Portion Control-any apps

Portion control is what I seem to struggle with. Does anyone know of any good apps other then Myfitnesspal for helping with portion control such as showing you how much you should be having of certain foods and measurements etc.
Thanks :)
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Replies

  • MelaniaTrump
    MelaniaTrump Posts: 2,694 Member
    edited July 2016
    One thing that could help:
    Pre-plan your meals and log before you eat.
    Ex: If you want to limit your dinner to 500 calories, pre-logging can tell you how much to eat.
    This site works wonders. Give that idea a try? And using a food scale rocks!
    * I have my next meal logged. Open diary.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    i agree with pre-logging to see what you can fit in your cals and macros
  • jayleeshells
    jayleeshells Posts: 17 Member
    thanks everyone :)
  • DavPul
    DavPul Posts: 61,406 Member
    cityruss wrote: »
    Forget set 'portions'.

    Eat the foods you want, in the amounts that you want, within the confines of your calorie and macronutritional goals.

    I don't understand
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
    edited July 2016
    I've never seen an app or anything like that, but I've seen charts and infopics that compare portions to common items like a deck of cards, your palm, etc.

    Do a google image search for "serving size reference guide" and you'll get a ton of stuff.
  • jofjltncb6
    jofjltncb6 Posts: 34,415 Member
    DavPul wrote: »
    cityruss wrote: »
    Forget set 'portions'.

    Eat the foods you want, in the amounts that you want, within the confines of your calorie and macronutritional goals.

    I don't understand

    You have to change the amounts you want to be an amount that is within the confines of your goals. You do that by changing your wants.

    Maybe the two people who liked and awesomed it can help explain it better.
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
    edited July 2016
    cityruss wrote: »
    Eat the foods you want, in the amounts that you want
    ^^ that does not equal this:
    cityruss wrote: »
    within the confines of your calorie and macronutritional goals.

    The are mutually exclusive.
  • jofjltncb6
    jofjltncb6 Posts: 34,415 Member
    You just have to alter your wants to be in alignment. Simple!
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
    edited July 2016
    MFP works in a different way, practically the opposite way, to those "how much you should be having of certain foods" infograms, but they are just two different ways to impose portion control while at the same time ensure good nutrition. Most MFP users like the MFP approach, where food is "broken down" into calories, macronutrients and micronutrients, and it's up to the individual to "rebuild" their diet to their own needs. Others prefer to think "food groups" and "serving sizes". Both methods work, if you make them work for you. Do you struggle with knowing what to eat and how much to eat of anything, or to stop eating when you've had enough?

    I don't know about any apps, but there are plenty of workarounds - 21 day fix knockoff, the plate model, graphics that use your hands or things like baseballs and computer mice to visualize proper portions. If they help you, use them; I think of these "aids" as useless complications and just additional things to memorize.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
    I find it better to build your own knowledge bank...so take a visual image of your plate once you have weighed the food and try to fix it in your mind

  • cityruss
    cityruss Posts: 2,493 Member
    Maybe a better worded way would be...

    "Hit your calorie and macronutritional goals however you see fit".

    No need to be bound by arbitrary rules like "a portion of chicken is xxx grams", "a portion of rice is xxx grams", "a fistful of beans".
  • DavPul
    DavPul Posts: 61,406 Member
    tumblr_nt9jfo8IwI1svefdfo6_500.gif
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,182 Member
    The app I use is convertunits.com You convert 1/3 cup portions to grams and get 78 g, Then you weigh your food in little pieces until it adds up to 78 g and that's your portion. I toss a variety of vegetables into a skillet for my daily stir-fry. For those, my portion is 50 g each. I pre-log my meals to have a plan for the number and name of the items I will consume, and I stop adding items to my plan when my plan reaches my calorie goal. It all works out to being a pleasing pile of nutrient-dense calorie-light food which is what I want my meal to be.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    And the app you are looking for is MFP, which works perfectly well. You have to log for a while sometimes, but you will figure out how to choose amounts of your various foods that result in meeting your calorie and nutrient goals. I don't care what the "serving size" is for braised turkey leg (one of the foods I am eating for dinner). I know how much I should eat to hit my protein and calorie goals and to be able to eat the other foods I want with it.
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    jacksonpt wrote: »
    cityruss wrote: »
    Eat the foods you want, in the amounts that you want
    ^^ that does not equal this:
    cityruss wrote: »
    within the confines of your calorie and macronutritional goals.

    The are mutually exclusive.

    No, the latter is a limit on the former.

    Buy the best house that you can afford.

    Buy a house in a school district you like, and that you can afford.

    So I read it as: Eat foods you like, in the amount you like, so long as that fits with your calories and nutrition goals, of course!

    Right. I know how it works. But the "as long as" part was left out of the original post, which is a BIG qualifier considering what I want to eat is oreos and how much I want to eat is the entire package.
  • DavPul
    DavPul Posts: 61,406 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    jacksonpt wrote: »
    cityruss wrote: »
    Eat the foods you want, in the amounts that you want
    ^^ that does not equal this:
    cityruss wrote: »
    within the confines of your calorie and macronutritional goals.

    The are mutually exclusive.

    No, the latter is a limit on the former.

    Buy the best house that you can afford.

    Buy a house in a school district you like, and that you can afford.

    So I read it as: Eat foods you like, in the amount you like, so long as that fits with your calories and nutrition goals, of course!

    Except.....that would be an example of portion control. And the post in question indicated that portion control wasn't a thing.

    1. buy any house you want!
    2. In whatever neighborhood you want!














    337. As long as it's within your budget.

  • michelleepotter
    michelleepotter Posts: 800 Member
    seska422 wrote: »
    cityruss wrote: »
    Forget set 'portions'.

    Eat the foods you want, in the amounts that you want, within the confines of your calorie and macronutritional goals.
    cityruss wrote: »
    Maybe a better worded way would be...

    "Hit your calorie and macronutritional goals however you see fit".

    No need to be bound by arbitrary rules like "a portion of chicken is xxx grams", "a portion of rice is xxx grams", "a fistful of beans".
    This is what I do and I thought the first quote was pretty clear about what you were saying.

    As an example, the serving size shown in the nutritional information may be 28 grams. Some days I may just want 17 grams and some days I may want 40 grams. I'm in charge of how much of it I eat. If I do want 40 grams, I may need to adjust how much I eat of other things so that my calories and macros for the whole day are where I want them to be.

    Yes, but this may be one of those "you have to understand the rules in order to break the rules" kind of things. Understanding how much a "standard" serving size would be is part of the process of deciding what serving size you want. If you think a half-pint container of ice cream is a normal serving size, then eating a whole pint seems like an indulgence but maybe not as much of one as it really is. If you realize that the actual serving size is one of those teeny-tiny cups that looks like you could eat it in one bite, then having a regular bowl of ice cream becomes the reasonable indulgence.

    Personally, I found that counting calories was the best way to learn this. You learn to read the nutrition information on packaged foods, and compare calories-per-gram on different things, and make decisions about how much you want to eat of any particular food. Do it long enough, and you'll make healthy decisions without having to follow any kind of outside rules, because you'll understand the concepts on which they are based.