My top two tips for portion control!
By Caroline Hartnack January 30
Like everything in life, healthy eating has its challenges. I know for me, the biggest challenge is portion control. It’s so hard to stop eating (and avoid overeating) when it comes to your favorite foods!
When I’m eating my favorite food, it’s hard to find my willpower. I’ll see it sitting there on the table, calling my name, looking like the most delicious thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s pretty much impossible to resist. But then, when I do give in to temptation, I end up feeling miserable afterwards! I just feel guilty and sad that I undid a day of healthy choices.
So, I have a couple of things I want to tell you. The first is that you didn’t ruin your whole healthy lifestyle because you overate during one meal! That’s just silly. We all make mistakes, and we have to cut ourselves a little slack. However if you continue to overeat for every meal and never hit the off button, this will make a different in how you feel. Plus, a lot of overeating might undo all your previous hard work. So basically, eating your favorite foods in moderation is the name of the game.
Listen up, because I’m going to share a couple of tips for how I still eat my favorite foods without totally overdoing it!
Here’s the truth: it’s extremely difficult to stop eating your favorite food if it’s sitting right on the table in front of you. So, make the situation a little easier on yourself. After you give yourself one serving, put the rest away before eating anything! If the food isn’t there, the temptation isn’t there. Even if you think you have made up your mind about how much you’ll eat, if the food is on the table, it’s so easy to take one more bite, and then a little more, and a little more until it is all gone! (I used to do this all the time…) So save yourself the trouble, and put the container away before you bite. Problem solved!
Here’s another great trick: when you’re eating your favorite food, slow down and actually enjoy it! Sometimes I’m in such a rush to gobble down my snack that I forget to really taste what I’m eating. You might find that if you pay attention to every delicious bite, you’ll feel much more satisfied when you’re done. And more satisfied = less likely to barge into the pantry looking for more.
Sometimes stopping at one serving can be hard because it feels like you’re done as soon as you start eating! I feel like I can enjoy my food more if I know that there is more coming. (I don’t know why, but I do!) Does that happen to you too? Well, what I do to is take out one serving, put the rest away, and then split my one serving into two little ones on two different plates. That way, it feels like I am eating more than I actually am! I eat one plate, take a mini break, maybe get some water or an extra napkin, and then eat the second plate. Whenever I do this I don’t feel tempted to get more because I have already had what I think is two servings!
So there you have it. To make portion control a little easier, take out your one serving, put the rest away, AND THEN eat your snack! Putting away the extra food is the key to controlling portion sizes, because if food is there, it will be eaten.
Do you have any special tricks for portion control? Share in the comments!
photo credit: Ani-Bee via photopin cc
Caroline is a high school senior from New Jersey. She’s joining fitsmi this winter as a teen intern, helping to make the fitsmi community even stronger. Caroline will be writing original articles about cooking and fun ways to stay healthy. In her free time, she loves to cook and bake, swim, and spend time with friends and family.
