Perfect Food Portion Sizes: Build Your Plate

Building your plate the right way with the right food portion sizes is important to remaining healthy and trim. In certain countries, like the U.S., portion control has gotten out of control. Fast food and junk food is cheap and accessible, allowing people to eat more than they should.

What’s even worse is these foods are super high in unhealthy calories. This has resulted in most adults and 1 in 3 children in the United States becoming obese. This goes for home-cooked meals as well as they are not always necessarily healthy or made in fewer quantities.

Building your plate to favor healthy food portion sizes doesn’t have to be complex. Here’s a rundown of some great, healthy, habit-forming information about portion “management” so that you can build your portions to perfection!

Why Are Food Portion Sizes a Concern?

It’s no secret that our health of many western countries has been on the decline since the introduction and increased production of processed and unhealthy foods.

But, what does this have to do with portions?

The more you eat these foods (ie, the bigger portions) the worse it‘ll be for your health. By eating certain foods in large quantities, you’re asking for health problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes etc.

Also, the excessive weight gain that is involved with limitless consumption is another concern. Portion size can also help people that are underweight. This would require consuming a bit larger proportion of more calorically dense foods per meal.

How To Cut Down On Portions

A good way to immediately cut down on your portions is to start consuming more water. Water consumption is very much underrated because we generally focus on nutrition (food) as a way to curb our hunger.

Water is essential to survival for all living and breathing things and it’s responsible for maintaining healthy functioning in the body. And it helps to curb hunger pangs. So, drink a glass before each meal and you’ll soon find yourself eating smaller portions!

Eat More veggies!

Vegetables should be a staple in your diet because they contain fewer calories than most foods and provide many health benefits. This allows you to become healthier and more trim as a result.

By including vegetables into most of your meals, you’ll cut down on the consumption of unhealthy, excessive, unnecessary caloric intake.

The ratio of vegetables/greens to other foods should be about half (fruit takes a little bit of the ratio) per meal. Vegetables are relatively inexpensive and the healthy benefits from eating them are well worth the incorporation into your meals.

Start Building Your Portions

There’s really no correct way to build portions as each person should build theirs according to their physical needs. Some people may need to gain weight, and some may need to lose it. However, here is a rough guide to measuring food portion sizes:

Breakfast

• Cereal serving sizes are about a fist-size or a cup.
• Dense cereals (like granola) should run between a ½ or ¾ cup.

Lunch

• A salad portion is a cup, but if you’re using iceberg lettuce you can use as much as you like! It’s the additions like sauces or dips that increase your calorie counts.
• Try open-faced sandwiches and save calories.

Dinner

• Your meat protein should be the size of a deck of cards.
• A medium potato is the size of a computer mouse.
• A pasta portion should be half of a baseball.
• A portion of cheese is four dice.
• A serving of leafy greens is two tennis balls.
• A serving of fruit or veg is a fist or a baseball.

The  Easy Way To Monitor Food Portion Sizes

There are many ways to control your portion sizes. Controlling your portion sizes allows you to healthily maintain your weight without the yo-yo dieting nonsense making you fat. To take the guesswork out of weight loss with portion control, you can easily monitor what you eat with an app like My Food Diary. It will help you to eat properly and be in control of your decisions, and by making healthy changes to your unhealthy habits you can lose all that weight and keep it off for a lifetime.