We Feed Our Stomachs And Our Eyes

We eat most of what’s on our plate regardless of the size of the plate.

Six ounces of cooked rice with a little chili looks like a good-sized portion on an 8 inch plate. The same amount on a 12 inch plate would look paltry and most of us add more — increasing both the portion size and the calories.

When you switch to a smaller plate you eat a smaller serving. You eat, on average, 22% less when you switch from a 12 inch plate to a 10 inch plate.

Go Small – But Not Too Small

It sounds too good to be true, but using smaller dishes can also help you feel full even when you’re eating less. Studies show that people are more satisfied with less food when they’re served on 8 inch salad plates instead of on 12 inch dinner plates.

But — be careful not to go too small with your plate.  With too little food you might end up going back for seconds. A plate 2 inches smaller than the one you normally use is probably about right.

The post Want To Decrease Your Dinner Calories? Change The Size Of Your Plate appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

Portion size is critical to managing your weight.  One helpful idea is to use familiar objects as visual guides to “guesstimate” portion sizes.

One Cup Is About The Size Of A Baseball

The suggested serving size for many food items, particularly produce, is a cup. The suggested portion size for many denser items, like pasta, rice, or ice cream is a half a cup, so two servings – which is, at minimum, what most of us eat, would equal a cup.

 A Baseball, Not A Softball

A cup is about the size of a baseball – a baseball, not a softball.  So a cup of cooked greens, a cup of yogurt, a cup of beans, or a cup of cantaloupe should all look like the size of a baseball – but with obviously different calorie counts.

Here are some of the CDC’s examples of one-cup servings:

• 1 small apple
• 1 medium grapefruit
• 1 large orange
• 1 medium pear
• 8 large strawberries
• 1 large bell pepper
• 1 medium potato
• 2 large stalks of celery
• 12 baby carrots or 2 medium carrot
• 1 large ear of corn

It’s easy to visualize a small apple or a medium potato as about the size of a baseball.  It’s more difficult with an ear of corn!  But, for most food products it is possible to think “baseball” and pour or cut or pick (as in the case of fruit) a similarly sized portion.

This is Tip #3 for Week 3 of the “lose 5 pounds in 5 weeks challenge.”  Let everyone know how you’re doing! Post your results and/or struggles and suggestions on Eat Out Eat Well’s page on Facebook.

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Maybe your plates are so big that you have trouble getting them into the dishwasher.

Does it make a difference other than for convenience?  You bet it does.

The Size Of Your Dinner Plate Can Affect Your Weight

We eat off of big plates. Since 1960 the overall surface area of an average dinner plate has increased 36 percent. The average dinner plate we commonly use today measures 11 or 12 inches across. A few decades ago plates measured 7 to 9 inches.

In Europe, the average plate measures 9 inches while some American restaurants use plates that are around 13 inches in diameter.

Portion Sizes Have Increased Along With Plate Size

1960 sized portions would look a little lost on today’s large plates.  Plop a small portion of spaghetti and meat sauce in the middle of a large plate and the temptation is to add more – usually pasta – to fill up the plate.  That’s how you feed both your eyes and your stomach.

The additional problem – aside from eating more food at the meal — is that with more food piled on your plate, the idea gets embedded in your brain that a larger portion is better and that it takes a larger amount to fill your plate. Your brain then figures that If you need that much food to fill your plate then it takes that large amount of food to make you feel good.

Some Easy Things To Do

When you switch to a smaller plate you eat a smaller serving.

Control your portion sizes by decreasing the size of your plate. Try switching from a dinner plate to a salad plate or look for vintage plates that are smaller in diameter. Research has shown that by switching to a 10 inch plate from a 12 inch plate you eat 22 percent less.

Incredibly, smaller dishes can also help you feel full even though you’re eating less. Studies show that people are more satisfied with less food when they are served on 8 inch salad plates instead of on 12 inch dinner plates.  But don’t go too small because eating too small a portion might send you back for seconds.

Keep This In Mind

We eat an average of 92% of what we serve ourselves. Since we pile more food onto larger plates, the larger plates means we eat more food. A two inch difference in plate diameter  — decreasing the size of our plates to ten inches from 12 inches — would mean a serving that has 22 percent fewer calories.  It’s a smaller serving but not small enough to leave you still hungry and heading back for seconds. For an average size adult who eats a typical dinner of 800 calories, the smaller portions that would result from using a smaller plate would lead to a weight loss of around 18 pounds a year.

