Controlling Food Portions

How important is it to eat appropriate portion sizes? Jeannette Jordan: It is very important to know what the standard portion as the food is. Actually most people have no idea you know we think okay if I go to the restaurant and they serve me a bowl of pasta or I’m having in this big plate of rice. Well that’s what they give me so that’s must be a serving, actually there is standardize serving of foods and it is very important for people to understand that because when you double the standard serving size you double the calories. For example, a standard serving size of something like rice or pasta or a vegetable like corn like I have here is about a half cup portion. And that’s important to know because I can tell you that many people will double this right? Now this is 80 calories but if you doubled it it’s now 160 and if you triple it you know its just keeps going higher and higher. So it’s the same thing with pasta you know about a half cup of pastas by to a calories but if you eat a whole bowl you may have fiber 600 calories just from pasta I’m not counting anything else. Do I really need to carry measuring cups with me to check portion sizes? It is pretty easy to gauge our measure portion size, is even without having our measure cup. Now I do recommend that everybody have a set of set of measuring cups at home where this plastic or glass or whatever they want to use because it just give you a real idea of what amount of foods that should be eaten. But pretty much to tell you the truth, about a half cup portions sort of fix in the palm of a ladies hand so like this so if you are eating a previous thing medium to small serving you actually going to fall pretty close within that range. Same thing with your starchy vegetables, you will notice that it fits almost in the palm of your hand. Now, if you are talking about some type of meat, poultry or a fish you are actually looking at about three ounces as the serving. And most people say, oh you are kidding me because it’s a really easy to eat two of these you know even from the head or retraining myself. So when you think about something like corn bread however, you know was kind of heart broken when I saw this I was just like oh my god this is not enough that’s small right. They stilling what we normally do but once we know what are serving size in then we are able to begin to cut back on portions. I got to show you this because you know I grow up in the salad fun, watermelon is just the favorite down here but this is a actually a serving size it’s about a cup and half. And when you think about the amount of people with a half of water in a time or four you can see how were doubling and tripling a portion size which means we are also taking in much more calories than what we need and that’s what is contributing to the overweight and obesity problems that were facing. How many calories should I be eating every day? The amount of calories that is needed by a person daily is actually from person to person and it is really depends on there age, there activity, you know how much they weigh but for example the average woman unless she’s really, really active probably needs about 1600-1800 calories a day. The average may unless they are really active working out everyday probably needs about 2000-2500. So but what you can see is its not very difficult to get that. For example, if a person drunk in average 16 ounce regular soft drink that’s already 250 calories and most people if you like soft drink you would drink two to three a day so you can see where you can get fat to 700 calories just from a beverage. If you ate a piece of cake, the average pizza cake and pie has about 4600 calories in it. Now, if you take to look at your average serving of bake potato or something like this, this is about 80 calories now this portion but you very seldom this portion in a restaurant is usually twice this. And that’s okay as long we are not eating three additional a you know a desert on top of that and sweet tea. This is a matter of knowing on what’s in food and cutting back on portion side is some most people just cut back to the portion sizes and they can see a difference in there weight and also there health. What do you tell people who struggle with portion control? What I tell people when they look at portion size is in for example if they look at this corn bread and start let saying like you know is just no way. What I see is listening doing just look at that one serving what I want you to do is to balance your meal. Where you are not just eating a lot of corn bread but you have some protein and have bake chicken here. You have some potatoes and you have actually two vegetables here. You have green beans and you also have some tomatoes and this could be stewed or slice in whatever you want and then the corn beat if you look at in the context of a whole meal then seem is bad. So what we are looking for is variety and moderation in eating and just being aware of the serving sizes, what is the standard portion and if you so hungry at the meal is set about was reaching for you know a bread or dessert type and try to get more vegetables which have much less calories.