Any number of strategies can improve your chances of losing weight and keeping it off, including eating more fruits and vegetables, exercising, eating less fat and becoming more physically active throughout the day. However, controlling your portion sizes may be the most effective dieting strategy.
Portions and Weight Loss
Portion size is the amount of food you serve yourself, which can be more than one serving of that food. As portions increase, you eat more food. By serving yourself less food, especially if you put it on a smaller plate, you are likely to eat less food. Over time this can lead to weight loss. Using this strategy, you can still eat all your favorite foods, just less of them.
Tips for Downsizing Portions
If you want to eat smaller portions, it is helpful to start keeping track of what you currently eat, then decide how much less you want to eat. Getting familiar with standard serving sizes can help. Use measuring spoons and cups to serve yourself until you get familiar with how different amounts of food look on your plate.
Increasing Weight Loss
Although you can lose weight just by eating less, you will lose more weight if you add more physical activity to your lifestyle. Exercising for half an hour most days of the week, taking the stairs instead of the elevator and walking rather than driving can all add up to significantly more weight loss. Other dietary changes, such as eating less fat and more fruits and vegetables, can also speed up your weight loss.
Considerations
If eating less of the foods you would normally eat is difficult for you, you might want to try eating different foods. Choosing foods that are nutrient dense, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains, can allow you to actually eat more food while consuming fewer calories. This helps you feel full so that you don't feel so deprived. In contrast, energy-dense foods, which contain a lot of fat and sugar, are high in calories.
References
- American Diabetes Association: Food and Portion Size
- "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"; The Influence of Food Portion Size and Energy Density on Energy Intake: Implications for Weight Management; Julia A Ello-Martin, et al.; July 2005
- Armenian Medical Network: Want to Lose Weight? Watch Those Portion Sizes
Member Comments