The post How Big Are Your Dinner Plates — And Why It Matters appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

Portion size is critical to managing your weight.  One helpful idea is to use commonplace objects as visual guides to “guesstimate” portion sizes.

One Cup Is About The Size Of A Baseball

The suggested serving size for many food items, particularly produce, is a cup. (The suggested portion size for many denser items, like pasta, rice, or ice cream is a half a cup, so two servings – which is what, at least, most of us eat, would equal a cup.)

 A Baseball, Not A Softball

A cup is about the size of a baseball – a baseball, not a softball.  So a cup of cooked greens, a cup of yogurt, a cup of beans, or a cup of cantaloupe should all look like the size of a baseball – but with obviously different calorie counts due to the food’s individual differences in food density and energy (calories).

Here are a few more of the CDC’s examples of one-cup servings:

• 1 small apple

• 1 medium grapefruit

• 1 large orange

• 1 medium pear

• 8 large strawberries

• 1 large bell pepper

• 1 medium potato

• 2 large stalks of celery

• 12 baby carrots or 2 medium carrots

• 1 large ear of corn

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An infographic courtesy of Healthy Meal Experts.

Learn more about Healthy Meals

The post Why Are Americans Getting Fat??? appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

Fortunately, for them, they have knowledge and their skill in the kitchen at their disposal to make food more flavorful, perhaps downright delicious, while cutting back on the use of sugar, fat, and salt.

What The Slimmed Down Chefs Do

According to an article in The Daily News, what they do is:

• Reengineer their palates:  Richard Blais of Top Chef fame followed a vegan diet for 30 days to jump start his 60 pound weight loss.  He says it was a palate cleanser that made him aware of how sweet, fatty, and salty his food was.  Art Smith, Oprah’s former chef, lost 95 pounds by changing the way he ate – incorporating more whole foods, eating six meals a day, and making uncomplicated food, often following the same menu most days of the week.

• Eat smaller portions:  Aside from eating smaller meals more frequently, some chefs like Houston’s Ronnie Killen, who lost 215 pounds, eats four ounces of a 16 ounce steak and saves the rest for another meal.

• Find new ways to add flavor and devise new ways to add taste but not tons of calories:  New York City’s Michael Psilakis poaches garlic in olive oil and then adds the garlic to various foods to really punch up the flavor of lower calorie items like mussels and gigante beans.  Many of the chefs use onion, garlic, and many herbs and spices for flavor.

• Indulge occasionally (or have a planned cheat day):  Many of the chefs, like Art Smith, build in a cheat day or leave room in their calorie budget for the occasional indulgence by eating lighter meals and fewer calories in anticipation of the indulgence.

• Exercise:  almost all of the chefs move around more than they did.  New York’s Rocco Dispirito became a triathlete, but Art Smith, who has a rigorous workout routine, says he sometimes just blasts music and dances.

The Bottom Line

Whatever routine a chef follows, they all seem to have become aware of  portion sizes.  They’ve learned about calories and the overabundance of sugar, fat, and salt in many recipes.  And, they move more.  They do not deprive themselves.  They may restrict the amount of food that they eat – but they are eating whole food with good flavor and they’re making room for the occasional, not daily, indulgence.

Art Smith cautions that dessert is a treat. As he says, “If you have dessert every day, then it’s no longer a treat.”

Try following their strategies when you’re cooking at home – or even when ordering in a restaurant.

If we could just get more chefs to offer smaller portions of delicious and healthy whole foods in their restaurants and food companies to do the same with their prepared products it would be a whole lot easier to lose and/or maintain weight and to be mindful of portion size.

The post Have You Noticed That Some Well-Known Chefs Are Shrinking? appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

Plates:  Bigger Isn’t Better

The size of our dinner plates might be contributing to our country’s obesity problem.

Since 1960, the surface area of our average dinner plate has increased 36%. Today, the average dinner plate measures 11 to 12 inches across, but a few decades ago they were 7 to 9 inches. By comparison, a European plate averages 9 inches and some of our restaurants use plates that are about 13 inches across.

Supersized Eating

Just as serving sizes in restaurants have been supersized and package sizes in the market have grown, so have the plate, bowl, and glass sizes we use in our homes — by 36% in some cases.

