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Because I'm a total sucker for Valentines day, Im excited to share with you some last minute ideas sure to surprise the lucky lady in your life.  

Quit Counting Calories

It's funny to sit here and reflect on everything I "use" to know about health and fitness before my coaching days.  I was probably like a lot of you.  I can remember so clearly sitting in health class even from the time I was in the third grade learning about the food pyramid and even years later being fed the idea that "calories in and calories out" reflected weight loss or gain.  Even shortly after I was married I discovered the My Fitness Pal app and would use that sucker to track EVERYTHING I ate and every bit of exercise I did, trying to get those numbers to match perfectly so they would surly equate to some kind of weight loss.  But honestly, all it made me do was run miles around the neighborhood while never really experiencing true results.

A couple of years went by and I would cycle in and out of this silly routine until FINALLY taking a chance on the oh so popular 21 Day Fix program from Beachbody.  And then FINALLY things started to make so much more sense.  You see this program focuses so much on nutrition and portion control that once I ditched my old mentality of constantly worrying about calories, change was finally taking place.  Following the simple eating plan of color coded containers, I was able to better balance my daily nutrition while re-training my brain to look at food differently.  And to be honest the hard part for me was that it felt like too much food.  So when I replaced carb and sugar loaded foods with my veggies and proteins and quit running myself ragged on the treadmill, I was finally feeling full and satisfied and results started happening.  

So if this concept of counting containers vs. calories is new to you, allow me to give you a little demonstration of what it should look like exactly. 

I give you one of my favorite meals to have on the run. The Chick-Fil-A Grilled Market Salad coming in at over 400 calories.  Now over all its really not that huge of a calorie count but I was surprised when I decided to measure things out with my containers what I found.

Overall Chick-Fil-A was pretty spot on with portion control with the exception of the leafy greens and the dressing.  When I portioned everything out according to what I've learned thus far it was amazing to see.

And then it was more fun for me to put this sucker back together and see what my favorite on the go salad should look like. Like I mentioned before Chick-Fil-A was pretty spot on.  I was left over with about a cup of greens and maybe 1/4 of the packet of dressing.  In the end it was plenty of food.  I felt full and satisfied with a healthy on the fly lunch.  I invite you to come learn more about portion control containers in a live Facebook event on Thursday February 9th at 1:00 MST. Its easy to join, just go like my page Lauren Mair Pretty Strong and turn on your notifications.  I'd love to see some friendly faces and will be excited to answer all your questions!  And trust me I always make this event worth your time (hint hint----a giveaway).  Sp join me to find out how!