Portion sizes

At the Healthier Weight support group meeting last weekend we discussed portion control. The discussion was not so much focussed on exact portion sizes or size 'rules' as such, more on general principes to help us with different situations. Here are some of the topics discussed:

1. If eating out in a restaurant and your meal is too large to finish - either leave it or ask for a doggie bag! I've taken my own 'doggie' bag a few times and taken food home for the cats!
2. When shopping, avoid buying multipacks and two-for-one offers. Having said that, this is OK if the items concerned are healthy!
3. Avoid going to buffets. This is because research has shown that when faced with lots of variety, we are much more likely to eat bigger meals. I've certainly been there - being tempted to try a bit of this and a bit of that, and before you know where you are you have a large plateful.
4. It's better to eat a too-large portion of salad than other high calorie food.
5. Remove the long gaps between meals. This is an important principle that I am dealing with at the moment. I'm re-reading Paul McKenna's book ("I Can Make You Thin") and one of his four rules is that if you are hungry - eat! I know this seems to go against the grain when we are all trying to lose weight, but actually it's not good to get hungry because we are more likely to eat a large meal to satisfy the hunger. It's much better to either eat healthy snacks in between meals, if necessary, or alternately, have a larger number of small meals. I occasionally split my lunch into two and have half at 'lunchtime' and the other half late afternoon.

My provider does give detailed advice on exactly how much food to consume at each meal. Generally, this equates to 4-6 tablespoonfuls, but this is quite difficult to judge. It's no easier trying to judge portions in terms of weights (e.g so many grammes etc). Personally, I try to judge my portion sizes in three different, but hopefully complementary, ways:

1. How full I feel. I am still not very good at this and have to think about it very carefully. My head would tell me I was hungry all the time if I let it (!) - but I have to try and learn to listen to my body and be more sensitive to messages being sent to my brain from my stomach. I guess after years of ignoring these signals I have to slowly re-learn this ability. Eating slowly helps.

2. Calorie counting. I keep a count of my calorie intake for every meal and I am getting quite good at judging what I should be eating. However, this is not the most reliable way of assessing portion size because it is possible to eat a very large meal of very low calorie foods and vice versa.

3. Eating all my main meals off a small (7-inch) side plate. This works well. It also helps when eating out because I can visualise how big a side plate would be and, therefore, how large my meal is in comparison.

So, I don't know how much this all helps me because I am constantly struggling with (a) distinguishing between stomach hunger and head hunger, and (b) dealing with hunger between meals. Although as I said, I am working on this problem quite hard at the moment and sticking to the 'if you're hungry - eat' rule - which seems to be working quite well for me.