How to Control Portion Sizes

As one of the main determining factors of a successful or failing fat loss process is the quantity of food that you eat, you may wish to learn how to control food portions.

While I’ve never been an advocate of a portion control diet, counting calories or measuring food, you do need to have some general awareness of how much you’re going to eat to prevent yourself from going overboard.

This is why I decided to provide you with the following tips on how to manage your portion sizes to give you every chance of losing weight and keeping it off.

I hope you find these tips useful. Please try them to see how well they work for you.

Tips to Control Portion sizes

Tip #1 Never eat from the box

Your body doesn’t always know exactly how much you’ve eaten or plan on eating. You need your mind to tell you that. Often, a single glance from our eyes at the food in front of us is enough to pass a quick judgment on it being too much or too little for you.

This doesn’t happen when you eat from the box. When you eat from the bag, box, or container the food came in, you lose track of how much you’ve eaten. Let’s say you’ve just opened a bag of chips and you’re busy munching away. You may eat quite a lot until you realize that the bag is becoming empty of chips. As long as the bag is still relatively full, we operate under the “illusion” that we’ve eaten very little.

If you want to be able to control your food portion sizes, you need to take your food out of the bag or container in which it came and place it on a plate or in a bowl.

Tip #2 – Eat from the right dish

I often found that the amount of food that I eat is in direct proportion to the dish from which I’m eating. If I take a big plate, I tend to put enough food on it to fill it up. If I take a small bowl, I do the same.

The amount of actual food I take for myself has little to do with my dietary needs or hunger, it is influenced by my choice of dishware. A lot of people act this way and I believe you may too.

So, my tip is to try to use smaller dishes to serve your food on. You don’t need to get ridiculous and find tiny plates with room for just a morsel of food. You do need to exercise sound judgment on this tip. However, avoid using big plates and bowls, you will likely eat less food because of it.

Tip #3 – Eat often, eat little, eat slow

If you arrive at a certain meal feeling famished you may likely eat fast to overcome your perceived hunger. In a way, if you refrain from eating for 5, 6, or more hours, you’re setting yourself up for a binge eating episode. Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t make it harder on yourself to withstand the temptation of overeating.

Eat often, every 2-3 hours, but eat little so that your overall calorie consumption won’t lead you to gain weight. By eating many small meals throughout the day, you’re helping yourself to keep a high metabolism, you’re curbing your appetite, and you’re helping yourself lose weight faster.

Eating lots of small meals throughout the day is one of the principles of many diet programs.

You should also eat slowly as this gives you more control over what you eat and a heightened sense of how much you’ve eaten. Eating slowly also helps you enjoy your food better and gives your body time to recognize that it is no longer in need of food.

Tip #4 – Recognize which Hunger you are feeding

We are no just driven by our physical hunger when we go and eat, we sometimes feed our emotional hunger. For many people food is a source of comfort from their daily troubles, anxieties and stress. Often, when you’re under emotional strain, you’re capable of eating a lot of food fast without even noticing it.

To be able to exercise some sort of portion control, you have to be aware which hunger you’re feeding: is it real hunger or emotional hunger? Until you do that, you will likely suffer from the occasional overeating episode.

To really be able to stop feeding your emotional hunger, you need to learn how to stop emotional eating. One program to do that is the Emotional Eating Solution program

Tip #5 Eat high protein high fiber foods

One reason you may have a hard time controlling food portion sizes is how hungry you are. The more hungry the more food you may eat without even noticing that you’re overeating.

To help you avoid that try to eat more high protein or high fiber foods as these help you to curb your appetite. Eggs are one example of such a food.  Don’t stuff yourself with protein or fiber as you can overeat on those as well. However, including them in your diet is a good way to reduce your portion sizes.

In Conclusion

There are many ways by which you can exercise better portion control. Use these tips but don’t overuse them. Don’t start weighing every thing you put in your mouth or try to count calories. Use these tips in the context of an overall diet and fitness plan. Some good ones include the Truth About Six Pack abs and the Fat burning Furnace system. A total lifestyle change is what gets you results. That and nothing else.