Our ideas about portion sizes and how much we need to eat and drink to feel full have grown along with the size of our dishware.

Six ounces of cooked rice with a little chili looks like a good portion on an 8 inch plate. The same amount on a 12 inch plate would look paltry  and probably cause the typical person to add more rice to the plate — which ends up increasing the portion size and calories.

What To Do

The fact of the matter is that we eat most of what’s on our plate regardless of the size of the plate.

But, when you switch to a smaller plate you eat a smaller serving. According to research done at Cornell, when you switch from a 12 inch plate to a 10 inch plate you eat 22% less.

So, you can control your portion sizes by downsizing the size of your plate. You can switch from a dinner plate to a salad plate or search vintage stores for older plates that are smaller in size.

Go Small – But Not Too Small

It sounds too good to be true, but using smaller dishes can also help you feel full even when you’re eating less. Amazingly, studies show that people are more satisfied with less food when they are served on 8 inch salad plates instead of on 12 inch dinner plates.

Use smaller plates and bowls. It’ll keep the portions smaller and you feeling fuller.

But — be careful not to go too small with your plate.  With too little food you might end up going back for seconds. A plate 2 inches smaller than the one you normally use is probably about right.

The post Dinner Plates: Size Matters! appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

What Do I Want To Eat?

What Do I Want To Eat?  That’s a question we all ask ourselves.  Including me.  A lot. Standing in front of the fridge with the door open.  Staring at the shelves in the pantry.  In front of the deli case.  Trying to decipher a menu.  With no clear idea, the danger zone looms setting  up the perfect scenario for being easily swayed by all kinds of food that, perhaps, is not really the best for you.

What Should I Eat?

Then there’s the other question — one I get asked all the time as a weight management coach:  “What SHOULD I eat?”

What’s the answer?

Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have a specific one.  I can’t tell you, or my clients, what to eat. That’s your personal decision. What I can and do say is that deprivation doesn’t work.  Certainly not for long lasting and healthy weight loss and maintenance.  Restriction and deprivation mean a pendulum swing – restriction on one end and indulgence on the other.  How many times have you foregone a food that you love only to gorge on it when you hit an emotional low and toss resolve out the window. Constant dieting doesn’t work either.  It messes with your metabolism, and because dieting, by its very nature, means deprivation.  A healthy lifestyle is an essential component of long-term weight management.

What can you do to get out of the dieting cycle and manage your weight?

There’s no way around it:  the formula is energy taken in (calories) should equal energy output (physical movement and metabolism).  If you eat more calories than you use up, you gain weight.  To maintain your weight, your energy (calorie) intake and caloric expenditure (activity and metabolism) have to be in balance.  An imbalance means you either gain weight or lose weight.

Don’t throw in the towel just yet.  There are ways to help figure out how to eat  good and tasty food and not pack on the pounds.  Each of us has food that we feel we can’t live without and food memories that are associated with tradition, culture, and nurturing.  It’s hard to separate food for sustenance from any of these emotionally charged food behaviors.  And why should you?  Doing so certainly sounds like a set-up for discomfort and what may be taken as either lack of willpower or failure.

Some Questions To Ask Yourself

No eating strategy will work if you are not happy and physically and mentally satisfied (satisfaction can mean both feeling comfortably satiated and intellectually satisfied that you are eating well).

Armed with knowledge about what is healthy food and what is not, and what your body needs in terms of a ballpark number of calories and nutrients, here are a bunch of questions you can use to mentally evaluate your food choices – before you make them.  It sounds like a big deal, but it’s really not – you probably ask yourself some of these already.  It’s a workable system of “foodie checks and balances.”

Foodie Checks and Balances

There are a series of questions you can ask yourself when you’re contemplating your food choices. By doing this you gain valuable information to use to make you feel good and to control your weight.

• What is my tried and true meal that can be my fallback or my go to meal for breakfast, lunch, or dinner? What type of food did I grow up with?  Did that type of eating give me energy, strength, and clarity?  There’s something to be said about eating the way our ancestors did (even if its only one or two generations ago).

• How do I feel when I eat this food? If you feel like garbage after eating red meat or drinking a glass of milk, stay away from those foods.  Just because someone else eats them doesn’t mean you have to. A journal comes in handy so you can jot down what you eat and how you feel and look at the associations.

