Serving Sizes: Is Ignorance Really Bliss?

I hope everyone had a great week! Just wanted to give a quick reminder to weigh yourself in the next couple of days and email me with your progress.

One of the biggest factors in weight-loss is watching your portions. By educating ourselves about serving sizes, we can more accurately determine how many calories we are eating and know if we are meeting the recommended servings each day for various food groups.

One of my favorite bits of advice I've been given says that when you look at your dinner plate, 1/4 should be protein, 1/4 grains, and 1/2 fruits and vegetables. Filling up on fruits and vegetables will help you from continiously going back for the higher calorie items.

Try to be aware of what you are eating by looking at food labels before you cook or eat them. I often have the "I don't want to know" attitude, but by making myself look at it, I do much better at limiting my portions. Then when I serve myself half a cup of rice, I automatically know that I've got about 110 calories sitting on my plate. If I've alloted myself 700 calories for dinner, I can then estimate how much I have left for my other food. I find that it helps to use measuring cups for serving food (when possible). I'm a little distrustful of my generous imagination!

Here are some commonly eaten foods and generally accepted serving sizes:

Cooked Cereal or Pasta: 1/2 cup
Whole Wheat Bread: 1 Slice (Slice should be size of the palm of your hand)
Fruit (apple, pear or banana): 1 Small
100% fruit juice: 1/2 Cup
Raw Leafy Vegetables : 2 Cups
Raw Chopped Vegetables: 1 Cup
Chopped cooked or canned vegetables: 1/2 Cup
Milk or Yogurt: 8 ounces or 1 Cup
Cheese: 1 1/2 ounces or 1/3 cup shredded
Cooked skinless poultry or lean red meat: 3 ounces (about the size of a deck of cards)
Cooked Fish: 3 ounces (size of a thick checkbook)
Egg: 1 Medium
Cooked legumes or dry beans: 1/2 cup

Here are a couple of websites with recommendations of how many servings you should have from the different food groups.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/healthy-diet/NU00190
http://mypyramid.gov/index.html

I really like the Mayo Clinic version (top link). It refers to everything as servings and I like the idea of unlimited vegetables and fruits. The mypyramid.gov version is good as well and is what is put out by the government. You can customize it based on age, sex, weight, etc. It gives out the amounts you should eat as cups or ounces rather than "servings". These recommendations are not taylored for weight-loss, so you can aim for the minimum recommendations for now rather than the max.