If you resolved to eat better/lose weight/count calories this year, I'm going to bet that, by now, you're figuring out which foods are really challenging for you. I can tell you what my weakness is -- cheese. I love it, and I maintain that it's not a bad thing -- it's a good source of dairy and protein. But, it also has a good bit of fat, and once I start slicing it up to put on (low-fat) crackers, I lose all conception of a serving and just keep cutting.

I know the best idea might be to just not have it in the house, but I also know that if I don't get my cheese fix, I'll want it even more and have a hard time not eating a lot when I finally get the chance. So, I bought a package of the 50% Reduced Fat Sharp Cheddar by Cabot today and had a pleasant surprise -- serving sizes are printed on the packaging, like on a stick of butter, so it was easy for me to slice off a single serving, which I then shared (somewhat unhappily).

I know not everyone approves of low-fat cheeses -- personally, I prefer regular, but I don't mind it. Anyway, I checked the Cabot website, and it looks like a lot of their cheeses have the serving sizes printed on the package regardless of whether they're low-fat or not. No excuses for overindulging on the delicious, delicious dairy goodness now!

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Fruits and vegetables are good for us, we all know that. So why do we have so much trouble getting enough of them? By some reports only 11% of people get the recommended number of servings on a daily basis, that's an embarrassingly low number!

Excuses, excuses, that seems to be the problem. Common excuses include it's just not convenient, veggies and fruits don't taste good, they cost too much, or they spoil too fast. Solutions? Keep fruit out where you can see it so it is convenient, try new kinds of fresh produce to see if you can't find something you like (or add it into foods you already enjoy like), buy frozen or (when possible) in-season to reduce cost, and drink juice or try dried fruit for longer-lasting options.

That's just a few of the several common excuses many people find themselves using, but thankfully there are also ideas on how to overcome them!

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Portion and serving sizes seem to come up all the time, but it's still easy to be confused or lose track of just how much a "serving size" of any particular food item is. Given I don't usually hear "fat" discussed in terms of servings or portions (usually it's just a percentage of your total diet), when I came across this article I was curious: just how big is one serving of fat, anyway?

Well the answer is: one serving of fat = one teaspoon of fat. But the only kinds of fats that can really be measured this way are things like cooking oil, butter, margarine, etc., so it doesn't help us out a whole heck of a lot. I guess that's why fat is rarely talked about in terms of "serving size."

Still, now you know!

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As do many people, I hate wasting food. So, although it's a poor excuse for overeating, the fact there's "just a little left in the pan and it won't really keep" is one of my most common pitfalls when it comes to portion control. Portion sizes in this country are out of control, there's no doubt about that, and could it be that one contributing reason is people's aversion to wasting food? It's a small reason probably, but I bet it's part of it.

Not to downplay the challenges of cooking for a large family, but having extra food sitting around isn't usually one of them. But for single people, or even some couples, it's another story altogether. Most recipes don't make just 1 or 2 servings, and most foods in the store don't come packaged in smaller more convenient amounts, or if they do they're much more expensive and hardly make sense.

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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:

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Portions have been growing steadily over the past many years, and so have we. I was out to lunch with a co-worker the other day and she ordered country-fried chicken. When it arrived it was on a big oval plate (a platter, really) and had a hunk of breaded chicken with two huge scoops of mashed potatoes on either side, and so much gravy the waitress had to use two hands just to keep it from sloshing into someone's lap. Of course my friend complained it was "too much" and she'd "never be able to eat it all" but I couldn't help but think -- noticing how I could see some of my plate through my pile of fries -- that I'd somehow been jipped.

Can we change the perception of "bigger is better?" What is a normal serving size anyway? For meat, poultry, or fish use a deck of cards or the palm of your hand as a reference (about 3 ounces). Cooked veggies? A half cup, or just 3 brussell sprouts, is considered one serving. And most surprising to me is carbohydrates: 1 ounce, or the size of a hockey puck, is what the USDA recommends. That means most bakery bagels are really 3 or 4 servings packed into one tempting package.

Yikes!

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