Soooo, portions??

edean331

How does one decide what portion size is appropriate? And how do you measure it???
If you use some kind of portion scale, where did you get the item? Can I buy find it at Tarjay??

edean331

Also, what about ingredients in a casserole or soup? Do I really need to do all this math and scanning of labels, and adding tablespoons of vegetables at a time?? I'm into it now, but it may get to be a bit much.

msalicia116

Find your calorie goal. Split those calories into how many meals you want a day. Allocate how many calories you want for each meal, maybe you want more for dinner than breakfast, and that will give you an idea of portion size. Meaning, your portion size is the amount that equals your calorie goal for that meal. If your breakfast allowance is 300, then read labels, or like many weigh the food on a food scale, and you have uccessfully eaten the correct portion.

daremightythings

portion sizes can be whatever you want them to be. i keep 125g and 150g hunks of chicken in my freezer and depending on what else i'm eating in a given day and how much protein i need, i'll take one size or the other out for lunch.

https://www.amazon.com/Taylor-Precision-Products-6-6-Pound-Platform/dp/B001DQOEIE

there's no reason a food scale should cost more than $20. you want one that will weigh in grams and ounces (grams are way more accurate) and that has a tare function.

i'm making pasta with sausage tonight for dinner. i'll put my plate on the scale, add pasta and weigh, tare, add sauce and weigh, tare, and add sausage and weigh. all you do is note the number of grams each thing weighs and add it to your diary. same thing applies to raw ingredients in a casserole, soup, etc. super easy!

Seffell

Yes, you need to weigh it all. For cooked meals like casseroles I use the recipe builder in MFP here. I weigh, scan, log all the ingredients. It becomes a habit and not a chore after a while. Otherwise you can't know how much you are eating. Few people can be accurate at eyeballing.

edean331

Ok, well it seems like I definitely need a scale, maybe write some recipes!
It would be awesome if the app allowed us to put in recipes then draw portion size from that and let the app break it down as a portion. Anyone know where that may be available??
But I don't know where to start for portion size???

kommodevaran

You need an appropriate calorie goal - let MFP calculate it in setup; set the weekly weight loss goal close to 1% of your total body weight.

You use your food diary, the food database, and an electronic food scale, and weigh and log your food. After some time, you'll find out how to spread your food through the day to get the most out of your allotted calories.

You don't do math, leave it to MFP. Use the recipe builder for recipes.

koslowkj

You can also use the recipe tab to add in ingredients for a casserole and then just enter how much of it you eat. I personally weigh the finished dish and divide it into 100g servings to make it easy. (Ex. If the casserole weighs 1500g, I set the recipe to 15 servings. If I eat 125g of it, I log 1.25 servings.) It has the added bonus of not having to re-enter everything if you make the same recipe again, you just go into the recipe and edit ingredients and servings as needed.

edean331

Ah! The recipe builder! Thank you

edean331

And I guess trial and error for the portions, requiring a bit of dedication and forethought.
Boo

AnnPT77

Weighing your food (when you can) is portion control for the win. It's more accurate, but it's also so much quicker and easier!

You just need a few tricks:

• Assembling a salad in a bowl, a stew in a pan, sandwich on a plate? Put the bowl/pan/plate on the scale, zero, add an ingredient, note the weight, zero, add the next ingredient, note the weight . . . .
• Using something from a carton or jar, or cutting a slice from a hunk of cheese? Put the container or chunk on the scale, zero, take out portion, note the negative value (it's the amount you took out).
• Eating a whole apple, banana, unhulled strawberries, corn on the cob? Weigh the ready-to-eat food, eat the yummy parts, weigh the core/hulls/peel, subtract & note.
• I like to keep a few clean plastic yogurt-tub lids around to weigh small items, like a handful of nuts or chopped hardboiled eggs or something. Drop the lid on the scale, zero, add item, note weight, eat or use - just a quick rinse of the lid under the faucet & you're done.

No measuring spoons to scrape out, or wash, except when you need to measure liquids . . . and you can weigh some of them, too.

Once you learn the tricks, weighing food is easier and quicker than measuring, and requires less washing up, plus it's the most accurate. Weigh in grams for the best precision.

You'll find a scale at almost any big department store, so I'd expect Target to have them. Walmart does, for sure.

You can start just weighing your normal portions, or what you think might be right. Log it, and at the end of the day, review your diary to decide what needs adjusting next time in order to maximize calories, nutrition, satiation, and tastiness. Before long, you'll have identified the portions that best meet your personal goals.

edean331

Awesome advice and so necessary!!
Excellent point about eyeballing portions, one could be consistently miscalculating and thereafter everything is wrong!

Psychgrrl

I pack my food for work in Pyrex dishes. First broccoli (or other veggie), hit "tare," then carb (beans, rice, potato, quinoa), hit "tare," then protein (usually chicken or fish, but sometimes tofu. Put lid on and throw in cooler. Log food.

I do smaller ones with fruit to eat with my yogurt. And every couple of weeks I measure out granola/cereal in these little Tupperwares to put on my yogurt.

I also take 3 32oz bottles of tea with me and one of just ice--I don't like warm beverages.

