The Art of Portion Size: Small Changes, Big Impacts
Understanding the correct portion sizes for nutritious foods is an essential healthy lifestyle strategy because even excess calories from oversized portions of healthy foods can lead to weight gain or undermine your weight loss plans. Human biology has evolved to store excess calories as fat very efficiently. When you consume the right types and amounts of food, you are rewarded with a healthier weight, higher energy, and better health. To give you an idea - a normal serving of protein is 4-6 ounces, fruits and vegetables about 1 cup, and starchy carbohydrates like rice and potatoes, 1/2 to 1 cup at most. What we think is a normal portion size, and what we or someone else put on our plates, is often double or triple what it should be. So, you are not eating small portions or small amounts when your portion sizes are correct. You are eating the amount that is considered normal and provides the body with what it needs, not excess that is later converted to fat.
The Art of Food Quality: When Unhealthy Foods Tip the Scale
Foods are broadly categorized as nutrient dense or calorie dense. We like to say healthy and unhealthy, but this can be misleading because the food industry has made it difficult for the general public to easily differentiate between the two. While it's critical to understand and apply correct portion sizes for healthy nutrient dense foods, it becomes doubly important for their unhealthy calorie dense counterparts. The recommended portion size for calorie dense and unhealthy foods is as little as possible. You should also indulge in these starchy, sweet, or fatty items as infrequently as possible to limit their impact on your weight loss. It’s essential that you read nutrition labels and understand serving size and calories per serving to understand and “limit the damage” that calorie dense unhealthy have on your wellness plan. That scoop of ice cream or those large fries will certainly derail your well-intentioned plans.
The Science of Accuracy: The Other Half of the Equation
Your ability to maintain a healthy weight isn't merely a numbers game. It's intrinsically tied to the portion sizes and quality of the foods you consume, but it is the accuracy of your portion sizes that is essential to your success. Nutrient-dense foods allow you to eat in larger quantities because they tend to be lower in calories, while calorie-dense foods require stricter moderation for obvious reasons. The challenge lies in balancing the two. It's about choosing the right type and balance of foods that satisfy you without resulting in caloric excess. While approximations may seem convenient, they are often misleading. Using ambiguous methods like "handfuls" or "palm sizes" to measure food can sabotage your efforts. Your journey to wellness deserves more precision. By weighing your food with a food scale and using a measuring cup to measure the amount you are consuming, you attain a level of accuracy that leads to remarkable success over time. Why guess when you can know? This ensures that the portion sizes you believe you are consuming are what you are actually consuming. Another essential part of your accuracy is including the items you drink in your daily calculation of intake. We want to get as close to zero calories as possible from the items we drink because calories from liquids can and will impact your weight loss journey in ways that you won’t like. At KairWell Weight and Wellness we can guide you through this mine field of portion sizes, food quality, and accuracy!
