Avoiding Portion Distortion, To Help Yourself Lose Weight
Thursday, February 28th, 2008How large is a portion?
A lot of us think we are reading the food labels correctly, or eating right in a healthy way, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
First of all, how many servings are actually in the box/can/bottle? I had a discussion with my mother recently, a smart woman, who said “Oh, there isn’t that much sodium in a can of tomatoes.” Well, the number may seem small on the can, but when you see that there are 11 servings in it, it adds up! Especially if you have high blood pressure and have to watch your salt intake.
It even happened to me the other day—a little tiny protein brownie, the serving size was HALF the pack, I ate the whole thing and was wired on sugar and chocolate for the rest of the day!
So it is easily done!
What about those large bags of potato chips? No matter what the brand, you know you can never eat just one!
Not to mention the fact that the large the bag, the easier it is to just keep dipping into it, and then say oh, it was only ONE bag.
When it comes to calculating the calories of food that is not prepackaged, we are not very good at quantities.
And yes, a tiny gram of fat or two CAN make a difference. The New York Times, of all institutions, ran an article by some male twit that said there was not much difference in the fat content per ounce between breast or white meat turkey and thigh or dark meat turkey.
White=1 gram per ounce
Dark=3 grams per ounce.
There’s only one problem.
HOW MUCH IS AN OUNCE?
One ounce of cheese, meat, turkey=2 dice
Then we come to a second problem—what American EVER eats only one ounce of turkey? Or meat etc. some of the burger chains are offering 4 to 6 ounce burgers.
Going back to our turkey example, even if you only ate 3 ounces of turkey, your grams of fat and calories from fat would go from 3 to 9 if you chose the dark meat turkey.
6 ounces, from 6 to a whoppping 18 grams of fat.
So we need to be better judges of what we eat
One ounce of cheese, meat, turkey=2 dice
A cup-the size of a closed fist
A medium piece of fruit or vege like a potato-the size of a closed fist
3 ounces of meat-the size of a deck of cards
This article from the Utah Dept of health gives you the sobering statistics about the number of Americans who are overweight. And how being overweight puts you at risk for many dangerous diseases:
http://www.checkyourhealth.org/nutrition/nutrition_pd.htm
If you think you are lacking in willpower, or just hate to count calories, one solution might be to get a portion plate, small, partitioned plates to help you measure a portion accurately (so long as you don’t go heaping it too high!)
Some of them are quite colorful and are useful reminders of all the different food groups you are supposed to eat each day.
http://www.nutrawize.com/perfect_portions.htm
http://www.theportionplate.com/
So if you want to lose weight and keep it off, avoid large bags or cans of anything, and when cooking for yourself, avoid Portion Distortion by carefully and realistically calculating how much you are actually eating.
