It’s so easy to eat too much!
Serving sizes have a sneaky way of growing over time. It doesn’t matter if you’re counting calories, fat grams or carbohydrates.
You still have to know how many potato chips are in one ounce or what a half cup of past actually looks like.
Instead of taking the amount you think is right, practice your estimating skills by comparing your serving with the real thing. You may discover that you’re eating a lot more than you thought, just by have servings that are too large.
Every once in a while, pull out your scale and your measuring cups again. Check your estimates to make sure an ounce of cheese hasn’t doubled or that a cup of ice cream hasn’t become a pint.
Today’s assignment (My answers are in blue)
1. With several of the foods you eat today, take the amount you think is your designated serving size. Then weigh or measure the food and see how close you came to being correct. Record the foods as well as how accurate you were.
I stay pretty accurate on some things but not on others. Yesterday, I took a small handful of almonds, and figured I had picked up one ounce. But when I counted them out and compared it with the label on the container, I learned I had almost a half-ounce more than I’d estimated.
My worst culprit is with salad dressing. What I think is a “small” amount is actually several tablespoons. I need to go back to dipping my fork into salad dressing instead of dumping the dressing on my salad.
2. Repeat this exercise until you are confident about your estimating skills. Write down any foods that you might need to monitor for correct serving sizes.
Salad dressing, half and half in my coffee, meat servings, ice cream. Even my “healthy foods” such as cottage cheese aren’t staying in my planned serving size.
3. To help plan ahead, write down your ideal serving size for the food items you eat most often.
Meat- 4 ounces, fish- 5 ounces, salad dressing- 2 Tablespoons, Dry cereal-1 cup (I have a terrible time with this one) and ice cream-one half cup (this one gets out of hand quite easily.)
Excerpted from Day 19 in the book, 100 Days of Weight Loss