When I had more weight to lose, I found the weight came off a bit quicker, but once I reached a comfortable size 12, it seemed impossible for me to lose any more. Everyone has their wall that they hit, when everything that they have been doing up until now has been shedding the pounds, and then suddenly it seems to stop working. Taking those extra few seconds per meal to weigh things out, and track what I am eating has really turned that around for me, and enabled me to break through that wall.

Before I really knew what I was doing,  I used to happily chow down on a whole avocado, thinking to myself, look at me what a healthy snack. When in actual fact, a whole avocado is on average 230 calories, and contains over 20g of fat (albeit good fat), which on my current diet is nearly half my daily allowance.

For breakfast I would wake up and pour myself a big bowl of porridge with semi skimmed milk. Now that I have learnt about portion sizes, I would say I was making myself a bowl 20g heavier than I should have been, and by bringing down the portion size, and swapping out my semi-skimmed for unsweetened almond milk, I’m saving myself 195 calories. Which I now use for a protein shake. It’s all about balancing out what you are having, and the only way to do that successfully is with a set of scales.

I couldn’t understand how I was eating all of these seemingly healthy foods, and I still wasn’t losing weight. But the issue was, I was eating too much of them. There is such a thing as too many nuts and seeds, too many avocados, too much porridge, too much sweet potato. All of these things in moderation build together to create a fantastic diet, but when you don’t understand portions and you’re not tracking your foods, you just won’t see the results you are working so hard to see.

Weighing and tracking your food is one of the most life changing things I have learnt to do. There is a big difference in eating healthy foods, and eating healthily. There are many ways of complicating it, but once you get to grips with portion sizes, and balancing out your fats, carbohydrates and proteins, it really is rather simple.

Obviously everyone has their own goals and there isn’t really a standard formula on how much you should eat. However the free app ‘MyFitnessPal’ does allow you to put in your weight, and your goal weight, and it will create you a daily target for fats, carbs and protein. It then allows you to scan barcodes of your foods, or search for them, and input exactly what you have eaten into a diary.

Believe me, when I first started this the idea of weighing and tracking everything felt like such an extra effort. But the main thing I have found is it truly does stop me just snacking on things for the sake of it. Tracking what you eat becomes second nature, and by not tracking that cheeky chocolate digestive you snuck in, you are only lying to yourself.

So get yourself a set of electronic scales, download MyFitnessPal, and give tracking your food a shot!