The Importance of Portion Control

Eating large portions of food and drink will lead to weight gain in the long term.

If you want to create long term, successful, dieting habits that lead to a successful weight loss mission, there are a number of things that you should start to do. And this isn’t just for weight loss, by the way, it can be used to form healthier habits if you want to turn around a lifestyle that might be tottering on the edge of unhealthy.

It’s not a secret that portion sizes are getting a little bit out of control. They’ve increased over the last few years and it creates a little bit of a vicious cycle in which people eat larger amounts of food, and continue to do so.

Studies have shown that it leads to long term weight gain and health issues. It’s not good.

In order to create long term successful dieting habits, getting to grips with portion control - as well as knowledge of what you’re putting in your body - is the key in creating those good behaviours.

The first stage of nutrient knowledge stems from understanding the difference between macronutrients and micronutrients. 

Macronutrients are the things we need plenty of, such as carbs, protein and fat. Nutrition.org.uk says that we need these as they provide our bodies with energy and the building blocks required for a healthy life.

However, not all carbs are created the same and you should try and avoid refined carbs where possible. Refined means that they’ve been processed and had all the healthy elements in them removed.

They can take the form of sugars or grains, and the stuff that makes them healthy - like fibre - has been removed. All they are is calories that give no benefit to the body. Refined carbs include some items you might have thought were good for you such as white rice, white pasta or white bread.

Stick to whole grains and foods like oats, root vegetables and barley.

 

If you’re planning on creating a diet plan using smoothies, make sure you include carbs that aren’t refined in order to get the fibre you need to avoid blood sugar spikes and crashes as you go through your day. Oats can be used in smoothies, and the Booseblend will be able to handle them with no problems at all.

Micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals that are important, but consumed in smaller amounts. Some diets may require you to watch your macros and micros, or you may find that keeping an eye on them helps with dieting.

Your usual healthy smoothie will be able to provide a large amount of those. Potassium is an important electrolyte and throwing some banana in your smoothie will be able to provide you with a hit of it. Your leafy greens will offer up calcium, yoghurt will provide phosphorus, almonds and cashews will give you some magnesium.

Once you understand that, and the difference between how much of each food group you should eat, you can begin to form successful long-term dieting habits. 

Don’t worry if you find it difficult to portion food properly or can’t stop going back to the fridge for a bit more and a bit more and a bit more because there are strategies to combat that.

One option is to use plates that are designed for portion-control, another is to use preportioned foods that will help to add structure to meal time. An article in Nature states that random trials have shown that preportioned foods are an effective way to create successful dieting habits.

This can come in the form of physical foods, or liquid meal replacements. That means Booseblend is pretty much the perfect tool to use in order to create long term successful dieting habits.

If you lead a busy lifestyle that involves frequently being on the go, a Booseblend Pro can help you hit a number of your healthy eating goals. Because it can be recharged and used wirelessly, it’s the perfect tool for anyone familiar with a corporate hotel room - and the smoothie maker becomes the bottle you drink out of for additional ease of use.

When getting to grips with portion sizes, it’s important to remember that they aren’t all the same. 250g of brown rice and 250g of chocolate are going to give you wildly differing nutritional intakes, so it’s important to know what your nutritional values are. 

That example is more cut and dry, but the waters get a little bit more muddied when you start to consider foods that seem pretty similar to each other. I think everyone knows that rice and chocolate are two different ends of the same spectrum, but how about foods a little closer in their make-up? Even something like dairy milk vs almond milk vs soy milk can bring up vastly different nutritional information.

When you’re eating something healthy, you can ruin those gains by chowing down too much healthy food. 

It turns out you can have too much of a good thing.

Eating properly is such a minefield, and there’s nothing worse than putting in the effort to workout properly and eat the right thing, only to find out that your diet is what’s holding you back.

This can go hand-in-hand with how you see food and what your relationship with food is. When you don’t stop eating after you get full, it can leave you feeling rubbish, bloated and just a bit ‘meh’. I think we’ve all been there. After a full night of treating yourself, you can end up having the opposite effect and end up resenting those choices.

This is what we don’t want, and it’s unhealthy in the long run.

To get out of unhealthy habits that damage your relationship with food, one thing you can do is drink lots of water before you’re going to eat. This article isn’t going to tell you how you should be doing that anyway, but it’s a handy reminder that staying hydrated can have more than one benefit.

When people are thirsty, they’re more likely to eat more - said an article in the Huffington Post - and skulling a glass of water can help you avoid binging.

One other solution that might work for you is to get a heap of veggies on that plate first. If your portion control with veggies isn’t great, it matters a lot less if you eat too many greens than if you overdo it on the protein or carbs. Because vegetables are low in calories but great for pretty much everything else, eating too many of them isn’t really an option.

There’s a number of really good smoothie recipes that you can use to make sure you’re having enough of the good stuff, and that all comes with it’s own benefits.

Creating good, long-term habits to do with portion control can involve some mental gymnastics and trickery. Eating preportioned food is good, and should be encouraged, especially if you find it difficult to serve things up yourself.

But if they come in a tupperware or plastic container, it can seem like the easiest thing in the world to plough through the whole serving and wonder what you can eat next.

That’s why you should always tip it out onto your plate. The chances are, the food that goes from the plastic to the plate will seem like a lot more than you originally anticipated - and just like that you’ve managed to avoid one of the pitfalls.

These go hand in hand with nutrient knowledge, and it’s important to know how to portion your food with the things that your body needs.

An article in the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism found that proper nutrient knowledge is the key in promoting behaviour changes and better dietary habits in teenage soccer players - but it’s still a useful tool when we consider the general population.

It’s clear that having a good knowledge base about the foods you consume can help to create successful dieting habits.

Creating successful habits is difficult and it involves time. Habits aren’t formed quickly, and they require discipline to get into the right routine. Learning more about the food that’s going on your plate, as well as how much to put on there, is seriously important to creating successful dieting habits.

Little things like eating the right sort of carbs, learning what you can and can’t overdo it on and listening to yourself will all send you on the right sort of path. As a general rule, refined is bad. That means no white rice, bread or pasta. Stick to the wholemeal or brown stuff, whole grains and oats. That way you can benefit from those calories instead of just chowing down nutrient deficient food.

And if portion control can be tricky, consider moving towards a preportioned approach. This can work for solids as well as from smoothies - which are also an excellent way of packing as much of the good stuff into your meal as possible.

Good luck!