Just today, I’m not going to eat between meals and I’m not going to take seconds. And I’ll use the Tools of The Hacker’s Diet to help me stay focused and successful.
That doesn’t mean that other tools aren’t useful also. I’ve been poking around the federal government’s nutrition web sites. And yesterday I found a couple of slide shows demonstrating the swelling of portion sizes from 20 years ago to now. It’s pretty interesting and I think a more helpful comparison than the standard ones about a compac disc being the size of a pancake.
I’ve been guarding against “portion creep” for my own meals. Last year I carefully measured every single thing I ate for months. And then sort of coasted on what I learned about how those portions fit in or on our dishes. But I know my tendenancy is to let those portions drift gradually bigger. So every few months I go back to measuring (if only for a few days) to get myself back on track.
It’s interesting to see that it’s a cultural problem. It doesn’t affect just one sort of meal of food. The portions we expect to have for just about every food have gotten larger. And I think that’s where the confusion about the number of servings in prepackaged food comes from. The official servings match the common serving size of 20 years ago. But the packages are doubled or more in size. The result is a single bagel that is 2.5 servings.
Portion Distortion (Follow the link to an HTML interactive slideshow):
Bagel |
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20 Years Ago |
Today |
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|
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3-inch diameter
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??? calories |
| A bagel 20 years ago was 3 inches in diameter and had 140 calories. How many calories do you think are in today’s bagel? | |
I wonder if Portion Distortion at least partially explains the rate of increase in obesity?
A few weeks ago I talked about Bulky Blown-up Buster and how he’s constantly eating just a few more calories than he burns. He’s always at the far right of the hunger/full chart:
We’ve been lulled by those gigantic portions from restaurants and prepackaged foods. They’ve led us to believe that we should actually eat that much. But nothing could be more wrong. When we let ourselves become accustomed to eating at the far right of the chart weight control becomes impossible.
Take a look at the interactive slideshows (there are two.) Maybe you’ve heard all this before (I had heard about the bagel and french fries and soda pop.) But I hadn’t thought about all of it. I was most surprised by the turkey sandwich and pizza display.
The one thing people consistently say when I tell them I’m not eating between meals and I’m not taking seconds as a way to control my weight is that it won’t work because I’ll eat too much food at my meals. But there’s a lot of tools out there to help us get control of those portion sizes. Here’s one of the silliest (and useless to me) examples.
Do you measure your portions (everytime?) or use some other method for monitoring how much you’re eating? Since my Eat Watch is busted, I can’t count on a sense of hunger to stop me from eating (at meals or in between.) And I’d love to get more hints for ways to control my bad habits.
2 Comments
You gave away the answer to the bagel calories.
If it’s 2.5 servings, and the “old” bagel is 140 calories, you’re looking at 140*2.5=350 calories. About half a meal right there, eh?
Hi, FF — that’s funny, the 2.5 calorie serving thing came from a totally different part of my brain. It came from my last experience of looking up the Weight Watcher’s points of a bagel. They recommend eating half or less of a largish bagel. But, it must be a standard estimate — because it did also match the calorie estimate of the Portion Distortion presentation.
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[...] The thing is, I’m pretty sure I’ve been eating at the far right of the chart again (mostly by taking portions that are just a little too big — not really breaking The Commitment, but bending it dramatically). And when you do that, you lose your buffer zone. So when special things came up, those little extras were a little too much extra — and my weight had no where to go but up. [...]