Healthy Foods . Unhealthy Portions.

The best advice I can give is to invest in a food scale and use measuring cups for liquids. After you formally measure things for awhile (I measure/weigh everything!) you'll get a good sense of how much portions really should be, such as 1 cup (8 fl. oz) of milk or 100g of baby carrots or 100g of rice or what a real serving of cereal is.

Agreed.. get a scale and use measuring cups. That is what I do when I prepare meals.

Here are the only tips I have about portion control:


salad dressings : I usually make my own because I love cooking and making flavors (and store bought ones have crazy sodium) but you really need to watch how much dressing you use. Big salad = lots of dressing so having a big salad for dinner isn't always the healthiest

Cheese: I love cheese and having mini baby bells (that come in the red wax) is helpful because they are already portioned out for you. They are great in omlettes

eggs: one egg plus a few egg whites makes a great omlette

Meat: if you have a kitchen scale take the time to check out how much 5oz or 3oz of cooked meat looks like. You don't have to do it every time but once you get an idea of how much a few ounces of chicken is it's easier to eyeball it.


My boyfriend hates measuring, weighing anything like that but he tries to make his plate 50% veggies, 25% carbs, 25% protein

Hi,
Hows it going, if you are burning up lots that great, to be honest I would think its ok to be up to 200 cal under your goal. I certainly wouldn't think eating in the evening to make up your cals is a good thing.

Anyway to what you were saying about portion sizes, you can weigh etc. but really you want to be eating portion sizes that fit in your hand- a hand ful of rice, a piece of meat the size of the palm of your hand, as for nuts have them in 10s only, nuts are healthy and most contain fats that actually help breakdown food, make sure you chew though, us westerners tend to chomp chomp swallow way too much which means that the body is more likely to store some as fat and some goes undigested- leaving you nutruient poor. So generally we eat portion sizes way too big - but if you can have a handful of veg and a chop the size of your palm thats good portion control. Forget about what they serve in restaurants thats just mad- people would not accept normal sizes they want to feel they are getting value so most food establishments will give you double the portion size you should be eating!!

Good luck - Barb

yessir!

I use a deck of cards for 3 oz of meat, two dice (or the size of my thumb from the web to the thumb-tip) for an ounce of cheese, a tennis ball for a cup of rice or cereal, and I don't really limit my veggies. fruits, i usually try to eat small or medium ones, about the size of a hackey-sack or less. if it's a baseball sized orange or a banana longer than my hand-span, I count it as a double portion. a serving of nuts is about a quarter cup or 200 calories and um that just comes from measuring stuff a lot. a quarter cup is 4 tablespoons, and something like 20-30 almonds I'd say. I guess an easy measurement would be say just cup your hand and pour a few into the palm until it's about halfway full, and when in doubt, go a little light on the pour.

Hope it helps!

Ok here's how I do it, not scientific at all. I think I saw it on BL long ago as a rule of thumb.

Meat=about the size of your palm (about the size of the deck of cards, in the box.) lol
carb=the size of a baseball, it's about 1 cup.
Veggies=the size of a softball.

The carb thing seems pretty high to me, but I did measure stuff out and it was roughly right on the money.

That's how I make my plate and judge.