Maintaing a healthy meal portion size is just as easy to manage as it easy to get out of whack. So how and why have so many of us lost control of managing a healthy meal portion size? The answer largely lies with eating out.

Over the past several years restaurants of all shapes and sizes have been competing based on value. Specifically, restaurants have framed value in two ways:

Customer Service &
Meal Size

Think about it….the real objective of all restaurants is to get you to come back and become a regular. Restaurant’s want your memory of them to be, “the food tasted great, the servings were generous and they were so friendly…we really should go back soon”.  It’s only the generous (some would say enormous) portions that get us all into trouble.

Here’s the rub: we’re all creatures of habit and if we “eat big” at our favorite establishment, that pattern follows us right back home.  For most people the “problem meal of the day” is  dinner…you know…several pieces of french bread,  a couple large servings of pasta,  followed by something wonderful for dessert.  Even though dinner is the big offender, it”s just as easy to find ourselves looking at beakfast and lunch meal portions equally large. Thankfully there’s a way to fix this pattern.

Believe it or not, the secret is, you need to eat more often. Really!  I didn’t say eat more or larger portions…just eat more often. The secret is to never allow yourself to get that   growling stomach hunger again. To do this, you need to eat 5 smaller meals per day and limit your calories to 300-400 per meal. Also, during your waking hours, eat something every 4 hours. This doesn’t have to be a meal.  A simple low calorie snack works great (orange, apple, snap peas,  4 or 5 almonds; but not cookies, chips).  Here’s a time frame of when to eat and how many calories: breakfast 6:30AM – 300 calories (oatmeal & banana), mid-morning 10:30AM – 300 calories (protein shake), lunch 12:00PM – 400 calories (tuna sandwich on wheat, small green salad with low calorie dressing, fruit), mid-afternoon – 3:30PM 250 calories (carrots, celery, tomatoes, apple), dinner – 6:30PM 400 calories (grilled chicken, salad with mango or apple with walnuts). That’s 1,650 calories which allows room for another protein shake and a late night fruit snack. For beverages: water is best,  diet sodas are OK but no sugar soda allowed.

Building the habit of eating healthy meal portions will take 2-3 weeks but once the habit is ingrained your on your way to living a healthier life and probably a longer life.  Here’s another tip: at the restaurant, ask them to box up half your serving before they ever bring it out. They’ll be happy to do it and you’ll be happy they did too. Lastly, combining  frequent healthy meal portions with some light exercise will peel extra weight off in no time. To learn more about diet and portion size please click here.

I hope this has been helpful. Feel free to leave your comments in the feedback section below.

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