I keep snacks in a drawer in my desk: Kind bars, trader Joe's bars, almonds (in little Tupperwares), soy nuts ( in little Tupperwares). I keep both salty and sweet snacks on hand so I'm not tempted by other stuff. Also works well on the go when my schedule is hectic.

At home, I eat a lot of egg whites with veggies. Measure everything out (frozen veggies, cooked potatoes, tofu) in the bowl I will eat out of. Sauté up, add egg whites. Don't forget to log the butter oil you cook in.

bioklutz

edean331 wrote: »

Ok, well it seems like I definitely need a scale, maybe write some recipes!
It would be awesome if the app allowed us to put in recipes then draw portion size from that and let the app break it down as a portion. Anyone know where that may be available??
But I don't know where to start for portion size???

You can enter recipes. Under the food tab there is a recipe tab. You would need to type the ingredients in and then match the ingredients and amount used with what is in the database. It is a bit of a pain to enter a recipe in the first time but once it is in it is easy to use. As for the serving size - I weigh the entire end product out. So if my cake is 500 grams I enter the number of servings as 500. Then when I eat a 75 gram slice of cake I enter 75 servings of the recipe into my food diary.

grinning_chick

edean331 wrote: »

Ok, well it seems like I definitely need a scale, maybe write some recipes!
It would be awesome if the app allowed us to put in recipes then draw portion size from that and let the app break it down as a portion. Anyone know where that may be available??
But I don't know where to start for portion size???

It does. Well, I don't know about an app, but from a computer it does. There's an option here to enter and save your own recipes as well as choose/play with the number of servings to meet your caloric needs. It's what drew me to MFP.

Food tab => Recipes sub tab => Enter New Recipe button on right hand side of screen ("Old Recipe Calculator")

Just be sure to verify every entry you select from the food database here is correct for calories per whatever measurement you choose. I use Calorie King, the USDA's nutritional website, and Google's results if you search for "calories in [whatever foodstuff looking up]" (which uses USDA from what I've seen). Weigh dry ingredients in grams, liquids in ml/ounces.

As far as portions, I go by what the manufacturers nutritional label lists if it is available. For example, Kroger brand spaghetti pasta lists one serving as 56 grams for 200 calories so that's what I eat. Once you deprogram yourself from considering restaurant "serving sizes" of 2-4+ 56 gram servings on your plate as "normal", one 56 gram serving is a perfectly reasonable serving for an adult woman with sauce and perhaps a salad side.

ouryve

It depends on how you're dividing your macros and what you eat, but generally, 3-5oz of meat, 4-7 oz of cooked starch and as much veg as you can cram in, to a total of 14-24oz of food is a reasonable adult portion of main meal. if you're on 1400kcal per day, aim for 5-600kcal for that meal and scale down, as appropriate to you, for others.

If you have no sense of scale with food, the best thing to do is eat normally and log it all for up to a week. Then start tweaking it so you meet your calorie goal but don't feel like you're going to faint. A slightly gnaw-y tummy is a good feeling to get used to. About to pass out means you need to adjust something - either your goals, your composition or just wait it out until a kinder part of your monthly cycle before trying again.

ouryve

Those little IKEA cups and bowls for small kids are great for little portions of stuff, btw. Something like 90p for 6 in the UK!

JeromeBarry1

Portions: My idea of a portion has changed during my journey. At the moment the portion of meat I want with my breakfast burrito is < 50 g. The portion of celery and onion I want with my breakfast burrito is 50 g. Why? Because I want my stuff to fit inside my tortilla! I have been baking and consuming cornbread from a Pillsbury cookbook recipe for 33 years, always 1/8 of the pan. After inputting that recipe into the mfp recipe tool, I decided that my portion was going to be 1/16 of the pan. For meat and pork, my portion is the thin cut, rather than the big and thick stuff.

edean331

ouryve wrote: »

If you have no sense of scale with food, the best thing to do is eat normally and log it all for up to a week. Then start tweaking it so you meet your calorie goal but don't feel like you're going to faint. A slightly gnaw-y tummy is a good feeling to get used to. About to pass out means you need to adjust something - either your goals, your composition or just wait it out until a kinder part of your monthly cycle before trying again.

This is super helpful!!! Thank you

edean331

grinning_chick wrote: »

edean331 wrote: »

Ok, well it seems like I definitely need a scale, maybe write some recipes!
It would be awesome if the app allowed us to put in recipes then draw portion size from that and let the app break it down as a portion. Anyone know where that may be available??
But I don't know where to start for portion size???

As far as portions, I go by what the manufacturers nutritional label lists if it is available. For example, Kroger brand spaghetti pasta lists one serving as 56 grams for 200 calories so that's what I eat. Once you deprogram yourself from considering restaurant "serving sizes" of 2-4+ 56 gram servings on your plate as "normal", one 56 gram serving is a perfectly reasonable serving for an adult woman with sauce and perhaps a salad side.

Agreed! Plus that whole "clear your plate" mentality programmed from youth! That's a hard one to break, something I need to be conscious of

Lounmoun

I prelog my food for the day so I know what portion size fits my goals. Then I just eat what I logged.