I really can’t stress enough the importance of portion control. In class I recommend all of you to go home and take out your measuring cups and measuring spoons and actually measure out each portion until you get the idea of how it looks in your bowl or on your plate. However, over time I think we need a refresher! It is easy to let portion control slide a bit and a little here and a little there can be the difference in losing, maintaining or gaining weight. I want to challenge all of you to do it again this week! Take out those measuring utensils and see how you are doing. The second part of that challenge is to get smaller bowls, plates and cups. It will go a long way in tricking your eye so that you feel like you are eating more food. You eat with your eyes first!

Here is a reminder on what a serving size is:

A woman’s fist or a baseball: 1 cup
A rounded handful or a tennis ball: 1/2 cup
Golf ball: 1/4 cup
Computer mouse: small baked potato
Deck of cards: 3 oz (1 serving) of meat or fish if thick
Checkbook: 3 oz (1 serving) of meat if sliced thin
Roll of film or ping pong ball: 2 tbsp
Compact Disc or 1 cassette tape: 1 slice of bread, a pancake or a waffle
Hockey Puck: 1 bagel
7” plate: 1 tortilla

So there you have it, it’s a deck of cards, not a baseball glove!

Here is a link to a site I just found. If you let the page load, you can click on each picture to get the full version. Each picture is a portion worth 200 calories. The pictures are all taken on the same size plate so you can compare pictures to each other to see how much volume you get for the same amount of calories (like broccoli compared with potato chips). Load up on those high volume, low calorie foods!