This week I had the good fortune of talking to some people in my group and recommending a program called myfitnesspal.

If you haven't heard of it, it's an online site much like sparkpeople, fitday or dailyplate where you can track your calorie intake and the like to examine what you are eating. When I talk to someone who is stalling or not losing as they'd like, 9 times out of 10 it is the carbs that they've added back into their diets that is slowing down their progress. Numerous times, it's been people that have been doing protein shakes like Body By Vi that are not low carb.

Low carb is a key to weight loss. It doesn't mean going NO CARB.

When you have an eating disorder, the worst thing you can do is to compound the eating disorder by elimating a food group completely. Your body also needs some carbs and there are nutritional values to carbs as well. (Read the China Study about how all plant diets can do wonders for many medical conditions and you'll understand that life with carbs in our body is a good thing in many respects).

Anyway, low carb is important. Most of us did not get fat by eating too much protein. It's usually the processed junk that gets in the way for most of us whether sweets (cakes, cookies, and the like)or crackers, chips, pasta, breads, cereals, popcorn etc. You'll find often that when you stall it's because you've been slowly adding more and more protein to the diet.

The ideal diet for a post RNY/VSG patient is considered to be 40% protein, 30% carbs and 30% fats. Myfitness pal has a WONDERFUL display on their phone app (not on website and not for blackberry users) where you can click a button and see a pie graph that shows you this percentage breakdown. If you go to "home" and click "daily" - there's a little basketball type looking button - that's it.

This is the brillant tool that I've shared with two people this week who both took the time to send me emails/notes and say it totally shows them that they are getting way too many percentages of carbs. One even wrote that she's been following it and already losing weight from it. She's got hope finally as to why she's been gaining, rather than losing.

This is the tool that I'm currently using myself....as my diet can easily go the way of too many carbs. I've even started doing protein shakes - damn the Premier Protein is pretty darn good =) to see if bumping that up helps me out. I'll keep you tuned! Dawn