Portion Control & The Great PB Fiasco

Overeating is one of the main reasons we (as a society) struggle with weight and obesity. It’s not necessarily our fault! Go to any restaurant and you get a plate FULL of food. Buffets and deals that give you as much food as possible for a cheap price have been hugely popular for years. Fast food joints used to always ask you if you wanted to make your meal bigger for only a few cents more. The emphasis is on “big” - Big Gulp, Big Mac, Big Everything. Over time we developed a warped sense of how much a regular portion actually is.

I found this neat graphic on a site called Diet and Obesity (dietandobesity.wordpress.com) that illustrates how portion sizes of popular items have changed over time.

How much portion sizes have changed.

As you can see, portions in many cases have doubled (or more!). The increase in portion size leads to an increase in calories, and people therefore are ingesting way more calories than before. And, we see it in our waistlines. Since our bodies are used to eating a large amount of food, I’m not sure we can rely on them to tell us when we’re full. If you’re like me and hate throwing food away, you might eat more than you should just to keep the food from going to waste. After all, you spent money on that food! In those cases, you will ignore the “I’m full” signal in your body and keep eating.

There are many reasons why we eat too-big portions. In addition to what was mentioned above, sometimes we just don’t know the appropriate portion. Especially if we rely on common utensils to help us figure it out. I will tell a quick story to illustrate how I fell victim to trying to eyeball-measure the correct portion of peanut butter with the help of an everyday tablespoon.

One day I was at my boyfriend’s apartment and I was making a snack - celery and peanut butter. I should mention that I LOVE peanut butter, it's one of my all time favorite foods. I could probably sit with a jar and eat the whole thing in one sitting. I reached in the drawer for a tablespoon and scooped out what I thought was one tablespoon of peanut butter. After all, since one serving of PB is two tablespoons, I was already doing good but only having half, right? From behind me my boyfriend exclaims, “what are you doing?!” I explained that I was having celery with peanut butter for a snack. He told me to drop the spoon. Confused, I looked at him and asked what the heck was going on. He said what I had in my hand was way more than one tablespoon of golden goodness. I was still confused. I had a tablespoon in my hand with peanut butter on it, how was this not a tbsp of PB? He said, let’s weigh it and I would see what he was talking about. He turned on his food scale and put my peanut butter on top. 25g of peanut butter is what the scale revealed. How much should one tablespoon of peanut butter weight? Only 16 grams! I had nearly twice as much PB as I thought - almost the full serving of 2 tablespoons. How did this happen? Well, my first mistake was trusting a regular spoon and not a measuring spoon. My next mistake was simply eyeballing what I had on the spoon and thinking it looked right (and let’s face it, with my love for peanut butter was I really going to complain if the spoon looked a little full? As long as it fit, it was a tablespoon in my eyes!). From that day forward, I started weighing all of my food - especially nut butters.

Daphne’s tip: Using a scale is the most accurate way to measure portions. Regular utensils we use for eating (mostly spoons) are not accurate for measurements. Take three different teaspoons or tablespoons, and you will get three very different sizes for the same utensil. So, when a recipe calls for one tablespoon, don’t use the same spoon you would use to eat your dinner with. There are measuring cups in a variety of sizes that will be much more accurate because they are meant for measuring. And, to be even more precise, there’s always the trusty old food scale for the most accuracy!

Here’s some simple steps you can take to help keep your portions under control:

1. Buy a food scale. Use it. Nutrition labels explain what a serving of that particular product is, and the internet is full of information on serving sizes and portions (and I will be writing a blog post in the near future about it as well).

2. Use measuring cups to appropriately measure foods, and only use regular utensils for eating.

3. Cook only what you will eat for that meal instead of making a whole bunch of extras. You’ll be more likely to keep eating if the food is right in front of you.

4. Put smaller portions on your plate and put the rest away before you start eating so you will be less tempted to overeat.

5. At a restaurant we have much less control over what is on the plate - ask the server to only bring you half of your meal and box up half of your meal to take home.

6. Drink water before and during your meal. We often think we are hungry when we are actually thirsty (and most of us don’t get adequate water intake). Plus, 8 oz. of water will help you feel fuller.

7. Eat more veggies! If you are still hungry and you finished your meal, eat veggies. They are lower in calories typically, and are more filling, too. If you don’t want to eat the veggies, then chances are you aren’t hungry but simply want to eat.