The holidays seem to go inevitably with eating and packing on a few pounds. This doesn’t have to be the case if you follow a few very simple rules.

Food should be pleasurable, but for many of us, the “stop” mechanism is broken. What’s wrong with a little cream puff or Swedish meatball? Nothing in itself. But can you stop at just one? I know that is extremely difficult for me and I suspect it may be for many of you.

If that’s the case, read on. Here are a few ways to keep off that “traditional” holiday five pounds:

1. Eat before you go. Have a salad or better yet, some soup, to fill you up before you’re faced with temptation.
2. Bring your own. What hostess would reject your offering of a beautifully prepared veggie or fruit tray? It’s a sneaky way to get yourself something healthy and keep you away from the high-calorie goodies.
3. Avoid the cheese and crackers (and the potatoes and gravy). At parties and dinners, skip the highest calorie and fat foods. Fill your plate with turkey and some veggies and enjoy the party!
4. Drink club soda. Alcoholic beverages can be very fattening, especially eggnog and other sweet drinks. Be satisfied with one glass of dry wine and then switch to club soda for the rest of the evening. You’ll feel and look better in the morning, since excessive alcohol intake also promotes wrinkly skin.
5. Indulge: Eat just one. By yourself. It’s the holidays, right? OK—Have just one. Put it on a plate and walk over to the corner by yourself. Conversation tends to foster mindless overconsumption. Enjoy your treat. Savor every morsel and be satisfied. Then re-join the party.
6. Stay away from the buffet table. I mean stay as far away physically and you can get and still be part of the party. That will quell the temptation.
7. Use tapping to stop cravings. If you’re not familiar with EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), go to http://www.thetapping solution.com and learn the basic technique. It’s a combination of acupressure and affirmation that shifts cravings and other physiological and emotional challenges (includes destructive self-talk) quickly.
8. Skip the hors d’oeuvres. At dinner parties, quietly abstain from those high-fat, high-calorie appetizers and enjoy your pre-dinner glass of wine or club soda. You can even a cheat a little by putting a few things on your plate and then ignoring them as you become engrossed in the conversation.
9. Pick yourself up and get back on the horse. If you slip and overindulge, don’t beat yourself up. Recriminations are the biggest diet saboteurs, so don’t indulge in them. Get back on your healthy eating plan the very next day. Don’t wait until the holidays are over. The damage will be far less.
10. Don’t punish yourself. The goes hand-in-hand with #9: If you go overboard, don’t try to survive on carrots and water the next day. That will just spark more cravings feelings of guilt and urges for stealth eating. Get back on a sensible eating plan, make some broth-based veggie soup, eat a salad for lunch and affirm that, yes, you can control your eating and keep your weight at the right levels for your entire life.

Kathleen Barnes is a natural health writer and health advocate. Her most recent book is The Super Simple HCG Diet (Square One, 2011). Find more of her weight management advice at http://www.supersimplehcgdiet.com.

Join me for a no-cost teleseminar at 7 p.m. EST
Wednesday, November 16.

Reserve your teleseminar seat now by e-mailing me: kathleen@kathleenbarnes.com.

I know. The holidays are coming and this time of year is a traditional time for overindulgence. Even our best intentions sometimes fall by the wayside.

I’ve done it and you can, too.

I got rid of 100 pounds of unwanted fat in 9 months with HCG and the accompanying diet. You can read all about it in my book, The Super Simple HCG Diet.

I’m now maintaining my weight with a program of sensible eating and exercise.

Whether you have 20, 40 or more pounds to shed, you can do it with The Super Simple HCG Diet.

Let’s get through the holidays, but it’s not too early to start thinking about the aftermath. If you’ve always wanted to shed those excess pounds, think of making a New Year’s resolution that will really work, that you can keep and that will have a positive impact on your health and longevity.

I’ll be starting new coaching groups and individual coaching sessions in early 2012. More info . . .

Start planning now, get everything ready and blast out of the box in 2012 with a weight control program that will surprise you with its simplicity, the health food you’ll eat and that fact that IT WORKS!

If you’ve searched HCG diet online and been daunted by how strict it is, not to worry. Kathleen has developed a simplified version that allows you stick to a healthy low-calorie, low-fat low-carb diet and achieve significant weight loss quickly and without strenuous exercise.

The HCG Diet works for men and women and is especially effective for women over 40.

Learn all about what you need to do to be successful and manage your weight for the rest of your life with the Super Simple HCG Diet.

