Tag: portion size

A Weighty Matter

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Does this sound familiar? It’s dinnertime, and by now the fatigue of a full day of work or activities has kicked in. You are hungry; but… good on you, you’ve done all the shopping and meal prep to produce a home-cooked meal. You’ve prepared an intentionally planned dinner designed to fit your plan. Take a bow, you’re a rock star.

Now comes the final step before you eat; it is maybe one of the most helpful things you can do on a weight loss journey and (when you’re hungry) may also be one of the biggest hassles: weigh and measure your portion.

Here are some tips to curve your hunger while preparing dinner, and some “pro-tips” to make it easier to get accurate portion sizes:

  • Have some veggie sticks at the ready to nosh on while you cook, this will take the edge off hunger
  • Stay hydrated as you cook, sip water – it helps
  • Serve dinner from the stove using measuring cups to dole out servings
  • Make it obvious and keep your kitchen scale next to the stove to weigh your serving

My hope for anyone reading this post is successful weight loss. If all the work has gone into meal planning and prep, then let’s all agree not to sabotage our efforts. Inaccurate portion sizes (either over or under) are not serving you well. I encourage you to do that last step, weigh and measure your portion sizes.

I Cannot Tell a Lie…

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At my last WW workshop my leader, Bonnie, said that we make over 200 food related decisions per day. No wonder yesterday’s post was “Tried & Tired”. A weight loss / wellness journey takes quite a bit of effort. I think you have to really want it to make it stick. I can say that because I am living the life of someone who has lost a significant amount of weight so I know from experience.

Having more energy, feeling more confident, and actually appreciating and enjoying my food more provide big motivations for me to keep at this. In this case, more is more. These are all compelling reasons to keep at it. Ironically, the very habits that grant me the freedom to live this way every day are the same habits that can feel obligatory and oppressive at times. Like tonight I struggled a little with weighing and measuring my portions at dinner. I measured out my 1/2 cup of linguini to mix in with my zucchini noodles. Then I really should have weighed my pork tenderloin (I made pork sauce I cooked the tenderloin in the crock pot and then just added it to tomato sauce). I tracked it at 2 SmartPoints for the pork and 3 SmartPoints for the jarred sauce (shortcut because I’m cooking after work). Then I added a dollop of ricotta cheese, which I should have measured. I eyeballed it and and counted it as 3 SmartPoints. Then when I was filling out my checklist, I really wanted to check off that I weighed and measured everything but I really can’t because I didn’t. This isn’t a gotcha, and I don’t feel bad about it, it just is what happened.

I’m not writing all of this as a confession, I’m writing to be objective. It’s worse to convince myself that I’ve done everything “right” and then weigh in on Saturday and not understand why I didn’t get the results I want on the scale. I am writing all this down to keep me honest with myself. My goal is to want to get back to Lifetime.

As always, thank you readers. You help, and I hope that as you read my posts, you get something that helps you in return. We are all powerful beings who can achieve our goals. Believe it.

Keep Things In Proportion…

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There is nothing exciting about portion control. Most people already know that monitoring portion sizes is just common sense if you want to lose weight. Absolutely, it can be tedious to weigh and measure food every day. It can be especially hard to do if you’re really hungry. Just as it is with brushing your teeth, or waiting in line, monitoring portion sizes is a necessary albeit mundane thing.

Weighing in grams is more accurate.

Why pick this topic? Well, for one thing it’s on my checklist, it’s actually one of the top three habits that I attribute my weight loss success to. Taking the time to weigh and measure does a few important things for me (besides helping me to lose/maintain weight loss):

  1. The accuracy of my portion sizes gives me a sense of control.
  2. Taking just a minute or two to perform this task honors my goals.
  3. It trains my brain to recognize what an accurate portion looks like.

Every Day Health published an article, 10 Easy Portion Control Tricks that was a useful read as I thought about this post. Here are some new strategies I’m planning on trying:

  1. Try using smaller dishes
  2. Adding milk first before pouring my coffee (that may be hard)
  3. Asking for a take home box and halving my dinner portion while eating out

I am starting to think that maybe part of this journey is to find joy in the mundane habits that continue to contribute towards my health and wellness goals. Maybe it’s good to just slow down and find some deep appreciation for the simple things. I wonder if this makes sense to you. No matter what you’re thinking, I wish is that you believe you can do this, know that even if it’s hard, you can do it.

Just for fun…

Have you heard of something called, “Slow TV”? Apparently, this is huge in Norway. It is hours of TV devoted to things like knitting, train rides, and shearing sheep. Check it out I find it strangely compelling:

Maybe we need to slow down and just breathe in simple things.