Some challenges for me

aj7x

Hi all,

For those of you who haven't seen my introduction post, here is some background info. I recently moved to Europe about 6 months ago. I have gained about 20 pounds since I got here and I would like to get back in shape before beach season. (I live on the Mediterranean coast. I always thought they said the Mediterranean diet was the healthiest hahah). I have facing many challenges with my weight loss by living abroad. Can anyone give me any tips on the following areas?

-Confusing food labels. Usually the packaging tells you calories for 100 grams, but doesn’t say how many grams total in the whole thing or in individual piece.
-kcal and calories are the same thing? Never really understood this concept.
-Everything is measured in grams. Conversion into ounces.
-Eyeballing measurements. I don't have a food scale (and I’m not going to buy one now because I’ll spend the summer back in the US.) I'm never really sure if my food diaries are even correct or not.
-COMFORT EATING: I am living alone, away from my friends and family, sometimes when I feel lonely I turn to chocolate.

Any advice is much appreciated! Thank you!

cmriverside

There are conversion sites online. Just google it.

You can also look up serving sizes, there are picture comparisons online.

Or, you could spend the $20 U.S. and buy a food scale.

If you are eating mostly whole foods, they are entered in the database with varying measurments (grams/ ounces/ inches/ cups/ etc.) Just search for them.

Chocolate is okay. Just be smart about how much you eat.

TAMayorga

1 kilocalorie = 1 Calorie (with a capital C). These are the Calories we see on our food labels in the States. 1 kilocalorie = 1000 calories (lowercase c).

1 oz is about 28 grams. Hard to tell when food is in the package, but once it's out of the package, you can use the fist/palm method of estimating servings.

Good luck, and have a GREAT time abroad! You are so lucky!

gardnerkennedy

kcals and cals are the same thing.

Most packages should have the total weight or volume on the outside, so if necessary you can figure it out from there.

100 grams is just under 4 oz/half a cup. Unless you need to be super precise, think of it that way.

It will not take long to get used to metric measurements and you won't have to convert any more.

You are bound to walk a whole lot more there than you probably did at home, so that will help iron out some of the chocolate "episodes".