, before the Agricultural Revolution, humans roamed the Earth, hunting animals for meat and gathering edible fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Food was scarce and obesity was unheard of. Our ancestors ate whenever possible as if their lives’ depended upon it. Many times it did – starving to death was a very real threat.

Advances in agriculture, food production, storage, and preservation have drastically changed the way we live as well as the way we eat. Most of us no longer have to constantly worry about foraging together enough scraps to survive. Nowadays, food is usually never more than a few steps away in the nearest fridge, vending machine, or drive-thru. And instead of facing constant shortages, modern food production results in a huge over-supply; the USDA estimates that 3,800 calories per day per person are produced in the United States.

In short, eating has transitioned from an important activity necessary for our continued existence into a routine everyday task we give little thought to. Set meals – breakfast, lunch, and dinner – are a convenient way for us to meet our daily nutrition requirements in a method that fits well with our work schedules and time commitments (see The Main Meal of the Day).

Recalibrating Your Hunger Signals

With such easy access to food served in several meals throughout the day, it’s likely many of us don’t know what hunger – true hunger – is. That said, billions of people in the world still face severe hunger and malnutrition, even with our overabundance of readily-available food here in the US.

Eating three solid meals a day has quite likely skewed our definition of “hungry.” The human body is capable of going many days without eating anything at all. In fact, many other carnivores and omnivores in the animal kingdom eat only a couple of times per week, or less. Eating a few hours later than usual may make you “hungry,” but chances are you are not actually “starving to death.”

Why Do You Eat?

Learning to trust your body and listening to natural hunger and fullness signals are some of the basic principles of the Intuitive Eating movement. It can, of course, be difficult to trust your own body after so many years of conditioning by external influences, including eating at set times of the day. It may help to ask yourself the question, “Why am I eating?” Ideally, you are eating to satisfy your hunger and not eating just because you want to eat. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one. Are you hungry? Are you bored? Are you stressed? Is it “time” for lunch?

Calorie Count co-founder Erik Fantasia and his fiancée, Heather Curtis, are currently traveling around the world.  You can follow their adventures online with Facebook and their blog.

Pave the Way for Persistence

When it comes to permanent weight loss, persistence is where the tire meets the road. There will be many ups and downs along this road, and you'll have to keep yourself going even when things get tough. If you’ve been working the previous eight steps in this plan, you have already done much of the preparation necessary to cultivate and support persistence. You’ve developed some knowledge and skills to help you overcome common stumbling blocks. And you’ve articulated your vision, found your inspiration, chosen your direction, designed some specific goals and strategies, and given your beliefs and attitudes a good reality check.

The next step is practice—developing a set of daily practices or situations that promote persistence. Here are some key elements you’ll want to include in your daily practice:

Surround yourself with excellence.

• Find success stories that inspire you and read them often.
• Associate yourself with people who are actively pursuing positive goals similar to yours.
• Share your Vision Statement with a few people you can trust to be supportive, and ask them to give you a good kick in the butt when they think you need it.
• Give yourself permission to demote non-supportive friends to “I’ll check in with you later” status.

Give your physical environment a persistence-building makeover.
The old cliché “out of sight, out of mind” is really true for human beings, as is its opposite, “in sight, in mind.” Your ability to persist to your final weight-loss goal will be much greater when you make sure that the places you spend most of your time are full of positive cues, such as objects, photos, inspiring quotes, and other visual reminders of your vision and your goals. You can also spare yourself a lot of grief by having several “go-to” strategies and tools for handling stress readily available: music to soothe the emotional eating beast, meditation, a journal to write in, candles, oils and scents for a relaxing hot bath, and so on.

Finally, make sure you eliminate as many negative cues and triggers as you can. Don’t keep foods you don’t want to eat in plain sight, put the exercise bike right in front of the TV so you have to sit on it to see the TV, etc. You get the idea.

Go public.
The more people who know about your goals, the more support you’ll get, and the harder it will be to find places where you feel comfortable NOT doing what you’ve said you want to do. Sometimes, embarrassment and peer pressure can be your friends.
Reward success, but don't punish yourself for failures. Find small, enjoyable rewards for yourself when you do well. And keep in mind that doing well means doing your part well—healthy eating, exercise and self-care—not just seeing a change on the scale. When you don’t do so well, make sure you don’t fall into the trap of beating yourself up. Just get back on track. Find someone else who’s having a bad day and see if there’s something you can say or do to help them out. That works like a charm for getting yourself out of your own negative state of mind when all else fails.

