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| 8.6oz of rotisserie chicken which has around ~450-550 calories |
First things first guys, for the average, everyday client I normally don't advocate using food scales and measuring your food and knowing all of your macros that you're eating down to a T! A lot of the time it's just too much for first time clients to take in and do right away. In reality it isn't necessary for many, not all, people to measure their food precisely, and you can still achieve amazing results and look great in the mirror.
What if you're looking to take your fitness goals to the next level though? Then you should get a food scale! When I say take your fitness goals to the next level I'm talking about getting super lean, getting ready for a bikini or physique show and so on, or I can be talking about someone who wants to build strength and muscle while minimizing fat gain. With all of these goals the bar is set higher and harder to achieve; you really have to zero in on your diet to see spectacular results. Now most of the foods we eat today all have nutrition labels, with the helpful information like serving size, calories, fats, carbs, proteins and so on, but when you're strict diet most of those foods with labels become obsolete. You'll find that you're eating mostly meats, none of which are created equal in size or calories, veggies, and healthy fats. None of these things have nutrition labels and if they do they usually go by ounces or grams, how the hell are you supposed to know how many calories you just ate? I don't know about you but I sure as hell didn't know what 8oz of chicken looked like, or 3 grams of almonds looked like when I first started. That's why having a good food scale really helps, preferably one that can measure in pounds, ounces, and grams. You weigh your food and you either google the calorie information or you can download one of the many apps for your smartphone, my favorite is "myfitnesspal" and search on there, and viola now you know how many calories you have in front of you.
In the case of these almonds you could either use a measuring cup or weigh out 30 grams worth, which I had no idea what 30 grams of almonds looked like, but now I do! 1 serving of almonds, or 30 grams has approximately 27 individual almonds and has about 170 calories, and now I'll remember that forever! This is why having a food scale is beneficial; after a while you start to get familiar on your own with portion sizes, and how many calories certain sizes of foods have, to the point where you won't even need the scale anymore!
It's that time again, summer is upon us and many of you have already started and many more are sure to follow with the dieting! Trying to clean up your bodies and shed some of that winter flab you've accumulated. One of the popular diets people like to go on is the low carb or ketosis type diets because they're generally believed to yield faster results; I myself am guilty of this trend to sometimes as I do find that it does help lean me out a lot faster. I usually will low to no carb diet for only 3-4 days and then then gradually reintroduce carbs back into my diet at the right times and ensuring that they are all quality complex carbs (oats and yams being my favorite). I find that by doing so I don't deal with all the pains and risks of living the low carb lifestyle, and I still get a lot of the benefits, but I will get into that at another time! Today was very busy for me and I didn't have tine for hardly anything let alone to eat so I rushed over across the street to pick these things up and still stick within my low low carb regimen at the moment, not bad right? Just keep an eye out for your sodium intake as the rotisseries have a lot of salt in them. Also finding precise calorie information for a rotisserie chicken is a little difficult, I found several different calorie amounts for the same thing... the average was about 150 calories for 3oz of the breast meat.
