Being mindful of your daily food intake is an important aspect of maintaining a balanced diet. Eating too much, or too little to achieve your dietary goals can be avoided by being more aware of portion sizes and determining the amount of food that is right for you. In fact, everyone’s body is different and the amount of food you think you need to get you through the day might not be the same as someone else’s.
With that being said, here are some of our tips to help you better control your portion size for various types of foods:
Measure your recipes
Whether you are an amateur or experienced cook, following a recipe may not always go as planned. In fact, you may be tempted to go off-track and personalise the recipe on the spot. Make sure to calculate everything before pouring more ingredients blindly, or try cutting portions in half, as you may end up with much a much bigger or smaller dish than intended resulting in a lot of unnecessary food waste or an empty tummy!
Follow the recommended portions
Nowadays, you can find portion suggestions on a lot of food packaging like pasta, rice, and other food items that can be hard to visually measure. These recommended portions are usually very accurate and them being written directly onto the packaging makes it convenient and easy to follow.
Cooking hungry can be a trap
Of course, eat when hungry. As obvious as it is to cook when hungry, it happens too often that the hunger takes over when preparing some food. This usually leads to making more food and results in having more on your plate than you need or can eat. Try drinking a glass of water before you start cooking to curb what might actually be thirst. Filling your stomach with fluid naturally makes you less likely to overeat so is a good habit to get into in general.
Use visual help
There are a few tips and tricks we have put together to help measure your portions. These hassle-free, visual tips are a great way to ensure your portions for meals and snacks follow the recommended intake.
Again, everyone is different, so keep in mind these are only average suggestions.
