Developing an eye for portion sizes makes or breaks your weight-loss plan. Say you started your day with cereal and a bran muffin. Sounds healthy enough right? But your cereal bowl totaled 4 servings and your bran muffin is 3 times the serving size giving you more than 800 calories for your morning alone! Look at the label and see for yourself.
Obviously the number of calories not only depends on what you eat, but also about how much you eat. If portions of even healthy foods are oversized it can lead to weight-gain. Measuring portions is the key to healthy and successful weight-loss.
When measuring liquids, cereals, vegetables, pasta, and salad use measuring cups. Use measuring spoons to measure jelly, sugar, peanut butter, salad dressing, mayonnaise, butter. You can also use a food scale to weigh food before consuming.
Most people don’t realize how much you are really eating. American portions sizes are being served to us on an average of 3 times the portion size it was fifty years ago.
When eating, take a portion out of the container or bag. Avoid eating straight out of the container or bag, as it is much harder to keep track of how much you have consumed. Spooning ice cream from a cup is certainly different then eating it from a half-gallon box. Drink all beverages in an eight-ounce juice cup rather than a twelve-ounce cup. Also eat cereal from a cup rather than a bowl. One study suggested that 70 percent of the people involved in a weight-loss program were more satisfied with less food when it was served on a salad plate rather than a larger dinner plate.
Send all of your over-sized cups, bowls, and plates to the local thrift store. It is harder to give yourself too much juice if you only have 8 oz cups. Know that many times we fill out plates out of habit, instead of true hunger.
When eating a meal don’t eat the main entrée first. Instead start off with fiber-rich foods at the beginning of the meal. Try eating an oversized salad, a fresh fruit salad, or lots of fresh vegetables. Doing this helps you helps you fell more satisfied with fewer calories. This also gets rid of that starved feeling so you can have portion control for the main course of the meal.
A common complaint when starting a new weight-loss plan is sometimes you won’t feel satisfied with the correct portion size. Still, you must serve food in the correct standard sizes listed on food labels. You will need to get familiar with how much common portion sizes are so you can better judge when you are eating out.
Many dieters eat more calories after the initial meal is over, due to that unsatisfied feeling you might feel at first. The trick is to rid your view of leftovers immediately. Pack up leftovers, or toss them away. If you feel guilty, toss the scraps to your pup or the birds.