Works For Me Wednesday: Salads aren't always the best choice at restaurants

My son sent me this article comparing several restaurant salads with their burgers. For example, amazingly, Wendy's Garden Sensations Mandarin Chicken Salad has more calories, carbs, sugar, sodium and fat than their 1/4 lb. Double Stack.

Many restaurants have nutrition information on their web sites, easily found by G**gling the name of the restaurant. It pays to check out the details if you're dieting or having to watch any of those elements in your diet.

Visit Rocks In My Dryer for more works-for-me tips.

Works For Me Wednesday: Portion control for chips

I know it is cheaper to buy big bags of chips and put lunch-sized portions in little plastic bags for school lunches. But once when I bought a big bag of different types of individually packaged chips just for variety, I noticed something. When any of us at home wanted to snack on chips, we stopped after eating the individual package, whereas when we had a big bag of chips, someone would take them down to the family room and watch TV while munching through half the bag. Not only was that unhealthy and hard to limit, but then I'd come near to running out of chips for lunches. The individual serving sizes made our chip supply last longer plus limited our snackage.

See Rocks In My Dryer for more tips.

Works For Me Wednesday: Resourceful Weight Loss Site

Some of you may know me from my regular blog, Stray Thoughts. :) I embarked on the May Day Weight Loss Challenge and decided to do so on a separate blog.

I wanted to tell you about a neat site my bloggy friend Kim told me about called SparkPeople. It has a ton of articles and resources. There is a daily food tracker where you can enter in what you have eaten and it automatically figures out the calories plus the fat, carbohydrate and protein grams. There is also a chart for recording exerice, though I haven't used that one yet. You can set up a profile page and join different communities based on your health needs and interests if you'd like. I have only been on it a few days and have only scratched the surface of what's offered.

And best of all -- it's free.

You can see more helpful hints and tips at Rocks In My Dryer.