For more persistence-building ideas, see:

Sharing Is Achieving
Goal Buddies Are Golden
Weight Loss Journals: Hands-On Inspiration

-- By Dean Anderson, Behavioral Psychology Expert

Eat More, Stress Less, Lose Weight!

Most of us are getting less than 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night, which experts say is the minimum amount that a person needs to maintain a healthy weight. Most of us also face high amounts of stress as well.
Now a group of researchers reports that these 2 factors--not enough sleep and too much stress--could be one of the main culprits sabotaging our weight-management goals.
Increased sleep + reduced stress = more successful weight loss?
A study just published in the International Journal of Obesity shows that getting 6 to 8 hours of sleep a night, while at the same time managing stress effectively, may double your chances of winning at the weight-loss game.
The study, from the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, involved almost 500 overweight men and women who volunteered to participate in a 26-week intervention looking at their diets and lifestyles. Here are the results:

• The average study subject lost 14 pounds.
• Sixty percent of participants lost at least 10 pounds.
• Those who slept at least 6 to 8 hours every night and reported having the least stress were twice as likely to lose at least 10 pounds, compared to those who reported being sleep-deprived and experiencing the most stress.

How to get more sleep and reduce stress
While it might be easier said than done to implement this program, here are a few tips I give to my patients:

• Check in with your stress throughout the day. Is your breathing deep or shallow? This is important to note because shallow breathing can often accompany stress. I'm a big fan of deep breathing, and sometimes use my training as a registered yoga teacher to demonstrate deep-breathing techniques to my clients. (Here are some deep-breathing exercises from the American Lung Association.) You might also consider gentle yoga, meditation, or Tai chi to help manage your stress.

• Get to bed earlier. If you have a hard time getting to bed at a decent hour, think about buying an automatic light timer for your main light source in your living room (or wherever you hang out during the later hours). If you program this device to turn off your light at least 30 minutes before you want to get to sleep, you'll have no trouble "remembering" when you need to start heading p to bed.
• Make your bedroom a calm and restful place. First, keep TVs, cell phones, and computers out of the bedroom. Next, block out bright lights that might keep you awake by hanging dark curtains on bedroom windows--or consider wearing an eye mask while in bed.
• Avoid eating before bedtime. Avoid eating large meals within a few hours of bed time; this will not only help you to avoid gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), but might help you cut down on calories as well.
• Don't exercise too close to bedtime. Exercise is a wonderful way to tire yourself out, true, but it also generates endorphins and adrenaline--2 biochemicals that disrupt sleep.
• Consider getting checked for sleep apnea. If you keep waking up tired, no matter how much sleep you get, you might have sleep apnea--especially if your weight could be healthier. Treatment for this disorder could help you lose weight, as well as feel a whole lot more refreshed when you wake up.

The bottom line
If you're working on weight loss but at the same time you're living through some high-stress times and aren't getting enough sleep, why not give this "sleep-more-stress-less" plan a try?
To less stress and more sleep, dear readers!
By Margaret Furtado, M.S., R.D

Mini Challenge

This week's mini challenge...

This challenge is stretching over 2 weeks. Lose 3 lbs or more between weigh-in on 5/2 and weigh-in on 5/16 and you will qualify for the drawing! What's the prize? WE are giving away (3) Expo Biggest Loser Magnetic Dry-Erase Meal Planners! Good Luck!

Congratulations to our One-Mile Walk Challenge Winners!. Thee were almost 30 of you that walked a mile at weigh-in on Monday, but only 3 could win! And our winners, drawn randomly from the participation slips are:
Diane Aispuro
Marissa Ramirez
Jason Yonano

You each won a copy of Biggest Loser Power Walk DVD!

The Single Best Exercise for Weight Loss

Often people will ask me to share the best exercises for weight loss. They want to know what kind of cardio activity is going to help them lose weight faster than anything else. Even if they don't enjoy it, they are willing to try whatever is going to help them reach their goals more quickly. My response is always the same. So are you ready to hear what the magic exercise is? What's going to help you lose weight keep it off long-term, and get fit?

The answer is simple: Find the activities you enjoy doing and stick with them. It's true that some activities burn more calories than others. You'll burn more in 45 minutes of running than you will in 45 minutes of walking. But if you hate to run, chances are that you're not going to be able to keep it up forever. Exercise becomes a chore, something you dread instead of something that brings enjoyment to your life. I always cringe when I hear people say things like this: "I hate running and have no interest in doing it. But I feel like I have to run if I'm going to lose weight, so can you give me some tips for how to enjoy it?" My response is usually to try it if you haven't before, but don't be afraid to do something else instead of it's just not working for you. I've tried swimming before. It was a great workout, very challenging, but not something I enjoyed at all. So I decided that swimming just wasn't for me and moved on to other activities instead.

