Sunday, January 29, 2012

Portion Control

When you start trying to lose weight one of those things people always tell you to look at is your portion control.  It is fine and good to want to deal with portion control, but doing it is something totally different. Generally speaking I have made pretty sorry attempts at portion control, but times they are a changing in our house.

Trying to figure out if you had good portion control, especially with homemade meals can be difficult, and was a total mess for us.  I could never figure out if had the correct portions when we had spaghetti and measuring things with cups, when people are talking ounces is madness.  The other issue we faced a lot was when a casserole said it was x serving somehow we struggled to get even sized servings.  We did try the whole your palm is this big roughly and for this food, your fist is this; but it is really subjective and we just got frustrated.

We have done two things to help with portion control and both are giving us a lot better idea of how much we are eating and what a serving of some food really is.  The first thing we did was buy a good scale, it is a pretty basic one and was about thirty dollars. What I like about the food scale is that I can put on a plate and then turn the scale on and it will start at 0, this means I don't have to weigh the plate or Tupperware and then the food.  I like having a solid number of x ounces and usually I am surprised at how much or little a particular food weighs.  The other thing we have done is use muffin tins for cooking casseroles.  This picture above has a family favorite, Hot Diggity Gog, it's from the 'No Whine with your Dinner' cookbook, I do sneak in extra vegetables and don't use corn.  Hot Diggity serves 10, so I filled 20 cupcake tins and two a piece is a serving. By using the tins there is more consistency in size than just scooping it out and the muffin tin shape makes it easy to store for later.  The other advantage to the tins, things tend to cook quicker.  These are our beginning steps into portion control and so far no one is starving and the kids are getting pretty independent with grabbing a Hot Diggety muffin for a snack.

3 comments:

  1. Smart! I think I'd be more likely to eat multiple muffins than multiple scoops of casserole though.

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  2. I'd love any interesting, low cal recipes you have. Although my biggest problem isn't with portion control so much as with inactivity. I always knew that would be an issue when I first moved to Anchorage, but I underestimated just how big of an issue. We've decided that since next r&r we'll be traveling (Puerto Vallarta), the following r&r we'll get with a personal trainer and that should help alot.

    On a foodie note: I've been doing a lot of Indian cooking, it's my new favorite. I've got some pretty decent recipe's if you want them. Not sure how the kids are with curry though.

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  3. Cindy for some reason since it is two muffins a serving I feel like I get to eat a lot.
    Jim I do have a few low cal recipes but really we just make more at home and use low fat and hat alone make a huge difference. Send me those Indian recipes Nan loves Indian food. On the personal trainer note, it has made a big difference for me. I am not losing tons of weight but the inches are coming off.

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