Posted by kathryn in A Balanced Diet

Following the success of the guest posts during the 31 Days to a Better Diet series, I’m continuing the series. Each month there will be a post from a guest writer on what they do to eat well. And this month it’s Sue-Lin Tin from Noodlebowl talking about watching your portion sizes.

I am Sue-Lin Tin, an average girl with an average yo-yo dieting lifestyle and a more than average love of broccoli.

Muesli, yoghurt and a banana. A healthy breakfast right? But how much of a good thing is a bad thing?

The recommended serving size for muesli is 30g. What does 30g look like? Is it a shake of the bag, 3 tablespoons, half your cereal bowl? How big is that banana? How much yoghurt did you pour on? I was surprised to find how very little 30g is. I was deceiving myself by choosing healthy options but eating far too much of it.

When I began tracking my diet, I decided to do it properly and weigh each portion of food before I ate it. I was constantly surprised how badly I estimated how much each item weighed and not in a good way. I weighed everything consistently for about a week or so, until I could better gauge each portion size. I use a tracking tool that has a library of most Australian food items; it allows me to enter in x grams of food and it will work out how many calories it is, as I am following a calorie restriction diet.

I have found the following tools to be useful in my quest for portion control:

Electric scales:

We have a set of electric scales that has a tare function so you can put on a container, set it back to zero and chuck in the food item. We bought these from a homewares shop and I love the tare function.

Measuring cup:

We have one of those glass pyrex jugs that measure in both mls and cups. Good for liquids and recipes that call for cup serves.

Glad lock bags:

Break up food into pre-weighed portion sizes. For example, break out meat into single portion sizes and write down the weight on the pack before freezing it.

Write it down:

When concocting a meal, it is easy to lose track of what you’re putting together. My husband started writing it on our kitchen blackboard as he went and I thought this was a very good idea.

Take a photo:

I just thought of this but haven’t implemented it yet. Take a photo of what a serving size of pasta should be, tape it to the front of the pasta container.

I found at the start of the diet, I was tracking very consistently and weighing everything. The enthusiasm for this activity wanes as you would imagine. I found the best way was to make a commitment to weigh and portion control for at least one week. This covered most regular items I would eat in a week and gave me a good gauge of what a serving size should be.

I still struggle with this and sometimes I just go to hell with it, why can’t I just eat like a normal person! But I know now that what I used to think was a normal portion size is really almost double what I should be eating. It will be an ongoing adjustment to rethink what ‘normal’ is.

Have a go at measuring your portion sizes for just one day, it would be interesting to hear if your portion sizes were more or less than you thought.

I am Sue-Lin Tin, an average girl with an average yo-yo dieting lifestyle and a more than average love of broccoli. My blog Noodlebowl is a random collection of food and other musings.

Scales photograph by Benjamin Earwacker and measuring jug by Tory Byrne.

16 September, 2008