Of course, eating A LOT all of the time won’t get me anywhere except the plus-size department, so I often need to rein it in. Over the years, I’ve gained a pretty good idea of what a serving should look like from reporting about the inflated portions we often put on our plates. But every so often I need to check in and make sure that my portions are what they should be. Usually I am right on track. Sometimes it can get a little messy. (Remember the granola experiment?)
One caveat, before I go any further. Some people can get obsessive about portions and want to whip out the measuring cups and food scale every time they eat. That is the opposite of balanced. For me, the smart thing is to check in every so often to make sure that my eyes and my stomach are on the same page. The other thing is that if you predominantly eat good-for-you foods, then portions shouldn’t be a huge issue. Most people don’t get the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables per day (not to mention the even-healthier 10 servings). In that case, it’s about eating more—not less.
But this week, I learned that I had been eating a little too much of something: Brown rice. I’ve started incorporating more grains into my diet over the past few months. And by more grains I mean, well, brown rice. I can get lazy like that sometimes. It’s easy and reasonably fast to make, I know that I like the taste, I don’t have to add anything to it after cooking to make it taste better, it goes with just about everything that I make, and I know that it’s good for me. However, I thought that I was being saintly and making myself half a serving based on the cooking instructions on the bag. There, the smallest amount is 1 cup of rice, so, without thinking any further, I assumed that half a serving was ½ a cup of the dry, pre-cooked grain. I’d boil it up and simmer it down with some water or low-sodium chicken broth and eat the whole thing, happy as a clam. But when I took a closer look this week, I saw that an actual serving, based on the nutrition facts panel (which is where you should look--duh), was ¼ cup. It’s not the end of the world that I’d been enjoying a hefty serving of rice. And if I hadn’t already been getting the recommended three to five servings of whole grains per day (from cereal at breakfast, wheat-berry bread at lunch, sometimes some popcorn for a snack), this would be a very good thing. But I could afford to cut back here.
I’ve realized over the years that one serving is supposed to be enough, and it often is enough. I recently made a single serving of pasta as one of my little experiments. Let me tell you, it looked like there were six noodles in my bowl. It looked like someone had already had dinner and I was eating the leftovers. I will also tell you this: When I topped the handful of noodles with a single serving of good tomato sauce and some broccoli, it was enough. My eyes weren’t happy, but my belly was. (I crack up now when I think about how, in college, I’d cook the whole box of pasta—and eat most of it. Good lord, I was clueless.) I realized the same thing about servings this week when I corrected my error and made only ¼ cup of rice (which cooks up to about ½ a cup): It looked like nothing, but it was plenty alongside my teriyaki salmon and sautéed kale.
What’s more, I was able to spend a little extra time in the store this week (typically, I could qualify for Supermarket Sweep) and inspected many different bags of rice. For some reason, I had it in my head that brown rice was the best kind you could buy. I’m sure this is from talking to experts who recommend brown rice as a way to move beyond white rice. But if you let it, brown rice can be your gateway food into all kinds of great grains. I’ve only been touching the surface. It turns out that the nutritionals for most of the whole grains were nearly identical. Being the rebel that I am, I swiped up some brown basmati rice and wild rice to change things up a bit. I also grabbed a box of quinoa. Living on the edge.
Some experts say that one way to shrink your portion sizes is to eat off of a smaller plate—it tricks you into thinking you’re eating more than you actually are. Occasionally I’ll do this, but in this particular case I knew I’d be piling on the kale (again, this is a portion I don’t have to worry about) so I used one of my big red plates.
I also recently adjusted how I buy fish and other animal proteins. I used to order the pre-sliced salmon filets because I thought that they were cut to be single servings. Not so. They’re typically sold in 6-ounce portions, when a smarter size is 3 to 4 ounces. I found that I was either eating the whole thing or tossing part of it away. When I mentioned this to my sister, she stated the obvious: Ask them to cut you a 3 to 4-ounce filet. Done and done. I do the same thing with chicken breasts. I ask them to find me a 3 to 4-ounce serving. Ask and you shall receive, folks.
Here’s the final product: A meal I ate earlier this week with perfect portions all around.
A feast for the eyes and the mouth.
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