teach?

Start with leaner foods like skinless chicken breasts and steamed veggies can not over eat calories with them.:happy:

It's simple but drink a glass of water before meals..

Seconding a food scale. They are cheap and will surprise you when you see how much a serving really is.

For most lunches and dinners I usually do four to five ounce piece of meat and 2 cups of veggies. For breakfast a couple eggs and a few slices of turkey bacon or 1/2 cup of yogurt. I find I control my portions best when I

-Use my food scale and measuring cups/spoons
-Plan my meals out ahead of time.
-Bring snacks and lunch with me instead of buying when Im out

Smaller meals more often works for me. If I go too long without eating, I'm so hungry when I do eat that I sometimes eat too much. Even when I don't over eat, when I get that hungry, I sometimes feel that out of control eating machine I used to be, welling up inside of me. Not good...

Water before the meal, smaller plates and filling your plate up with low-calorie vegetables.

Also, exercise! I'm much less inclined to overeat if I have some good work I don't want to undo.

Whenever i buy a large quantity of food, i immediately weight it and separate it into individual servings....ziploc bags are great and i put one serving into each ziploc bag. then when it comes time to cook or eat, everything is already measured out for me

As you work with the food tracker you will learn what a normal portion is. It's different for different foods. Also read the nutrition labels on foods that have them. eg; cold cereals. Measure out the serving amount stated and see what it looks like in your bowl. I use smaller bowls and plates so it looks like I have a full plate.

This is a learning process.

I agree with the food scale and measuring cups. I also will cook a week's worth of boneless, skinless chicken or pork chops on the weekend to take for lunch during the week so it is all ready to go and add frozen veggies to the lunch container the night before since I have a microwave at work.

Hey, Joseph, would you ever consider working with a nutritionist? I think that would be so beneficial for you to help you learn about portions, the right foods for you, and to help you learn how to avoid the binging as well. It can be covered by some insurance too. It's worth looking into!

Hey, Joseph, would you ever consider working with a nutritionist? I think that would be so beneficial for you to help you learn about portions, the right foods for you, and to help you learn how to avoid the binging as well. It can be covered by some insurance too. It's worth looking into!

I second this notion, but recommend seeing a registered dietician instead. Almost anyone can call themselves a nutritionist, but a dietician actually has formal training and certification and will give you better information.

As others have said, a food scale is key. Start off by weighing and logging the portions that you would usually eat. Then you can see where you need to cut back. For example, I started out weighing what for me was a normal portion of cheese, it turned out that it was about 3-4 times what an actual portion should be, so the next time, I weighed out less. It's all a matter of fitting what you're eating into the calories you have allotted, but there is definitely some trial and error involved. I actually found that I was eating smaller portions than i thought of some things and too large of a portion of others.

I have not read all of the replies yet but thought that, what may be really helpful to you, is to check out the information provided in the food pyramid - the guide to eating put out by the government. Here is a link http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/Fpyr/pmap.htm This page also lists what each serving size is of each typical food group. It's also good information for what you really should be eating.

I must admit that I have never been much of a breakfast eater. Perhaps that is part of the reason I became overweight? I still don't eat a lot for breakfast but I do have something. Generally, (besides my coffee) I try to have a piece of fruit, a single serving container of yogurt and maybe a piece of toast or a breakfast bar. Or, fruit and cereal with milk. Keep in mind though that I am also not an early riser so the time between breakfast and lunch for me is sometimes only a couple of hours.

Start reading nutrition labels on foods and pairing that with your food scale and both wet and dry measuring cups. When portion sizes are listed by gram (g) or ounce (oz), that's a weighted portion. When they say cup, 1/2 cup, etc, that's a wet or dry measurement depending on the food (broth would be wet, cereal would be dry). There's not a huge difference between wet and dry cups but it's best to be as accurate as you can be. And then obviously things measured in Tbsp, like peanut butter or mayo, would require measuring spoons.

I love the recipe function on here because you can add everything together and then approximate how many servings! More liquid things like soups and chilis are a bit harder but a lot of recipes you find in cookbooks or online will give you an actual potion size like 1 cup.

Here's a good link with more info from the AHA:
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Caregiver/Replenish/WhatisaServing/What-is-a-Serving_UCM_301838_Article.jsp