200-400 Extra Calories

In one of her nursing classes, my friend, Leah, learned a shocking statistic: stay-at-home-moms frequently consume 200-400 extra calories a day!!!

It is easy to see where these little extras can come from. If you're like me, you nibble at the extra grilled cheese pieces your toddler didn't touch, have a cookie when you offer one to the kids, scarf down a few saltines when you're feeding your infants some, go ahead and have a small snack with the kids mid-afternoon (this is probably not carrot sticks), lick the beaters from the birthday cake you're making, and are already eating slightly more fattening dinner entrees since creamy casseroles are so kid-friendly.

Well, 100 calories a day equals 10 pounds a year, so 200-400 calories a day can lead to 20-40 pounds weight gain over the course of the year! If you drop 100 calories a day, then you can lose up to 10 pounds over the year, so it works both ways. Watch those little nibbles!