No Room For Supersizing

Have you noticed that we live in an era of supersizing? Consider the 32-ounce single serving of soda, the super-sizing of fast-food meals for a mere fifty cents added to the regular price, huge muffins and cinnamon buns in coffee shops, warehouse grocery store's (that only sell in bulk) in every city. How are you to manage your weight in this kind of eating environment?

Weight management isn't easy with all this supersizing going on, but it isn't impossible either. It is true that you can eat anything you want, but weight management is about how much of each food you eat and how often you eat. It's simply a matter of taking a realistic look at portion sizes of the foods you eat and of knowing which food portions to watch more closely

You already have some tools to use to get familiar with the portions of food you eat—food labels, measuring cups, and the plates, bowls, glasses and cups you use regularly at home. If you want to use food labels to help you manage your portions of food, look at the areas of the Nutrition Facts panel marked "Serving Size" and "Servings per Container." The serving size tells you the specific amount of that food on which the nutrition information, including the fat grams, is based. Depending on the food, the serving size could be given in ounces (meat), fractions of a cup (vegetables, ice cream, cereal), slices (bread, packaged cheese), and so on.

To find the correct portion size of, for example, breakfast cereal, look at the nutrition panel on the box. The serving size might be 'A cup or 1 cup. You can simply fill a measuring cup with the proper amount of the food to see what one portion looks like. Or you can pour your usual serving of cereal into your bowl, then pour that into a measuring cup, and compare the amount with the standard serving size. If you find that y( usually eat two portions of cereal for breakfast, that's fine, hill , least now you know how much your typical portion amounts to.

Servings per container are useful on canned or frozen prepared products. If a can of soup says it serves two and you usually eat the whole can by yourself, multiply the fat grams by two to know the real debit against your fat budget.

The second tool for portion control is your dishes. It is very helpful for a week or two to measure out how much food you put into the plates, bowls, glasses, and cups you use frequently. Once you know the amounts that fit into your different dishes, you'll be able to more accurately gauge the amounts of food you're eating, the fat grams in these foods, and the foods for which you might need to decrease your portion size. It's a good idea, too, every so often to remeasure so your eye doesn't lose its version of the portion sizes that fit into your dishes.

It's obvious that you need to monitor portion sizes in order to manage weight. But do you need to check portions of everything you eat? Actually, you don't need to track everything. Plaits fruits (but not juice) and vegetables, for example, are foods that are so good for you that you can never really get too much of them, so you shouldn't worry about limiting your portions. Plain pasta, rice, and other similar products can also be watched less closely, again because they're so low in fat. The items you want to monitor closely include high fat items like regular salad dressings, butter, and mayonnaise; creamy sauces; many meats; cheeses; snack items like chips; and dessert items like cakes, cookies, and ice creams.