Soooo, portions??

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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