By Jake Bekemeyer – Gleaners Nutrition Education Team
The amount of food you need on any given day depends on a variety of factors. As much as we all would like to have our eating in check, but it can be hard to know how much of something you’re supposed to have.
Thinking about Portions
Before diving into the numbers, it’s important to note that overregulation of portions can have negative effects as well. It can be overwhelming to feel like you need to monitor every single thing you eat in a day. Rather, it is encouraged that you use these tools to simply notice how much you are eating. This will help you get a sense of whether you’re in the right range, or whether you need to take steps to work on any problem areas.
Portions and Servings
To understand how much we’re eating, knowing what is considered a serving is critical knowledge. For example, with grains: one slice of bread, one tortilla, one pancake, or a half cup of cooked pasta or rice is considered a serving.
For vegetables: one cup of leafy greens, nine broccoli florets, an ear of corn, two carrots, or a medium sized piece of a tomato (about a quarter of a regular supermarket tomato) are considered a serving.
With fresh fruit: a pear, mango, apple, or banana are all single servings; while 20 grapes, two apricots, and 1 watermelon wedge, and six slices of canned peach are all considered one serving.
For cheese, a 1.5-ounce serving is recommended, which is bout the size of your thumb. For milk and yogurt, an 8-ounce serving is recommended.
Meat and fish have a serving of only 3 ounces, or about the size of your palm.
For snacks like nuts, pretzels, crackers, or chips, a 1-ounce serving is recommended.
Tips for Helping Control Portions
If you identify an area you think you want to cut back in, it can be difficult to know where to start. A classic and highly effective tip is to use smaller plates, bowls, and other serving vessels—they look full with less food, that can help you feel like you’ve had more, while actually having less.
Avoid eating directly from the bag. Snacks are one of the easiest thing to overeat because they’re addictive and typically packaged in a way-too-big container. Instead, put some in a bowl and come back for seconds if you feel like you want more.
Slow down! To listen to your body’s hunger cues, you need to eat slow and pay attention to how you feel. If you eat too fast, you can have already overeaten by the time your body tells you you’re full!
While this blog doesn’t cover everything, it is a good starting point to get a sense of where your portions sit compared to recommended portions. Any changes that you make to how much you eat should be sustainable changes. Radically altering how you eat may work for a short time, but often leads to reverting to old behaviors again. Instead, make small, incremental changes and give them time to stick.