• Is it delicious?  Why waste your calories on something that doesn’t taste good? Ditto for something with little or no nutritional value.  There are two sides to this coin.  Just because something is good for you doesn’t mean that it has to taste bad.  There are many ways to prepare foods.  Try a different preparation.  The other side of the coin is that maybe you’ll never like a certain food.  Who cares if it’s a nutritional superstar.  There are plenty of them.  Why eat what you don’t like.  This is not force feeding.  There are lots of delicious and healthy foods to go around.  Choose something else.  Don’t waste your nutritional budget on something that you don’t like.

• Is it good for me?  Is it healthy?  Not “Is it good for my family, my spouse, or my friend.” As above – don’t waste your calories on something that doesn’t do anything for you. Some foods may be delicious (to you) but be downright unhealthy.  Give up on the empty and unhealthy calories.  What’s the point of eating stuff that does either nothing for you, or that may be bad for you?

• If I eat this, how am I going to feel half an hour or an hour from now? Ever eat a big bowl of pasta at lunch and then need to prop your head up on a book to try to stay awake (or more likely, grab a monster cup of coffee).  Ever stop at a gas station on a long road trip to grab a candy bar – only to find yourself nodding off a while later?  Dangerous.  I once had pasta for dinner right before a movie and fell asleep during the trailer only to wake up when prodded by my husband and son when the movie credits were rolling.  Pasta makes me sleepy, so does candy.  What about you? Food certainly can have an effect on your levels of awareness and clarity. Learn to identify the relationship between certain foods and how your body physically and emotionally reacts to them.  Some make you sleepy, some make you crabby, some make you alert, and some give you energy.  Which foods do what for you?

• Is this the right portion size for me? Portion control is essential for weight management.  Learn to eyeball portion sizes and commit to a personal “no seconds” policy.

• Do I really want to eat this or am I doing it just because . . . (you supply the answer – some typical ones are: everyone else is eating it, or my kids love it, or Grandma made it, or it’s the specialty of the restaurant, or “I had a tough day, I deserve it”).

Create a habit of asking yourself these checks and balances questions when you’re faced with food choices:

• How do I feel when I eat this food?

• Is it delicious?

• Is it good for me?

• Is it healthy?

• If I eat this, how am I going to feel half an hour or an hour from now?

• Is this the right portion size for me?

• Do I really want to eat this or am I doing it just because . . .?

Have A Game Plan

SocialDieter Tip: Having a game plan ready before you eat will help you stay out of harms way but also allow you to eat portion appropriate healthy and delicious meals.

The choice is yours. What are some of the questions you ask yourself before eating?

The post What Should I Eat? appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

A Healthy Meal Or A Caloric Fat Fest?

It’s time for lunch or perhaps to pick up a bite for dinner on your way home.  It’s Monday after a weekend of a bit of overeating.  Time for something light and healthy.

How about a salad?  Here’s a chance for plenty of vegetables, other healthy stuff, and a chance to save some calories, too.  Yeah, right!!!  Think again and read on.

Wonderful Reasons To Have A Salad

There are a whole bunch of good reasons to chow down on a nice big salad.

• It’s easy to make your own from the salad bar at the local market, to order one for delivery, or to rip open a bag of lettuce and plop a piece of grilled chicken on top.
• The nutrient rich plant foods that make the base of a salad are high in antioxidants — especially the dark green and orange vegetables, and legumes.
• Most of the vegetables are full of fiber – good for your cholesterol, your GI functioning, and as a way to feel fuller for a longer period of time.
• Salads take a long time to eat – much longer than sandwiches or pizza that you can scarf down far more quickly.
• Salads can look really appetizing and can cost very little (they can cost a lot, too, depending upon the add-ons).
• Salads are a great way to recycle leftovers – just toss them in the mix.

Where’s The Nightmare?

Answer:  Hidden in the fatty and sneaky high caloric add-ons and dressing.

