The Top 7 Mistakes Made in the Kitchen to Sabotage Your Diet
By Kathleen Daelemans

Taking off those extra pounds might just be as easy as dough-weigh-me! By paying attention to the amount of fat you're using to get your food cooked, the portion sizes you're actually consuming, the integrity of the ingredients you're using and the overall balance of your menus over the course of the week, you can take off several pounds a year without even breaking a sweat. Avoid the Seven Most Common Mistakes for Sabotaging Your Diet in the Kitchen and you just might lose more!


1. Mistake: 5 o'clock Panic! Solution: Cook from Books (or recipes or at least have a plan).

Choose easy recipes that work for your time constraints, skill level and let's face it, your energy level. Cooking from actual recipes will focus you and can save you time and money. Each recipe is a culinary road map. The ingredient list is your shopping list. Your prep list is revealed in the instructions.

Cookbook purchasing (and recipe selection) criteria:

Do the recipes sound easy?

Are the ingredient lists short?

Do you understand the language?

Can you picture yourself going step by step through the recipe?

Still stuck? Grill busy Moms you know who actually cook for their list of favorite cookbooks.

2) Mistake: Giving in to Voice Foods. Solution. Make Room for Cake.

86 Voice Food Overages. Voice Foods scream your name across the grocery aisle and don't stop hollering until you toss them in your cart. Voice Voice Foods coax you into "having more" until you're too stuffed to walk. Voice Foods are any foods that trigger guilt. Voice Foods are all those delicious, over-the-top fattening foods frowned upon by nutritionists.

Make Room for Cake. Balance out your menus nutrition wise, over the coarse of the day and the week. Plan desserts for light menu nights. Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp might be the perfect ending for Zucchini, Corn, Tomato and Basil Soup night.

If you know you're throwing a birthday party on Friday and cake and ice cream are on the menu, sandwich the event with clean meal plans before and after the big day.

3) Mistake: Filling up on the Wrong Stuff. Solution: Make an Appointment with Your Broccoli. You don't get any credit for eating fish if you sabotage your effort with fattening side dishes. Instead of loading up on the mashed potatoes, mac and cheese and mayonnaise-y coleslaw, fill your plate with foods you're not getting enough of every day.

According to the CDC, 75% Americans do not get the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables each day. When you're planning your menus for the week, attach two vegetables and one fruit to each day of the week and work them into your dinner menus. It's easier than you think!

4) Mistake: Not Knowing The Truth About The Food, The Fat & The Ugly. Solution: Become a CCSI (Culinary Crime Scene Investigator)

The Food, The Fat & The Ugly: Use common sense and listen to your culinary instincts when you consider the amount of fat you think you need to get your food cooked, versus the amount of fat actually called for in recipes.

A sampling of fat called for in a few recipes right off the pages of best selling cookbooks in stores now:

A) Recipe Says: Pasta Primavera. Cook veggies in 1/4 cup of olive oil (500 Calories and 56 grams of fat). Serves 4.

Recipe Doctor Says: Cook veggies in pasta water. Skip the oil, Save: 125 calories and 14 grams of fat per portion. Lose: about 2 pounds a year (based on consuming or using this technique once a week).

B) Recipe Says: Cook 2# of boneless, skinless turkey in 7 Tablespoons butter (714 calories and 80.5 grams of fat).

Recipe Doctor Says: Use 1 Tablespoon of oil. Save: 185 calories and 20.5 grams of fat per portion. Lose about 2.2 pounds per year.

C) Recipe Says: Cook Pork Tenderloin and Portobello Mushroom sauce in 10 Tablespoons of butter (4 to cook pork, 6 to finish sauce). 1020 calories from butter and 115 grams of fat. Serves 4

Recipe Doctor Says: Use 2 tsp oil to cook meat, 1 Tbsp butter for sauce. Save: 835 calories, 95 grams of fat. Lose 3 pounds a year!

5) Mistake: Fishy Portions. Solution: Shiny New Scales.
Protein is good for you but too much of any food will send the bathroom scale soaring in the wrong direction. Portion control lean meats and fish right at the butcher shop. A lot of us are in the habit of ordering one steak, one chop, one filet or one chicken breast per person. Order by the ounce instead of by the piece, you'll be amazed at how much you save in money and calories.

If you buy in quantity, stick to proper protein portions by using a kitchen scale every single time you cook. They've gotten pretty sophisticated over the years. Some of them even calculate calories, fat, sugar and sodium based on actual weight.


6) Mistake: Guesstimate, Approximate. Solution: Calculate! Never, ever eyeball high calorie ingredients in a recipe. Eyeball the cilantro, eyeball the chili pepper but do not eyeball the oil, the cream, the cheese or any other ingredient you know will pack on the pounds. Always use measuring cups and measuring spoons.

7) Mistake: What? The Menu Says it's Healthy. Solution: Be a Carry Out Drop Out.

A recent investigation by Scripps Howard News tested low calorie menu items from some of the country's leading chain restaurants including Applebees, The Cheesecake Factory, Macaroni Grill, On the Border and Taco Bell.

Carryout samples from each restaurant were sent overnight to EPA certified analytical laboratories in Boise, Idaho. Chemists mathematically determined the amount of fat and calories in each serving. Their tests revealed that of the 15 samples tested – all but one were way over on either calories or fat content or both.

The worst offender in our test was the Macaroni Grill.

• A carryout order of the Pollo Magro Skinny Chicken says it should have 500 calories and 6 grams of fat. Our meal had 1,022 calories – more than double, and 49 grams of fat – eight times the amount listed on the company website.
  
  
• Chili's Guiltless Grilled Salmon, which was supposed to have has 480 calories and 14 grams of fat, but our test showed 664 calories and 35 and a half grams of fat.
  
  
• Applebees restaurant has a Weight Watchers section on its menu. The menu says the Cajun Lime Tilapia has 310 calories and 6 grams of fat, but our test showed 399 calories and 12.7 grams of fat.

Nothing will sabotage your good health intentions faster than restaurant and carry out food. The only way to truly control the quality and quantity of the foods you eat is to cook at home.

Create weekly incentives to keep your fingers from doing the walking.