Hello Summer!

Today is Saturday, June 21, 2014. The first Day of Summer!

I love Summers. Back when we were raising all four kids, my husband would finish teaching for the year, and after I cleared my calendar of freelance design projects, Summers were all ours, so, we slept in, went camping, or ventured out on Road Trips. It really meant all six of us were together for almost two whole months. I loved it!

This year will be different. Our household has dwindled down to three. My husband, Gerard, will be off teaching Summer School and will be very busy with lesson plans and creating activities for his class (this occurs at home because teacher's planning time for Special Ed doesn't happen during "Planning Time.") and as teachers often do, he has a second job on the weekends. He will be very busy.

Our son, Benjamin, is the last of the FAB FOUR still living at home and we have come up with a few new and creative ways to do something productive, have a lot of fun, laugh, probably cry and just make the most of the time we have together since he will be graduating high school next year.

We have agreed to help each other as much as we can on our tasks to encourage success for us both. Benjamin's project will be diving into social media: Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. My project is this new blog, Serving Size Summer.

In the early 1990's, nutrition facts became a requirement for food labeling. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) created a standard of nutrition information based on serving sizes Americans consumed in the 70's and 80's. Back in the day when we didn't have an obesity crisis. Before wheat, corn and soy became additives in our packaged food.

A few months ago, the FDA  announced a plan to change the serving size recommendations to reflect what Americans actually eat. Similar to what they did before... except this time, the FDA will be using our out-of-control consumption as the norm.

Does this idea bother anyone? Americans are already bad at managing their food intake. I am a prime example of this. I didn't get to weigh almost 300 pounds by following the serving size information. I basically just ate as much as I wanted and the results, are disastrous.  It didn't happen overnight. I believe I did this by ignoring the recommended serving sizes of the foods I consumed.

The FDA's plan would make my mismanaged dietary habits seem normal. I could then consume larger quantities of guilt free foods. Some people wont even be aware that the serving size was changed. They will look at the label and be happy to have permission to eat more.

Here is an example. A seven ounce bag of sour cream & onion potato chips is 1051 calories - almost half of your recommended calorie allowance for the day in a 2000 calorie diet. The current label states that a serving size is one ounce of chips. It could be somewhere between 10 and 17 pieces for 150 calories.

If there is a seven ounce bag of chips sitting on my counter, I would want to eat the entire bag and be resentful of every other hand that went in for a taste. I am an obese American after all and chips are my favorite thing, and yet I know 7 ounces of potato chips would not be a good idea.

I could list hundreds of foods in the same manner, but what my goal is for this blog, is to show myself what the current food labeling system means to me in my daily life, use the information within a 2000 calorie diet, get healthier, move further away from Type II Diabetes and lose some of my belly fat.

I may not always stick to this plan perfectly but I will be honest about my failures as well as my successes. Today I spent the day keeping track of my food intake and am happy to report, I followed my plan very carefully. Later, I will show you what my first day of Serving Sized food looked like.

Stay tuned.

Here is one story: http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/27/health/nutrition-labels-changes/