If you’ve already done the HCG Diet, I welcome your participation. There will be time for questions.

During the teleseminar, you’ll get information about upcoming group coaching sessions and special pricing for those who attend the live webinar. There will be one replay of the recording scheduled a few days later.

Please feel free to pass this e-mail on to others who might be interested.

Register now by e-mailing me: kathleen@kathleenbarnes.com. I’ll send you back the call-in number right away.

by Kathleen Barnes

Great news for chocolate lovers: Two new studies show that those who regularly eat chocolate, especially dark chocolate, have a significantly lower risk of heart attack and stroke.

The first, a British study from Cambridge and published in the British Medical Journal, shows that those who eat the most chocolate have a 37% lower risk of heart disease and a 29% lower risk of stroke.

What’s more, the study says that chocolate eaters have a surprisingly lower risk of cardiometabolic disorders. That’s a fancy way of including diabetes and metabolic syndrome in the mix, both disease conditions that are triggered by excessive sugar and fat consumption and obesity.

The second study, which looked at dark chocolate consumption among more than 14,000 adults in Jordan, found at those who ate four dark chocolate bars a week had substantially lower blood pressure, even among those with a family history of high blood pressure.

High blood pressure is a major cause of heart attack and stroke, so the Jordanian study validates the British study in its finding that chocolate consumption can prevent these potentially deadly diseases.

Researchers theorize that the wealth of antioxidants found in chocolate is responsible for these happy results.

CAUTION: This does not mean it’s OK hog out on chocolate. Chocolate has a high sugar and fat content. A 1.5-ounce milk chocolate mini-bar (think or it as a two-biter) has 235 calories and 13 grams of fat. Dark chocolate is a better choice: It’s about 20% lower in calories and fat, but chocolate in any form cannot in any way be considered a diet food.

Moderation is still the key. An ounce a day should be more than sufficient and I think the Jordanians who chow down four chocolate bars a week may have lower blood pressure, but they are almost surely fatter.

My regular readers know that I have recently shed more than 100 pounds of unwanted fat. Chocolate has absolutely not been part of my regular eating program. However, now that I am phasing off the diet, I think there is reason to add a couple of ounces of dark dark chocolate to my diet each week and the addition of 200 to 300 calories on a weekly basis is a worthy investment for the health return I can get from it. (Oh yes, and there’s the element of pleasure, too. Chocolate stimulates the cannaboid receptors in the brain, producing a feeling of well-being.)

That “dark dark” chocolate was not a typo. If you’re a chocolate lover as I am, you’ll discover that really dark chocolate (60% cocoa or more) is much more satisfying than milk chocolate, so an ounce or so is sufficient. I know the milk chocolate and its high sugar content triggers sugar cravings for me and probably for many others, leading to taking in hundreds of unwanted and unneeded calories.

My neighbor likes to call her nightly Dove dark chocolate habit her ”heart medicine.” It turns out, she’s right!

For those of your who have been following this I’ve been on a modified version of the HCG diet for the past nine months. So here’s an announcement:

I did it!

I’ve now shed 100 pounds. I can’t begin to tell you how good this feels on every level of my being.

Let me try: The other day I was carrying a 44-pound bag of dog food up the stairs. Now needless to say, I wasn’t very happy about it. Who would be? Then suddenly I realized just nine months ago, I was carrying 2.5 times (give or take) the weight of that bag on my body, lugging it around with every step I took. No wonder my energy is so good. -I don’t have to haul around all that extra weight anymore!

Intuitively, I have decided that I should taper off the HCG injections I have been using for nine months. It just seems like it would be difficult for my body to adjust to a sudden withdrawal of the hormone. A conversation with a doctor friend confirmed this ida. So I am now tapering down by 25 IU every two weeks until I am off it–ten more weeks.

I am increasing my calorie count to my maintenance level (about 1600 calories a day, up from the 700 I’ve been consuming throughout most of the time I’ve been on the diet). However, if you’ve read the early version of The Super Simple HCG Diet, you know that it is very important to continue to low carb for three more weeks as I taper off the diet. I think i will amend that to keep off the carbs at least until the ten-weeks phase out period is over. I have begun to understand that carbohydrates are probably my worst enemy.

Case in point: I ate a cookie a couple of weeks ago. Now you know that I don’t consider these occasional slips to be cause for a barrage of negative self-talk. That little cookie actually gave me some valuable insight when it set off a craving that astonished me. I wanted to eat 20 more.

