Tips to control portion size to loose weight

The main key in weight loss process is that the number of calories that you burn should be more than the number of calories you consume. Now does that mean that you always have to starve yourself? Well, No!!One major hack that people ignore is the portion control habit.

What is portion control?

Portion control means choosing a healthy amount of a certain food. It helps you preventing from mindless overeating, alongside allowing you to extract the nutrients in the food as well. Researches show that people automatically tend to eat more food when served in large quantities. Therefore, portion control is an effective technique that helps in weight loss, cutting the extra food from your plate serving its exact quantity. It helps you in loosing weight maintain healthy weight.

Portion control helps in improving the quality of your life by keeping your weight off and controlling what foods you eat.

Here are a few tips that you can follow to control your portion size and experience how good it feels to control your food and be aware of how much you eat :-

1. Use smaller plates

Studies suggest that not only the size of plates, but spoons and glasses influence largely on how much food you eat. Larger plates tend to make you feel that you are eating less food. As a result you overeat. When people use smaller plates, the portion of food they eat is also smaller. So, it makes you eat less food as compared to when you use large plates. But it is advisable to not use very small plates and spoons because this strategy won’t work if you are too hungry.

2. A glass of water before meals

Drinking water before your meals can be really helpful if you are trying to loose some weight. Doing so suppresses your appetite, a lot of times it’s not actually that we feel hungry but its just the glass of water our body needs. It aids digestion and helps in absorbing the nutrients better. Water before meals can enhance your feelings of fullness, decrease your intake during the meal and even helps you in burning more calories.

3. Use different plates for different nutrition

You can try using medium sized different plates for different foods like a small sized bowl for nuts, a seperate plate for complex carbohydrates, another one protein rich food and one for salad. Now this could be a fun way to control portion size and could also motivate you to add variety in your meal. However, do not overdo this trick by using extra plates that you don’t even need. And yes, don’t forget to wash them after you have had your meal:p

4. Know what to eat less and what to eat more

Now a myth that needs to be busted in weight loss process is that eat less. Now, you should know that you actually don’t have to torture yourself to starve in order to loose weight. Rather than starving, one should give a thought to knowing what to cut down from meal and what to add more, which is a smarter choice. Example:- Eat less salt, added sugars, packaged fruit juices, fast foods, solid and trans fats and refined grains like white bread. In place of these, consume more healthy fats, fruits and vegetables, lean sources of protein and whole grains. In this case, even if you want to eat more, overeat an extra plate of salad than any fast food serving.

5. Starting your meal with a vegetable soup

Now this might make you think that adding variety in your meal can actually make you eat more making you fat. But wait, all you need is a realisation that explains you the value of added variety in your meal especially if it is something like vegetable soup. Foods like salad and vegetables soups contains high water content. Their consumption makes you feel full on very low calories. Vegetables soup is rich souce of fluid and veggies. It promotes portion control helping not only in weight loss and digestion but promoting cardiac functioning as well. So, go give it a try !

6. Using visual cues for food measurement

Another effective method could be to use visual cues for food measurement of different nutritions that can help in your portion control.

Example:- Using a plate equal to the size of deck of cards for protein measurement, one fat serving equal to the size of a dice or two spoons equal to the size two dices, a baseball equal to the size of bowl of veggies, a carbohydrate serving equal to the serving of hockey puck and a tennis ball equal to the size of fruit like an apple or an orange.

Alternatively, one can use hands as serving guide like a palm sized hand for protein rich food, a fist size for vegetables and salads, one cupped hand portion for high carb food and one thumb sized portion for high fat food.

Note:-(Although these could be rough guides for your meals but these can help you judge better which of foods in your meal you need to eat more and which one to eat less).

7. Eat slowly and mindfully

Eating mindfully requires you to be focused on your present moment and be aware of the aroma, taste and look of your food appreciating it and eating it slowly with no other distractions. Mindful eating has been shown to promote weight loss, reduce mindless binge eating and helping you feel better. Also, sitting down to meals and eating them slowly regulates portion control.

8. Avoid eating straight from containers

Large sized chips packets, sugary foods like candies or any other food from large containers makes you loose track of your portion sizes. Eating straightaway from packets or containers makes you eat more, So make sure to re-portion your snacks into smaller servings to prevent overeating and take account of your portion sizes.

Happy Eating:)