10 Tips for Controlling Your Diet
Introduction: A big meal when a friend treats you? A feast at home on the weekend? Faced with delicious food, how can you control your appetite? Come and learn some tips
Although many people know that portion control is an important part of maintaining a healthy diet, it's often the last thing on our minds when we sit down for a meal. However, for those who are on a diet or want to maintain their figure, this is exactly what they should be doing.
Our days of having a bagel or muffin with a meal are long gone, but sadly, we always feel that the calories we consume are within a safe range. Surprisingly, researchers measured the portions of typical meals from takeout restaurants, fast-food chains, and family-style restaurants and found that, according to USDA calorie standards, a bagel is 295% of the standard, a muffin is 333%, cooked pasta is 480%, and most terrifyingly, a cookie has seven times the standard calories.
How does portion control work?
The first step to successful portion control is learning to calculate food portions, such as those in the food pyramid developed by the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services. Portions can usually be determined by reading nutrition labels; a food portion is the amount of food and drink a person chooses to consume. In most cases, we eat larger portions simply because we don't know how much we should be eating.
Dr. Mary M. Flynn believes that portion control means limiting your diet, being aware of how much food you should actually be eating, and how many calories those foods contain.
How to control your diet through portion control?
With a little practice, portion control is easy to achieve. Here are 10 simple tips to help you limit your portions and maintain a proper weight.
1. Measure accurately. For foods and beverages, use small tools like measuring cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons to control portion sizes.
2. Learn how to estimate portion sizes. Dr. Rose Clifford believes that people can estimate portion sizes by comparing them to objects of known portions, for example, 3 ounces of cooked meat, fish, or poultry is the size of a deck of cards.
3. Use dishware to control portions. Choose smaller plates, bowls, and cups from your kitchen and see how much they can hold. You might find that a bowl you thought could only hold 8 ounces of soup can actually hold 16 ounces, which means you might have eaten twice as much as you planned.
4. Eat only your own portion. Serve yourself the food you intend to eat, rather than serving family-style, which helps reduce the amount you consume.
5. Make your own diet packs. Dr. Jennifer suggests putting your favorite foods, like pasta and rice, into pre-portioned bags. This way, when you're feeling down and want to eat, you'll immediately think of the pre-portioned packs you've prepared.
6. Switch drinks for milk. If possible, replace the drink in your cup with skim milk to better measure your diet.
7. Measure oil carefully. Oil is high in calories, even healthy oils like olive oil and safflower oil, so don't pour it directly into your cooking pan or sprinkle it on food.
8. Control portions when dining out. Eat half of your meal or share it with a friend. If eating a salad, put the dressing in a separate bowl on the side. This way, when you eat the salad, you can dip your fork in the dressing first, then into the salad.
9. Add vegetables. Before your meal, drink a low-calorie vegetable soup, or add vegetables to your sandwich, which don't add many calories.
10. Listen to your own hunger cues. Eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full. Because there will be more food for the next meal, don't eat too much at once.