What"s The Deal With Portion Sizes at Meals?
So you took the time to cook a healthy dinner and made sure to stay away from soda, potato chips, and anything fried.
Great job! That's a big step forward towards developing and maintaining a healthy diet.
However, just because you cooked a healthy lunch or dinner don't assume you're clear of any nutritional dangers.
It's one thing to prepare a healthy meal, but a whole other obstacle to monitor the portion size, drinks, and "extras" that have the potential to get added to that meal.
Here's an example to get you thinking about possible caloric dangers even you prepare a healthy meal.
Consider a meal of grilled chicken, mixed vegetables, and a salad.
Sounds pretty healthy right? That would be a great meal if the person were to only eat one 8oz.
portion of chicken, one serving of vegetables, and a salad with light/fat free dressing along with a glass of water, black coffee or tea.
However what started out with the potential to be healthy can quickly turn into the complete opposite.
Far too often a glass (or two) of soda will be added to that meal along with a second helping of food.
Toss in a couple dinner rolls and maybe even a dessert afterwards, and the meal that was once hovering around an ideal 450 calories just became more than 1,500! That is far too much sustenance for one single meal.
Time and time again this happens for would-be dieters, and one of the main reasons why weight loss progress is not made.
The sad part is, originally the meal had such potential to have a positive impact for the body.
Calories are calories plain and simple.
But since an appropriate portion size was not upheld, weight loss just won't happen.
And when this individual steps on the scale after a couple weeks of this type of eating expecting to see a big drop in weight, they may not see any change at all.
To make matters worse, they are now frustrated not understanding why weight loss progress hasn't been made (since they've been eating "healthy food") and will often give up and go back to their old manner of eating and naturally start gaining even more weight.
Therefore when you go about preparing your main meals for the day, maintaining an appropriate portion size is of utmost importance.
Drill that into your head in hopes you maintain self control.
To help prevent overeating drink 2-3 glasses of water during your meal because that will help fill you up not to mention aide with digestion.
Also try to take your time when eating since it takes approximately 20 minutes for the body to register it's had enough food.
The faster you eat, the more you will be able to cram into your body before it realizes that it's full.
Remember, you shouldn't eat until you are stuffed and have difficulty moving afterwards.
By that point you have eaten way too much food.
It's the subtle adjustments you make in your regular eating habits that will determine how successful you are improving your weight situation.
Eating healthy does not mean you starve yourself.
Appropriate portion size of healthy options tied in with small nutritious snacks evenly spaced between those meals and you will be well on your way to living a healthy life.
Great job! That's a big step forward towards developing and maintaining a healthy diet.
However, just because you cooked a healthy lunch or dinner don't assume you're clear of any nutritional dangers.
It's one thing to prepare a healthy meal, but a whole other obstacle to monitor the portion size, drinks, and "extras" that have the potential to get added to that meal.
Here's an example to get you thinking about possible caloric dangers even you prepare a healthy meal.
Consider a meal of grilled chicken, mixed vegetables, and a salad.
Sounds pretty healthy right? That would be a great meal if the person were to only eat one 8oz.
portion of chicken, one serving of vegetables, and a salad with light/fat free dressing along with a glass of water, black coffee or tea.
However what started out with the potential to be healthy can quickly turn into the complete opposite.
Far too often a glass (or two) of soda will be added to that meal along with a second helping of food.
Toss in a couple dinner rolls and maybe even a dessert afterwards, and the meal that was once hovering around an ideal 450 calories just became more than 1,500! That is far too much sustenance for one single meal.
Time and time again this happens for would-be dieters, and one of the main reasons why weight loss progress is not made.
The sad part is, originally the meal had such potential to have a positive impact for the body.
Calories are calories plain and simple.
But since an appropriate portion size was not upheld, weight loss just won't happen.
And when this individual steps on the scale after a couple weeks of this type of eating expecting to see a big drop in weight, they may not see any change at all.
To make matters worse, they are now frustrated not understanding why weight loss progress hasn't been made (since they've been eating "healthy food") and will often give up and go back to their old manner of eating and naturally start gaining even more weight.
Therefore when you go about preparing your main meals for the day, maintaining an appropriate portion size is of utmost importance.
Drill that into your head in hopes you maintain self control.
To help prevent overeating drink 2-3 glasses of water during your meal because that will help fill you up not to mention aide with digestion.
Also try to take your time when eating since it takes approximately 20 minutes for the body to register it's had enough food.
The faster you eat, the more you will be able to cram into your body before it realizes that it's full.
Remember, you shouldn't eat until you are stuffed and have difficulty moving afterwards.
By that point you have eaten way too much food.
It's the subtle adjustments you make in your regular eating habits that will determine how successful you are improving your weight situation.
Eating healthy does not mean you starve yourself.
Appropriate portion size of healthy options tied in with small nutritious snacks evenly spaced between those meals and you will be well on your way to living a healthy life.