Now tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and lettuce, stapels of my diet, don’t set off cravings ike. that. This time of year, I’m happy to eat at least one of each from garden every day. But eating one doesn’t make me want 20. It’s the sugar. Duh. I needed to experience that.

I’ve posted new photos on the website.

Blessings to everyone who is sharing this journey with me and those who are inspired to begin the weight management journey for themselves. Please let me hear from you and keep up the good work!

Editors’ note: I think this article by Jordan Rubin is right on track. I’ve been on the HCG Diet now for nearly eight months– have shed 90 pounds of unwanted fat and I’m feeling great. My high energy levels are probably due to the fact that I eat very high quality calories with large quantities of veggies, a few fruits and just a little bit of meat. –Kathleen Barnes

reprinted with permission from Jordan Rubin

There’s one thing you can count on when it comes to diet advice: it’s always changing. For years, I’ve promoted the benefits of eating whole foods sourced as close to nature as possible—not only from a healthy weight standpoint, but also for overall health. In the past, calorie counting was the primary message of conventional weight-loss strategies in our culture, but it finally seems to be catching on that it’s not just about calories—even in the diet industry. In fact, not all calories are created equally, so people are turning more to caloric quality, not quantity.

The trend now is that health- and weight-conscious people are less concerned about caloric restrictions and more concerned about nourishment. In fact, some market research among health- and weight-conscious people found that their top preferences were not for low-calorie foods, but for high-quality, fresh, nutritious and organic ingredients in their food.

Don’t get me wrong. Calories do count, but they’re not the only measuring stick. Eating nutrient-dense foods is weighing in much more heavily these days.

But what about those calories? We know that we get calories from the foods we eat and what we drink, but what happens after that? When we eat, the chemical processes that make up our metabolism break down the food and turn it into energy for us to use. Ah…there’s the key: metabolism. It’s how calories are metabolized that makes the difference.

The idea that “a calorie is a calorie” has been the basis of conventional weight loss strategies for years, but people are realizing that not all calories are alike. There may not seem to be a difference between 500 calories of Twinkies (for the Twinkie diet guy) or 500 calories of fresh veggies and fruits—until the calories are metabolized. The calories you eat are absorbed at varying rates and have differing amounts of protein, fats, carbs, fiber and other nutrients which translate into various complex metabolic signals controlling your weight.

For example, sugar from processed carbs enters your blood quickly, while sugar from legumes enters your blood slowly. Sugar going into your bloodstream all at once leaves the calories you’re not using to be stored as fat. If, however, sugar from another food is absorbed over time, then your body has more time to burn those calories and not store them as fat. In short, high-carb diets made up of rapidly absorbed sugars increase blood sugar and insulin levels, cause weight gain and increase cholesterol and triglycerides. That can lead to a fatty liver, which can cause even more weight gain.

Leading nutrition researchers, including Walter Willett, M.D. and his group from the Harvard School of Public Health, designed a study on calories and weight loss. Here’s what they found: one group was fed a low-fat diet—1,500 calories for women and 1,800 calories for men—while another group was fed a low-carb diet of the exact number of calories. A third group also consumed a low-carb diet, but ate 300 more calories a day than the other groups—1,800 for women and 2,100 for men.

The results? Over 12 weeks, the low-carb group eating the same number of calories as the low-fat group lost more weight—an average of 23 pounds compared to 17 pounds for the low-fat group. (That’s six more pounds of weight loss over 12 weeks.) The difference? The low-carb diet was mostly whole, unprocessed foods like lean animal protein, veggies, whole grains and beans. The low-fat group included more refined carbs. Both groups ate the same number of calories, but those who ate the whole, unprocessed foods had greater weight loss.

Here’s the kicker, though. The group eating 300 more calories a day with the low-carb diet lost more weight than those eating the low-fat diet—even though the extra 25,000 more calories they ate should have appeared as seven pounds of increased weight. They lost an average of 20 pounds more than the low-fat group who ate 25,000 fewer calories during those 12 weeks.

Calorie quality is more important than calorie quantity because the type of calories you eat has an impact on how your metabolism functions. Your diet—in the quality of calories you consume—impacts what your genes tell your metabolism to do.

You can see why calorie counting has been countered.

Find this article and much more here.

I’m just back from a nine-day trip to California and I am pleased to say I still was able to shed three pounds, despite some unavoidable slippage. I consider that a major victory considering that keeping my eating on track was difficult, especially during the time I was in a hotel room and attending business functions.

