Effective Food Portion Control Tips
One of the most effective ways to both lose weight and maintain your weight is to manage the size of your meals. Learning about appropriate portion sizes for the various food groups is the first step. Once you know what a healthy portion looks like, then you can take advantage of a few tips and tactics to stay in charge of what you eat.
#1 What Does a Portion Look Like?
The first step is to know how much you’re supposed to eat to meet your body’s nutritional and caloric needs. There are a few handy visual aids to make this step easy.
* Meat – The size of a deck of cards
* Vegetables or grains – the size of your fist (or if you have a large hand, about the size of a tennis ball)
* Fats and dressings – two dice
* Bread – a hockey puck
#2 Out of Sight
One simple tactic to make sure you only eat what you need is to keep serving dishes off of the table. Fill your plate at the counter or stovetop and then sit at the table. You’ll be less tempted to reach out for seconds or to nibble from the dish.
#3 Veggies First
If you eat your vegetables first, before your meats and grains, you’ll fill up faster. You may not have room for that serving of meat, bread, or pasta.
#4 Eat More Slowly
One of the reasons many people tend to overeat is because they eat quickly. It takes your body about twenty minutes to send a “full