Tips for portion awareness rather than calorie and macro counting

The British Heart Foundation Eating Well booklet (free download) gives some eyeballing ideas about portion sizes https://bhf.org.uk/publications/healthy-eating-and-drinking/eating-well

Sadly a portion of cheese is small box of matches size, not the size of your palm :-(




I suggest trying weighing your portions out for a few weeks until you get a feel for them as others have suggested,

I agree with weighing different foods to find out the appropriate portions. I'm vegan but I know for me a protein like black beans is different from a more concentrated one like tofu. A starchy vegetable like butternut squash is different from a bunch of raw spinach. Even whole grains--brown rice and quinoa are different obviously.

But putting that aside for a second, one neat trick I've heard is that people simply eat less in general when eating off a smaller plate. So I'm seeing if I'm happier with my smaller portions on a little plate, as opposed to having them look lonely on a big plate, which might leave me feeling deprived.

kshama2001 wrote: »

I don't like the way they treat potatoes. Instead of a "whole grains" category, I use "starch" and include potatoes there, like the UK government suggests in their Eatwell Guide

This is what I do too. It's how I grew up thinking about it, and weird that the US guidelines do not. (Corn, peas, grains, tubers, beans and lentils = starch.) Of course now I'd say beans and lentils could be starch or protein, depending on the meal, but growing up we did not do vegetarian, and my parents still seem to think a dinner without meat is weird (breakfast or lunch, sure, as there were eggs and peanut butter).

there is a diet based on this, where you buy special containers that are supposed to help with portion control. I wouldn't pay for them personally, but I could see where weighing out some portions in the containers you have around already and getting an idea of what portion sizes look like would be a useful thing to do

I agree with some of above that when you get into "fist size" or similar type measurements there is alot of variability from person to person, so I don't feel that is super helpful. But figuring out your own more accurate portion system could work.

I know you wanted suggestions for NOT calorie counting, but for the last year or so I have set my calories to maintenance at my GOAL weight. So although the weight-loss is much much slower, this gets me used to eating at that level. There are days when I slip up, so I try and eat a little less the next day, and follow hunger rather than having to hit an arbitrary calorie figure, as long as my weekly average is right, and I am getting the nutrients. I’m a big vegetable fan anyway so many of my meals end up mostly vegetables, with some protein and healthy fats, and then I don’t have room on the plate for starchy carbs.

This helps me get USED to the idea of eating less. In fact, this week, as I have a half marathon coming up, I am meant to be eating a bit more to help fuel my runs and I’m finding it a struggle as I don’t WANT to eat more. Something must be working!!

For years I kept reading about diets that didn't involve calorie counting. I'm very type a and if I couldn't do it perfectly I didn't want to do it (i.e calories eating out etc) but I finally gave in because it works!

It would be worth trying out...I would suggest logging for a few weeks while you tweak your portions to ensure you are regularly meeting calories and macros though.

I've lost weight twice in my life. Once around 2000 and once in 2014. I maintained the first weight loss for quite a while and the reasons I regained had nothing to do with how I lost it. (Disclaimer.)

This time, of course, I logged, but the first time I did not. What I did was write down what I ate in a normal day (you have to be honest), and then figured out what I could cut down/out without missing it. What I realized from that exercise was that I really didn't know exactly, because I did not eat in a structured way, so I decided to do that. I ate: (1) a planned breakfast (at the time I think it was oats and fruit and milk or yogurt, but obviously depends on the person, point was I wasn't running out the door and then grabbing a muffin or bagel later because I was hungry -- people don't have to have breakfast but I was in the habit); (2) a lunch with protein, vegetable, and usually some sort of starch (sometimes I had extra fat or fruit instead); and (3) dinner with protein, veg, and starch. I also started exercising and eventually was doing quite a lot.

Like someone else said I built meals (other than breakfast, although now I would say breakfast too) around protein and veg, and then I used starches and fat to add flavor and round out the meal. To cut calories I cut down on the latter, but didn't cut them out. I mostly cut calories by eliminating snacking other than raw veg. I had one indulgent meal a week, usually at a restaurant, sometimes a favorite delivery/take out place. I used portion size to figure out how much meat to have when I had it (I assumed 4 oz raw), and didn't log, but would buy 16 oz and cut it into 4ths or some such.

If someone asked me for advice, not sure I'd get into all that detail, as it would depend on how interested they were, but I do think for many having structure is really important and then, whether you log or not, you can cut back/adjust based on results.

I know people hate "eat less, move more," but I really do think how to do that is something people have to work out for themselves for it to really work.

amtyrell wrote: »

Why not weigh for a while so you get to know what a portion of the foods you eat is.

This is the best option!!

I have tiny hands and "piano" fingers...long and skinny....based off of this I would starve trying to eat this way