• Generally, at least ¼ of a cup (frequently more) of dressing is added to a tossed salad. A ladle of creamy dressing has about 360 calories and 38g of fat (a cheeseburger’s worth).  Vinaigrette dressing, usually 3 parts oil to one part vinegar, adds its own fat blast.
• Tuna, macaroni, and chicken salads, the holy grail of delis and salad bars, are loaded with mayonnaise, which of course, is loaded with fat.  On average (for a half cup):  chicken salad has 208 calories, 16g of fat; tuna salad  has 192 calories, 9g fat; tuna pasta salad has 397 calories, 9g fat; macaroni salad has 170 calories, 9g fat.
• Cheese, please – or maybe not. For a 1/4 cup serving:  Shredded cheddar has 114 calories, 9g fat;  blue cheese has 80 calories, 6g fat;  feta has 75 calories, 6g fat.
• Portions:  The calorie counts above are for ½ cup of salad, ¼ cup of cheese.  Those are pretty small portions.  Do you have that kind of restraint?
• Croutons and Crispy Noodles: ¼ cup of plain croutons has 31 calories, 0g fat; 1 serving of  McDonald’s Butter Garlic Croutons  has 60 calories, 1g fat;  ¼ cup of crispy noodles has 74 calories, 4g fat
• Dried cranberries: ¼ cup has 98 calories, 0g fat
• Nuts and Seeds (1/4 cup): Sunflower seeds have 210 calories, 19g fat; chopped walnuts:  193 calories, 18g fat
• Avocado (1/4 cup) have 58 calories, 5g fat
• Bacon: 1 tablespoon of bacon bits has 25 calories, 2g fat
• Bread (often used to sop up leftover dressing):  1 piece of French bread has  82 calories, 1g fat; 1 dinner roll has 78 calories, 2g fat
• Dressing sopped up by the bread or roll:  lots of extra fat calories!

Should Salads Go On Your “Do Not Touch” List?

No way, absolutely not. The healthy stuff in salad tastes great, fills you up, and is good for you.  There are plenty of ways to cut down on the fatty and caloric add-ons and still end up with a really tasty meal.  There are even good choices in fast food and chain restaurants (and plenty of really, really bad ones).

SocialDieter Tip: don’t stop eating salad, just be aware of what add-ons and dressing can do.  Check my next post for some very helpful info on choosing and making salads and for the low down on a few fast and chain food “good” and “don’t even think about it” choices.

The post Is Your Salad A Nightmare? appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

That’s my lifestyle, and having to be constantly vigilant about managing my weight, I had to learn how to control my caloric intake while eating out. 

It’s certainly easier to control the portion size and fat and calorie content of your food if you cook it at home. In your own kitchen you know what you’re putting in your food. And you don’t have to put bread on the table if you don’t want to or do things like rinse your vegetables in oil to make them look fresh and pretty.

Restaurants love to use butter, oil, full-fat dairy, and higher fat meats.  Their business is to make food that tastes good and to entice you to come back again. What goes into your food is, for the most part, in the hands of the preparer in the restaurant kitchen whose primary objective is not to keep the calories down (unless that’s the promise or the response to your request) but to get your food on the table.

But, you can learn ways to control your caloric intake when you eat out. You can easily make requests and small changes that put you in charge of the calorie count while still enjoying your dining experience.

I’ll be talking about additional strategies to use in future posts, but for now, here are some things you can do to cut the calories:

• Learn the code words on the menu that signal the fattier and more caloric dishes
• Be pleasantly assertive when asking to go “off menu” or to have food prepared in a specific manner – like grilled rather than pan fried
• Be aware of mindless eating:  olives on the table, peanuts at the bar, tastes of everyone else’s food
• Learn how to eyeball portion sizes and commit to eating that size rather than cleaning your plate.  Premeasure at home so you have a guide about how much, for example, 5 oz of meat looks like – or 4oz. of wine.  Commit it to memory so you can eyeball portion sizes
• Stay out of the breadbasket – and, if you do indulge, lay off of the butter, olive oil, and other dips
• Practice trade-offs:  if you’re going to have dessert eliminate the appetizer and vice versa
• Check out the menu ahead of time and decide what to order so you are not tempted by the possible calorie laden “special of the day”
• Rehearse these words so they become your habitual request: 
  • dry toast/pancakes/English muffin (no butter)
  • dressing on the side (for salad)
  • do you have skim/low fat milk?
  • no whipped cream
  • sauce on the side for entrees/vegetables
  • may I have salad instead of French fries/onion rings?
  • hold the mayo (try mustard instead)
  • is the sauce tomato or cream based? 

I’ll be posting frequently about additional strategies to use when eating out. 

What are some strategies that you use to control your caloric intake in restaurants?

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