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As discussed in this and this post, I was asked to participate in a “New Year New You” campaign with BlogHer and Best Buy. I have been asked to test out a few items to help me with my new goals for this year and have also been provided with (you too!) the advice of a personal trainer/dietician, found here. I will be blogging all about it on ‘Make It and Love It’ for the next several weeks. (All related posts can be found here.) Join with me and healthy up that body of yours too! In fact, why not take the pledge to live a healthier lifestyle right now!



††††† -Ashley


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I think the hardest thing about eating healthier is figuring out portions and calorie consumption, etc. Ugh. It’s such a pain.†However, if you’re really trying to monitor what you’re eating and/or count up calories, carbs, cholesterol, sodium, sugars, etc. you just have to plow through it until you get better at recognizing how much stuff is in everything.



Okay, okay…we’ve gotta put forth more effort. Check.





Do you want to see the coolest little tool that’s going to save you a lot of time? Something that will give you accuracy so that you’re not overeating without knowing it, then getting frustrated with your body for not changing?



Best Buy sent me the Perfect Portions – Food Scale with Nutritional Calculator that instantly tells me exactly what’s in my portion of food, just like looking at the nutrition label on a box of food from the store. Pretty dang cool. I no longer have to figure everything out. This little beauty does all the calculations for me.







You know how it’s annoying to figure out, “Hmmmmm, okay, 1 serving of chicken is my fist size, but this is probably one and a half fists. So, uh?” Or is this a “small” sized apple or a “medium” sized one? Who knows! Grrrrr. This scale cuts out all that guesswork. It weighs it, calculates it, then tells me what I need to know. It even has a feature to keep a running total of stats for the day. Cool.



The Perfect Portions Scale has about 2,000 food items stored in its memory, but it also allows for an additional 99 food entries. I can add and save unusual foods I may have in my diet and then recall them at any time. Again, cool.



So here’s how it works. You look up your food item in the food code book (which is plastic coated and very well organized) and find the code for what you’re going to eat. I wanted almonds, which†are code 0631. So I entered that code into the scale.







Then I plopped my almonds right on top and watched my info come up instantly. If you can see, the calories pop up as 121. If I want less, I can just take off one almond at a time until I get down to the calories†I want. Then I can scoop them off and gobble them up. Easy.







Here’s a pear that I placed down on the scale, happy to know I didn’t have to figure out the calories by labeling it a “medium” or “small” pear. The scale figured out exactly how many calories, carbs, sugars, etc are in that one little pear. Ooooh, I love it!







So, even though the top of the scale is glass and really easy to clean, you can’t really plop liquid stuff right down on top, like yogurt, for example. So you can place a bowl down first, ‘auto tare’ the scale (balance it out at zero) by pressing ZERO, and then plug in the number for your item. Yogurt is 0821.



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Then you add your yogurt in by the scoopful and watch as the nutrition facts change instantly with each scoop. Ooooops, too much yogurt? Just scoop a little back out and put it back in the yogurt container for another day. Ahhhhh, perfectly portioned.







Okay, now seriously, how many times have you just “guessed” how much you were eating or what the calculations were? No more of that for me. You know it’s hard to count out exactly how many crackers/chips/pretzels from a bag by following the serving size number on a food package. They’re always broken or different sizes. I don’t have to count anymore or puzzle piece chip bits back together to equal one chip. Or even do the math if I just want to add 10 more calories to my portion.



This scale has earned a permanent spot right on my counter. You could say we’re friends now.







Would you like to win a Perfect Portions – Food Scale with Nutritional Calculator of your very own?†









To be entered for a chance to win, just leave me a comment letting me know why you’d love a Perfect Portions scale.







Rules:
No duplicate comments.
You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
b) Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.



This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.
The Official Rules are available here.
This sweepstakes runs from 1/18 – 1/24





Also be sure to visit the Inspiration to Fitness page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggersí reviews, get great fitness tips and find more chances to win! You can also roll over the Best Buy image at the top of my blog to view a calendar of all the Inspiration to Fitness content. Good luck!++





Best Buy does not sponsor, endorse, approve, or have any responsibility for this promotion.

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