Portion Sizes !!!

VfM4meplse

Barneysmom wrote: »

A bowl of porridge will sustain me only for 1 hour then I'm hungry again.

A bowl of porridge with a Weetabix (or generic equivalent) stirrred in at the end is more filling, if it gets too thick, thin down with water, not milk. I was amazed that porridge can have upto 9% fat, depending on the brand!

Unfortunately porridge makes me painfully bloated, so it's another thing I avoid in any quantity. So now I make big trays of fruity flapjacks and have just a tiny bit if I feel my blood sugar go low after the gym, they are much tastier than shop-bought cereal bars.

Pink.

Hi MaggieBaking,

We have a number of threads on portion control:

Portion Sizes !!!

Portion sizes (meat, fish and other protein)

What 'dry' weight per portion for rice and pasta?

Mince quantity question (stretching and portion sizes)?

Vegetarian meals - portion size for pulses?

I'll add this thread to the first (main) link later.

Pink

redlady_1

Well after seeing this I decided to weigh out my bulgar wheat and the muesli. Oh dear!!! 50gms of bulgar wheat. I have been having probably double that!!! And the same of muesli! I think I have just had an education.

redlady_1

Um, interesting....now I have cooked it (I take it to work for lunch) it seems too much. Perhaps it is because I cook several days worth in one go. Is 50 the given weight? I think I would rather have 30 gm of bulgar wheat and 50gm of muesli.

heretolearn_2

What's weird is that just being at home makes me feel I need to eat twice as much.

Just come back from a working holiday where our evening meal is given to us. Typical meals are a slice of lasagne about 2ins x 3ins, a handful of salad, and a serving of veg, plus bread and butter and a piece of fruit. Or 2 small chicken drumsticks plus 3 new potatoes plus veg plus a yoghurt. I always look at it and think 'is that it?' but I'm full when I've eaten it. It seems as though they give us the sort of portion size they should in general (you can get seconds and I know some of the men feel rather shortchanged by their first serving) But if I try and do those size portions at home I'm still starving. Why is that?

MaggieBaking

Here to learn, I reckon that it's because you're in "eating mode" as I call it, when you might have a filling dinner but it's not enough and you still want to chew or something and you rabbit around looking for food!

Perhaps when you were on holiday you ate your dinner slower as you were talking. The longer it takes you to eat the fuller you feel.

They reckon it takes 20 minutes for your brain to register food - so if you wolf everything down in 5 minutes you're still hungry because your stomach is telling your brain it's had no food.

I now always wait till an hour after my dinner now to see if I'm still hungry, even if it's an apple. Sometimes I'll finish thinking "I'm ravenous!" and then I plan everything I'll eat in an hour - and then don't bother when the time comes!!

redlady_1

I am the opposite. When I was off work ill at the beginning of the year I dropped half a stone in a couple of weeks because I didnt have a sandwich van come round selling nice choccie and crisps. At home, because I have no self control over crisps, I wont buy any.

Also HTL habit has much to answer for. If you try a different meal how about just reducing the portions you would normally have? It might work.

short_cake

Just reading a lot of these threads , there a good one making meals from scratch and the 1in 4 do/dont depending on whether some class jars as ready made and not from scratch going on at the mo

but what is a portion size ?

some people use 500 grams mince + bits and bobs and get 5 meals out of it some will only get 2


so what do u all call a portion size ?

HappyMJ

100 grams of raw beef per person is a portion size. For some people it's very small. It's only a peice of meat the size of a pack of cards.

squeaky

That's a "How long is a piece of string?" question if ever I heard one.

It's going to depend on lots of factors such as child/teen/adult? Food type? Physical activity levels...

A recommended level of calories can be found here: https://www.purelifestyle.co.uk/Article.aspx?Id=37

You would then need to do sums to work out just how many calories you are putting on a plate at meal times and add those up for the day.

What might be easier is to browse the sites listed on this google search for recommended food portions

HTH

There's no single simple answer. You're unlikely to find a portion allowance for pork scratchings for example, or cream cake - so you'd have to do a calorie based checks...