Portion control: Seriously, that’s the entire meal?!

Did you know that the size of the average American plate has increased 36 % since the 1960s, which means you don’t have to back for 2nds anymore, you can just pile more on in one sitting!  If I went back in time and gave my great grandmother one of the plates I use for dinner, she might think it was a serving platter!

Gauging meal sizes can be tricky, and who looks at a piece of chicken and knows how many ounces it is, AND who want to think about that kind of stuff when you’re eating anyway!  Counting calories and measuring out portions is math, and math makes my head hurt, and I don’t enjoy eating with a headache!

You don’t have to eat off of a salad plate or dirty every measuring cup in your house to make dinner in order to make sure you’re not eating too much food.

Here are a few potion control methods that keep it simple:

1. The Divided Plate
1. Divide your plate in ½ and fill it with your veggies (salad, spinach, broccoli, escarole, etc.)
2. The other have of your plate gets divided in ½ again
3. Fill one ½ with your protein (chicken, fish, lean beef or pork)
4. And what’s left is for your grain (roll, rice, pasta, quinoa, etc.)
2. Hand - Palm - Fist
1. Spread your hand out, that your veggies portion
2. Turn your palm over, not including fingers- that’s your protein portion
3. Make a fist and that’s your grain.
3. Object related sizing
1.  Your protein should be about the size of your iPhone or a deck of cards
2. Grains should be about the size of a tennis ball.

Everything is good in moderation and if you (and me) can stick to balancing meals and snacks like this, it makes dieting easier. It also keeps us from trying to justify ketchup and pickles as vegetables! You know you’ve done it!

Eating “good for you” foods in the right proportions gives you more energy, wards off illness and disease, speeds up your metabolism, and will eventually melt off the pounds.  It’s pretty easy to know the kinds of foods that are good for us (refer to the new food pyramid from a previous post.)  We all learned the food groups in grade school, and I don’t remember there being a “cake” group, I WISH, but alas, nope, no “cake group.

Next Post: “Spinning” out of control!