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I talked a little about portion sizes a few days ago, and said I would have more information about proper portion sizes. Use these guidelines to help with your natural weight loss program.ight loss

Here are some visual guidelines to help with portion control.

The following are based on the National Institute of Health’s portion sizes, each represents 1 serving.

1 cup of cereal is about the size of a closed fist.

1/2 cup of cooked pasta, rice, or potato is about the size of a half baseball.

1 cup of salad greens is about the size of a baseball.

1 medium fruit is about the size of a baseball.

1/2 cup fresh fruit is about the size of 1/2 half baseball.

1/4 cup of raisins is about the size of an egg.

1 1/2 oz. of cheese is about the size of 4 stacked dice, or 2 slices.

1 tsp of butter or margarine is about 1 dice. (I know dice is plural, but was afraid using the singular “die” would frighten people.)

3 oz. of meat or poultry is about the size of a deck of playing cards.

2 Tbsp. of peanut butter is about the size of a ping pong ball.

There is a downloadable card with this information available from: Serving Size Card

There is also an interesting slide show about portion distortion at the following two links:

NHLBI Slide Show 1

NHLBI Slide Show 2

I briefly talked about how serving sizes have increased, these slide presentations demonstrate very well how much they have increased, and also point how much exercise is required to burn off the extra calories.

I hope you took the time to check out the slide shows, as always, comments and questions are welcome.

Remember, I am not a doctor, none of the information I share here should be taken as medical advice. If you need medical advice, please consult your doctor.

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I talked earlier about learning about portion size; and how the larger portion sizes in restaurants has skewed what is seen as a serving.

Eating larger portions makes weight gain easy, and if you think you are eating one serving of any food but actually eating two or even three, you may not even know why you can’t lose weight.

Your best friend in this area is a measuring cup. Most packaged food has a panel somewhere on the container which lists the serving size, along with other nutritional information, such as calories, fat and salt content, vitamins, etc.; in many cases, the serving size is described in cups, or fractions of cups (1/2 cup, 1/4 cup, etc.) By using a measuring cup, it is easy to see if you are eating a single serving. After using the measuring cup for a while, it becomes easier to judge serving sizes without the measuring cup.

I still find it good practice to go back to measuring servings periodically, to avoid getting back to eating larger and larger portions.

Using a measuring cup is another easy step to simple, natural weight loss.

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When I had a doctor tell me my blood pressure was high, and I was overweight, I began to look at what about my life caused those problems.

One of the conclusions that I reached was that a large part of the problem was the serving sizes in restaurants had grown gradually much larger, and I had been taught since I was a child to clean my plate, so I was eating more and more calories, without really noticing. And we also started eating similar size portions at home. When I began to pay attention to serving sizes, I started to lose weight.

So, one of the first steps you can take to lose weight is to become aware of proper portion sizes.

Meat is a good place to start, since it is such a central part of the standard American diet. A good visual to understand what a portion of meat looks like is a deck of playing cards. That is enough to fill your daily protein needs.

And starch servings in restaurants are about three times as large as they should be. (That means potatoes or pasta for example.)

Just learning what a proper serving size is will go a long way to helping you lose weight.

I will have more information about portion sizes soon.

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