We all have those days when we don't want to exercise. Although I love running, I don't jump out of bed every single morning, full of energy and ready to go. There are some days when I'd much rather stay in bed. But for the most part, I've found something I enjoy doing, so it's easier to stick with it. And to keep things interesting, I like to train for different races, incorporate different kinds of runs and different routes into my routine. That way my body is continually challenged and I don't get bored.

Putting personal preferences aside, if you look strictly at what exercises are considered "best", you'll get a wide variety of professional opinions. Exercise physiologists will give answers based on what exercises burn the most calories, which ones provide the most strength benefits, which ones increase power or flexibility. It just depends on your goals and your body. Every body responds differently to different exercises, and everyone has different opinions about what activities we should be doing.

Regardless of the activity, the fact that you are exercising at all is most important. You don't have to train for marathons and spend hours at the gym to be healthy. "A recent meta-analysis of studies about exercise and mortality showed that, in general, a sedentary person’s risk of dying prematurely from any cause plummeted by nearly 20 percent if he or she began brisk walking (or the equivalent) for 30 minutes five times a week. If he or she tripled that amount, for instance, to 90 minutes of exercise four or five times a week, his or her risk of premature death dropped by only another 4 percent."

Jen Mueller - SparkPeople

Take the Stress Out of Weighing In

Regain Your Power Over the Scale

Does seeing the wrong number on the scale make you crazy? Many people find that a “bad” weigh-in ruins their mood and saps their motivation, making it difficult to keep doing what they know they need to do.

Things don’t need to be this way. You can learn to use the scale as a helpful tool, instead of giving it the power to dictate your feelings and your actions.
3 Ways to Take the Stress Out of Your Weigh-Ins

1. Be clear with yourself about what that number on the scale really means. That number on the scale only tells you how much you weigh at that moment. It tells you absolutely nothing about what kind of person you are; what life has in store for you; whether or not you’ll ever look the way you want to look or feel the way you want to feel; or how other people see or think about you. If you experience thoughts or feelings like these just because you see an unwelcome number on the scale, then your expectations about what weight loss can do for you need a major overhaul. You may want to take the Is Weight Loss Stressing You Out? quiz to see if you need to do some work on that front—before you paint yourself into a corner you can’t get out of.
   
2. Remind yourself that you are choosing to use the scale as a weight loss tool. It is NOT your judge, jury and executioner. It’s probably a good idea to post this reminder where you will see it each time you step on the scale. It can help to include a short list of the most important reasons why you are trying to lose weight in the first place, and some of the ways you can measure your progress towards those goals (besides the scale).
   
3. Use the number on the scale to actually help your program work for you. If you’re going to use the scale as a tool, you might as well do it right. Try keeping a journal (or better yet a computer spreadsheet) where you track your weigh-ins (daily, weekly or monthly), your total calories eaten during that time period (from your Nutrition Tracker) and your calories burned through exercise (from your Exercise Tracker). Once a month, add the numbers up and see if things are going the way they “should” be. Figure out your total calorie deficit for the month, and see if your weight actually behaved according to the "3500-calorie deficit equals one pound lost" formula. If it didn’t, then try to figure out why, using a method like this:
   
   
   • First, go back to basics. About 90% of the “mysterious” differences between what should happen and what does happen can be traced to underestimating calorie intake and/or overestimating calories burned. For the next few weeks, double check yourself on your calorie counting, portion estimating, etc., and make sure you’re not leaving anything out of your nutrition tracking.
     
   • If that doesn’t solve the problem, figure that there may be something wrong with the estimates you are getting for your exercise calorie burning and/or your non-exercise calorie burning (your basal metabolic rate—BMR). Consider investing a little money in a heart rate monitor with a calorie estimating feature to wear during exercise, and/or having your BMR tested at a local gym with a device called the BodyGem (costs about $50). Use this info to adjust your calorie intake and/or your exercise, and see how this new plan works for the next month.
     
   • If all else fails, talk to a dietitian or your doctor to rule out any unusual metabolic problems, or medical issues. But again, 9 times out of 10, it's most likely a simple problem with getting the right numbers.

-- By Dean Anderson, Behavioral Psychology Expert