How did I do it? Planning, planning, planning. My dear friend Eleanor, who has been in food addiction recovery for ten years, shared some helpful ways to get organized. her major caveat: Plan your food and don’t let yourself get distracted from your plan.

I carried my injectable HCG in my check luggage. It needs to be kept cool, so I bundled it with a gel pack and a package of frozen cooked chicken breast. To my surprise, everything was still very cold when I arrived. I also had a bottle of my special salad dressing in my luggage, carefully sealed in plastic bags to prevent leakage.

For food along the way, I had some more frozen chicken breast and lots of celery sticks, sliced peppers, cherry tomatoes, raw broccoli and a couple of apples in my carryon. I gave up on salad since the TSA’s no-liquids rule precludes taking any dressing, but finger veggies made sense and were less messy anyway.

As soon as I got out of the airport and into the cary, I hit a supermarket that I had identified beforehand. It was just off the freeway and I was able to pick up some more fruit and a couple of containers of lettuce to keep in the frig in my room. My only deviation (at that point!) was a package of deli-chicken breast since the home-cooked smoked turkey breast was gone. When I[m at home, i don’t eats deli meats, but this seemed like a logical concession.

I was able to eat breakfast in my room most days and I could usually able to escape for lunch and take a break from the intensity of the business situation where I found myself. A couple of nights, I had business dinners, but was able to remain on the straight and narrow for them. It helps that California requires calorie counts on menus. My biggest deviation was a corned beef and cabbage dinner on St. Patrick’s Day, consumed mainly to humor my mother. It seemed to have no negative effect.

On the way home, I reversed the process and had my chicken and finger veggies to sustain me on the trip home.

I think my biggest problem was keeping my water intake at the optimal levels, since I was walking around a show floor. I was able to spot water coolers by the second day and I simply visited them several times daily.

My daily calorie count was probably slightly higher than usual–in the 800 to 900 calories per day range.

Planning was key to all of this, although there is a lot to be said for the ego boost I got from colleagues who were impressed by my weight loss and congratulatory about the dramatic improvement in my appearance. It certainly makes me want to continue.

Minus 63 pounds of unwanted fat and still going strong!

Today’s entry is the first of several excerpts from my new book, Rx from the Garden: 101 Food Cures You Can Easily Grow.

As garden season approaches and we’re all longing to get our hands in the dirt, consider planting these foods that can help you fight hypertension or high blood pressure or buying them from your local farmers market:

Hypertension

Your Rx from the Garden: garlic, spinach, potatoes, onions, sunflower seeds, dried beans

Also known as high blood pressure, hypertension is a silent killer. Millions of us have it and don’t know we have it, so we don’t treat it, placing oourselves at risk for heart attacks and strokes.

If you have a blood pressure monitor or make use of one at your local pharmacy, keep a few things in mind:

• Blood pressure can change throughout the day. It’s usually lowest early in the morning.

• Blood pressure goes up when you’re moving around. If you’re taking a reading, sit still for at least five minutes before measuring.

• Blood pressure responds to stress and illness. When you visit your doctor’s office you may experience “white coat hypertension,” which is one of the most common forms of elevated blood pressure, but it usually temporary. Many of us get nervous in the doctor’s office, and often our blood pressure will be elevated due to an illness or pain.

• If your doc tells you that your pressure is high, ask for a second reading later in the visit r ask if you can monitor your blood pressure at home over the coming month to determine whether there is really a problem. Long-term stress is another story, and it should be addressed to eliminate one of the most common underlying causes of hypertension.

Your Garden to the Rescue

Garlic is a primo vegetable to help relax blood vessels. Allicin, a sulfur compound that give garlic is odor and its power, has been shown to relax blood vessels and lower blood pressure as well as some other impressive heart healthy benefits we’ll talk about in the cholesterol-lowering section.

Spinach, sunflower seeds and dried beans (think kidney beans, pintos and navy beans) are all good sources of magnesium. Your blood vessels are like rubber tubes that are stretched to the max, making them thin and taut. But if the tension on the tube is released, the tube becomes wider and more flexible. Magnesium works just like that in your arteries, helping blood flow more easily and lowering pressure. Studies show that people who eat magnesium-rich diets have lower blood pressure.

