portion control

lisasimpsondoops28

Would like to know what is a healthy portion for any meal

LazSommer

About 4

kommodevaran

Set an appropriate calorie goal per day. Your height, weight, age, sex and activity level will decide this. Use MFP's setup and plot that in. If you need to lose weight, choose a weekly weight loss goal that is appoximately 1% of your total body weight.

Now you have your daily allowance. Split that into meals as you see fit. You may have things to do, places to be. Time your meals to match those events.

Then figure out what you would like to eat for those meals. Do you like a bigger dinner or breakfast? Prelog a day or two in your diary of foods you want, and see how different amounts make the calorie number go up and down. You want to hit that number more or less spot on every day.

Is it difficult to stick to your portions? You may have to tweak amounts and timings a bit more to get maximum satiety. But you may also have to be a bit strict with yourself. Serve yourself the portion you have decided, and don't go back for seconds. If you cook, you can cook just the amount you need for that meal, or box and refridgerate/freeze leftovers immediately.

juliet3455

lisasimpsondoops28 wrote: »

Would like to know what is a healthy portion for any meal

@lisasimpsondoops28 Rather than quoting and reposting Go visit this thread for some good comments and links to helpful posts by other MFP's. No Idea how to eat

cee134

This might help.

callsitlikeiseeit

42

enterdanger

@callsitlikeiseeit nice Hitchhiker's reference.

tcunbeliever

I tend to go for about a fistfull of food per meal...after that I'm not hungry and if I keep eating I'll be stuffed.

TavistockToad

lisasimpsondoops28 wrote: »

Would like to know what is a healthy portion for any meal

How long is a piece of string...?

callsitlikeiseeit

enterdanger wrote: »

@callsitlikeiseeit nice Hitchhiker's reference.

well, it is the answer to everything .... lol

kommodevaran

cee134 wrote: »

This might help.

This is not helpful or useful AT ALL.

(Well, it helps me understand why so many struggle with their weight.)

hlltwin

kommodevaran wrote: »

cee134 wrote: »

This might help.

This is not helpful or useful AT ALL.

(Well, it helps me understand why so many struggle with their weight.)

Care to explain? I do have a scale with which to measure my food by the gram and all but but the visual cues are useful when you're out at a restaurant or a friend's house and can't break out your scale to check how much food you should be eating.

Are these measurement's entirely inaccurate in your experience (is a 3 oz piece of meat smaller than your palm, for example) or do you just disapprove of guestimating and prefer to carry your scale with you everywhere?

kommodevaran

hlltwin wrote: »

kommodevaran wrote: »

cee134 wrote: »

This might help.

This is not helpful or useful AT ALL.

(Well, it helps me understand why so many struggle with their weight.)

Care to explain? I do have a scale with which to measure my food by the gram and all but but the visual cues are useful when you're out at a restaurant or a friend's house and can't break out your scale to check how much food you should be eating.

Are these measurement's entirely inaccurate in your experience (is a 3 oz piece of meat smaller than your palm, for example) or do you just disapprove of guestimating and prefer to carry your scale with you everywhere?

I'd love to explain what I mean. Diet is all about context. This infogram provides zero context. How much food is appropriate for an individual, depends on whether the person is active or sedentary, and needs to lose, gain or maintain weight. How much food is appropriate for a meal, depends on how many meals that person eats per day. There is no mention of how many of these portions a person should eat, per meal, or per day, and how to figure it out. If a person wants to eat more of one kind of food and less of another, it doesn't matter as long as the diet still is balanced, including providing the right amount of calories. No mention of the importance of variety. Random examples, for instance "meat, fish and poultry" - I can hear the reader ask "how many eggs can I eat?" "can I eat shrimp?".

No, I don't bring my scale with me But I have learnt what appropriate portion sizes are, and that is both more accurate and more flexible than this.

kommodevaran

To expand on the "context" thing - this kind of "narrow" thinking makes people only consider the immediate. For instance, I could claim that "but, I just had a piece of fruit", and "forget" that today I also ate a head of cabbage, three large potatoes made into mash with milk and butter, a packet of bacon, a bowl of cream of wheat with milk and butter, a slice of black rye bread with butter, salami, mayo and pickles, a nectarine and a large plum, some sugar snap peas, and a good chunk of broccoli. It doesn't even matter that I "lied" - I had a fig and an apple just now. It's the whole day, week and month that matters.

DiIDE

Try using smaller plates, I recently changed to 10" plates and was surprised that what I was putting on a large plate completely filled the smaller one, rim an all. It was a real eye opener for me.

kommodevaran

TavistockToad wrote: »

lisasimpsondoops28 wrote: »

Would like to know what is a healthy portion for any meal

How long is a piece of string...?

14.25 inches. Didn't you get the memo?

I actually believed this to be a hoax:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtQa13u6mYM

We have found this precision tool called MFP, and still people insist on using these heavy and blunt tools. The combination of rigidity and randomness scares me. The lack of trust saddens me.

Are we supposed to memorize these portion sizes? What if we are served a piece of meat that is bigger than our palm? We can cut off into exact portions when we are at home and cooking, and then we weigh the damn meat, and log it, and get some data we can use. Is ice cream nutritionally equal to rice? I once served myself a lump of butter the size of a tennis ball, believing it was ice cream. I didn't need an infographic to figure out that that would be too much butter in one sitting. These infographics complicates something simple and conflates the complex at the same time.

Mostly, the challenge isn't even knowing how much one should eat, but to not eat more than one needs. We are told what to do, but not taught to understand why, and it's difficult to follow rules we don't understand, and we don't need to, because understanding what we want to achieve and the process by which that is achieved, will make what to do, crystal clear. If we know that we can eat that chocolate bar, but to keep within budget, we will have to reduce dinner or forgo lunch, and if we don't eat properly, we will be hungry, it becomes a free and deliberate choice, not "I can't have chocolate", which will certainly trigger a "need" for that "forbidden fruit".

I get angry and sad because my health has suffered from trying to follow guidelines like this (not quite as stupid, but in the same vein). And it wasn't just me. Public health is at risk.