The Key to Enjoying Good Food is Controlling our Portions!

What we put on our plates is too much!

One of the biggest problems in America is we like large quantities of everything. This is especially true when it comes to food. The size of meals at restaurants, especially fast food restaurants have gotten bigger and bigger over the years.

When I was young McDonald's had hamburgers, cheeseburgers and Big Macs. In 1971 they introduced the Quarter Pounder. Later they added the Double Quarter Pounder.

You can look at every restaurant and see the same trend up until recently when people started being a bit more health conscious. But even with people being more health conscious the choices at restaurants are high calorie.

Growing up in the home I did didn’t help either. I had a Mom that was a great cook and took pride in making sure everyone was fully stuffed at the dinner table.

Even when I had moved away, whenever I visited, she would insist on feeding me something almost as soon as I walked in the door. Because of that upbringing, I had no idea what it meant to eat a serving size portion of food.

There is a big difference between what is called a serving size of food and how much food we put on our plate. Too often we put too much on our plate and that is where our excess calories come from.

I love chili and I like making my own chili. Before I lost my weight I would fill a bowl with chili, eat that and pile my bowl a second time and eat that. The bowl would be filled to the top both times. That would be about three cups worth of chili at one setting. Now one cup of my chili I calculated out to be about 390 calories. That means at one meal I would eat 1170 calories of chili, not including mashed potatoes which I loved to eat with it. That is over half of the calories I should eat in a day consumed in the span of an hour.

We all do the same thing with the foods we love and that is why so many of us suffer from being overweight.

Learn to trim down our serving size

I still enjoy my chili, in fact I plan on making a pot this week, but now I stop with one cup of chili and savor it. The plus side is I also enjoy more meals of chili from one pot because it stretches out over a longer period of time.

What I learned was to eat less at my meals.

One rule of thumb is the size of an average fist usually a serving size. Also the size of the palm of the average hand is about the equivalent of 3 ounces of meat.

If at all possible don’t go for seconds.

If you cut your portions like this, then after a few weeks you will notice that the smaller portions will satisfy you. Your body and your stomach will accept the smaller amounts of food as sufficient, which in reality is way you should have been eating all along.

Another one of my favorite foods that would get me into trouble was potato chips. It was always hard to just eat a few.

I use to buy a large bag of chips to enjoy while watching a football game. More than once I would finish the whole bag, sometimes before halftime.

I didn’t want to stop eating chips altogether but I knew I needed limits. I started buying the mix packs which hold about 18 separate packs of chips in small one ounce portions. Each separate bag is around 150 to 160 calories. I would limit myself to just one of these bags a day, that way I can enjoy something I like but control how much of it I consume.

Now I buy the large bags again, but I divide it up in sandwich bags which are about the same size as the little bags. It’s cheaper that way.

The point is you don’t need to turn away the foods you love, just learn to enjoy them in smaller quantities.

Become educated in how many calories are in the foods you love and figure out how much you can still allow yourself to have before you eat it. Most of the foods you like you can still enjoy. You may have to learn portion control and stick with it to make it work.

What are some of your favorite foods?