Potatoes (baked or roasted, without butter or sour cream, please!) are an excellent source of potassium (as are the above mentioned foods) that helps regulate fluid balance in the body. Excess water, fluid buildup and bloating (usually caused by a sodium-potassium imbalance) put extra pressure on the blood vessels and increases blood pressure. Getting extra potassium from potatoes and other veggies can help reduce the fluid buildup and normalize blood pressure.

by Kathleen Barnes

I am so excited about the 40 pounds of unwanted fat I have shed in the past 11 weeks on the HCG Diet, including a two-week hiatus for the holidays.

Since so many people are asking me, I’ll give you the basics and then you can figure out for yourself if this is the diet for you.

What is HCG? How does it work?

HCG is human chorionic gonadatropin, a hormone secreted by pregnant women. In fact, this is the hormone that gives you the positive results on those home pregnancy tests.

Why would a pregnancy hormone work to help you lose weight? First of all, you’re only getting about 100 IUs a day, compared to the millions of units secreted by a pregnant woman. It doesn’t in any way mimic pregnancy, but what it does suppress appetite and helps burn fat in the most problematic areas: belly, thighs, hips.

Shed 3 to 5 pounds a week

Both of those are key to the HCG diet, which in the simplified form I am using, means you eat 700 calories a day. Most people shed 3 to 5 pounds a week on this diet. This strict form only allows 500 calories, which, in my mind, is too low for a long-term weight control program.

Still, 700 calories is not much, and of course, anybody would lose weight on 700 calories a day, that’s true.

HCG makes it possible to remain on this low-calorie, low-carb, low-fat diet for an extended period of time. Most of us simply wouldn’t be able to “tough it out” without some help. I know I don’t have the willpower, but this program simply has not been about willpower at all.

What you eat

I eat what I need to eat:

4 cups of low glycemic index vegetables a day
7 ounces of extremely lean meat: low fat fish, chicken, beef
2 pieces of fruit
100 calories of whole grain bread or tortilla or flatbread
It doesn’t sound like much, but it is actually a large amount of food if you pare it down to the basic healthy stuff– fresh veggies, good fruit, unlimited salad greens. And I am satisfied.

Here’s a great example: My husband (who doesn’t need to lose a pound) and I were eating dinner one night. He was having a big plate of organic basmati brown rice, chicken curry and some fresh sliced tomatoes. It was a good healthy meal.
I was having 3.5 ounces of grilled chicken, a whole green pepper, a large salad and a large bowl of vegetable soup.

My beloved pointed out that I was eating a lot of food. I agreed, so compared the calorie counts of our meals: He was eating nearly 900 calories and I was eating about 300.

My only complaint is that I am really cold most of the time and I wish I had started last summer when it was warm.

Most effective for those who want to shed more than 25 pounds

I think the HCG diet is most effective for people who have more than 20 to 25 pounds to shed (Note: I don’t say “lose,” because I think that triggers a subconscious thought that you are losing a part of yourself). You can lose 20-25 pounds in 4 to 6 weeks, but I think that is too short a time period to re-examine your relationship with food and the types of food you eat.

The HCG diet has given me a chance to take another look at what I thought was a healthy diet. It really wasn’t bad, but learning to center my eating around vegetables rather than my former love affair with bread, pasta and rice has made a huge difference in my weight and my energy levels.

I’ll get a new photo taken soon so you can see the difference. You’ll see even more in a couple more months.

HCG injections and drops

How do you use HCG? This is a deal breaker for some people. I have been using a daily injectible form. I’m not at all squeamish about injecting myself and it’s just a little insulin syringe, anyway. It’s no worse than a mosquito bite.

But daily injections may just be too scary for some people, so you can get HCG in homeopathic drops. I personally think the injectible form is probably more effective, but many people have gotten excellent results from the drops.

Injectible HCG is available only by prescription.

If you choose HCG, you need some medical supervision. Yes, you can buy HCG online, but buyer beware: some of it is useless. I get mine from my doctor, Hyla Cass, who is very excited about the results she has seen.

In my next post, I’ll talk more about where to get your HCG and who you can trust.
I promise, I won’t turn this blog into a day-to-day blow-by-blow pound-by-pound account of my diet. But I do promise to give you the basics and answer your questions.

by Kathleen Barnes

Most of us now understand that table sugar is detrimental to our health, not only to our waistlines, but in myriad other ways, including causing inflammation that leads to a host of health problems including high blood pressure and diabetes. I don’t need to go all the way down the list because I know I’m preaching to the choir for most of you.

