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Portion Control: Know your limits
Posted on Jan 19th 2007 3:47PM by Martha EdwardsFiled Under: Diet & Weight Loss, Nutrition & Supplements
My day-to-day diet is fairly healthy. I eat lots of fruit and veggies, choose whole grain over refined carbs, get calcium from low-fat dairy, avoid red meat, opting for fish and lean cuts of chicken instead and consume moderate amounts of mostly vegetable-based fats. I don't eat fast food, junk food or trans fats. I occasionally indulge with chocolate, fine cheese or wine, but I try to limit this to weekends. I'm pretty active and work out lots. Yet I have trouble losing pounds. Why? Because I suffer from portion distortion -- thinking that because I eat healthy, I can eat as much as I want.
Let's examine some of my typical meals:
-One of my favourite things to have is whole wheat pasta with pesto, freshly chopped tomatoes and goat cheese. I go light on the pesto, but for as for pasta, I usually have up to 3 cups of it. A serving of pasta should be no more than one cup. Yikes! As for the cheese, I've realized that I put in about double the serving size -- maybe even triple if I'm feeling naughty. Eeps!
-For dinner, I usually barbecue, grill or bake a chicken breast. I'm not sure exactly how many ounces or grams one is, but seeing as a serving size is about the size of a deck of cards, it looks like I'm eating twice or even three times that in one breast. That's all my protein requirements for the day in one meal.
-For lunch, I'll usually have a meal-size salad. Meal size salads are pretty big, and I usually eat the whole thing because I fine that veggies don't fill me up as much as, say, a sandwich or piece of meat. One serving of veggies is equivalent to 1 cup of salad, so I'm probably getting four servings in my lunch. That's not a bad thing unless I have unhealthy add-ons to my salad, like high-fat dressing, croutons, crushed tortilla chips, etc.
-Sometimes, to get an extra serving of fruits and veggies, I'll drink juice. One serving of fruit comes from just half a cup of juice. Half a cup is not very much -- I usually drink a whole cup or more if I'm thirsty. Juice isn't something you want to drink too much of because it has a lot of sugar.
The moral of the story is that you can get too much of a good thing. If you're watching your weight, watch your portions too. For information on portion sizes, I usually refer to the Canada Food Guide, or this post, which teaches you how to eye up portions quickly and effectively.
Now it's your turn: How do your portions stack up?
Let's examine some of my typical meals:
-One of my favourite things to have is whole wheat pasta with pesto, freshly chopped tomatoes and goat cheese. I go light on the pesto, but for as for pasta, I usually have up to 3 cups of it. A serving of pasta should be no more than one cup. Yikes! As for the cheese, I've realized that I put in about double the serving size -- maybe even triple if I'm feeling naughty. Eeps!
-For dinner, I usually barbecue, grill or bake a chicken breast. I'm not sure exactly how many ounces or grams one is, but seeing as a serving size is about the size of a deck of cards, it looks like I'm eating twice or even three times that in one breast. That's all my protein requirements for the day in one meal.
-For lunch, I'll usually have a meal-size salad. Meal size salads are pretty big, and I usually eat the whole thing because I fine that veggies don't fill me up as much as, say, a sandwich or piece of meat. One serving of veggies is equivalent to 1 cup of salad, so I'm probably getting four servings in my lunch. That's not a bad thing unless I have unhealthy add-ons to my salad, like high-fat dressing, croutons, crushed tortilla chips, etc.
-Sometimes, to get an extra serving of fruits and veggies, I'll drink juice. One serving of fruit comes from just half a cup of juice. Half a cup is not very much -- I usually drink a whole cup or more if I'm thirsty. Juice isn't something you want to drink too much of because it has a lot of sugar.
The moral of the story is that you can get too much of a good thing. If you're watching your weight, watch your portions too. For information on portion sizes, I usually refer to the Canada Food Guide, or this post, which teaches you how to eye up portions quickly and effectively.
Now it's your turn: How do your portions stack up?