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a comparative Johnny-come-lately to the sugar dangers radar screen and it’s a subject that bears closer examination.

Table sugar is composed of fructose and glucose. You might say,
“But fructose is a natural fruit sugar!”

You’d be right. The glucose molecule is needed for energy by the human body, so it is a necessary nutrient. No, it’s not necessary in the form of table sugar, but it’s found naturally in virtually all carbohydrates, in varying amounts depending on whether you’re looking at a piece of broccoli or a serving of white rice.

Beware of fructose

Fructose, on the other hand, is converted into a range of waste products in the human body within minutes, including uric acid.

Uric acid is a major inflammatory compound that, among other things, causes high blood pressure, a major contributing factor for heart attack and stroke.

Without getting too technical, let’s say that high uric acid levels in the body cause lower nitric oxide levels, constricting blood vessels and raising blood pressure. Uric acid excess also contributes to kidney disease, fatty liver, all types of cardiovascular disease and pre-eclampsia in pregnant women.

Let’s focus on hypertension for today.

Sugar consumption translates to high rate of hypertension

It’s not coincidental that, as our natural per capita sugar consumption increases, our national levels of high blood pressure have increased in tandem.

In 1800, sugar was a luxury with the average person eating less than four pounds a year. Today, it is an obsession with the average person eating an astounding 153 pounds a year. Worse yet, our national sugar addiction increased by 20 percent in just ten years, two percent a year!

On the same time frame, our national rate of hypertension went from 5% of the population in 1900 to 31% today. The connection is obvious.

If sugar isn’t bad enough, manufacturers began to substitute high fructose corn syrup for sugar in many products beginning in the mid 1970s. Your average can of Coke has 40 grams of sugar—now all of it HCFS.

HCFS is everywhere

HCFS is now found in all kinds of products, not surprisingly on the sweet ones like the breakfast cereals and breakfast pastries to which most kids are addicted, but also in some products you’d never imagine would have added sugar.

How about breads, mayonnaise, catsup (bottled BBQ sauce is even worse!), hotdogs and lunch meats, peanut butter, salad dressings, kids’ packaged snacks, spaghetti sauce and canned soups? Here’s a link to a site with many name brands that contain HFCS.

HFCS is a stealth ingredient in many, if not most, processed foods. It’s cheaper than sugar and the manufacturers care much more about their bottom line than about your health.

The easy answer is to avoid processed foods. The harder answer is that most of us do use them from time to time.

Be a label reader

I’ve often urged you to become an avid label reader. That skill is more important now than ever. There are bottled and canned foods that do not contain HFCS. You’ll do pretty well if you select organic store brands.

The best article I’ve read on this subject was written by Dr. Joe Mercola.

This article is definitely worth a close look, including the chart showing the natural fructose in fruit and his suggestions to limit your intake of fructose through fruit to 15 grams a day. That’s less than half a mango or just a little more than a cup of seedless grapes, much more of the less-sweet fruits like citrus fruits, most berries, apples and melons.

April 8, 2010

By Kathleen Barnes

In my wanderings through Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim last month, I came across Measure Up Bowls, the most brilliant weight control tools I’ve seen.

Recognizing portion size

The idea is ridiculously simple: You achieve portion control by eating your food out of one of two attractive white ceramic bowls that have subtle measurement markings. That’s it.

Now I’m guilty of the sin of failing to recognize correct portions. How much is a ½ cup serving of cereal (not to speak of ice cream)? Like most of us, I overestimate the size of the portions I’m eating, so this simple and effective tool is reining me back in.

Bowl creator lost 80 pounds

It certainly did the job for Heather Harvey, creator of the bowls. After the birth of her first child, Heather was eager to shed those extra baby pounds. Inspired by her personal trainer to take careful note of her portion sizes, Heather began a search of attractive bowls that would help her measure her food without having to wash a separate measuring cup. She looked for measuring bowls that wouldn’t call attention to her diet plan, but there were none on the market.

So Heather took the bull by the horns, developed her own bowls and got a patent for them. The rest is history. She shed 80 extra pounds and created a lucrative business with this simple idea.

A set with a large bowl holding up to 2 cups and a smaller one that holds up to ¾ cup sells for around $30. The Measure Up team is currently developing a non-toxic version with snap-on lids for portable purposes

I love this idea because of its simplicity, elegance, inventiveness and practicality. Thanks for the gift of a set, Heather. I’m using them!