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Eating Well to Lose Weight: Portion Control

2/26/2014

We know that food is as basic to our survival as the air we breathe. Can you have too much of a good thing? Of course! You may think that you are eating healthy foods but the scale doesn’t show any difference in your weight. Is there something else to try? Portion control. A new study demonstrates that controlling portion size may be the single most effective action to have a lasting impact on one’s weight.

Some basic math comes into play. In order to maintain weight, the calories you ingest must be equal to the calories you burn. To lose weight, more calories must go out than go in. To lose one pound, you need to burn about 3500 calories. While exercise is important in this equation, changing your diet by reducing the number of calories consumed will result in pounds lost. For example, if you reduce your intake by 500 calories/day, you can lose one pound in a week. Over a period of three months, that can add up to 12-13 pounds. When you add exercise into the equation, you will increase your metabolic rate and burn even more calories, which will fortunately be from fat instead of muscle resulting in more weight loss. The topic of exercise will be explored in a future article.

Consuming the appropriate amount of calories is essential for proper functioning of the body. While we don’t want to eat too many calories, we also want to avoid too few calories. If the body senses that it doesn’t have enough fuel with which to work, it will go into “starvation mode” and holds onto every calorie consumed making weight loss that much harder. For more guidance about this, click here to contact me.

Remember that portion sizes are different from the serving sizes that were explained in the last article (click here). Portion size is amount of a food consumed at a single eating session. Serving size is a standardized unit of measurement based on a typical 2000-calorie diet. Our portion sizes have increased significantly over the last twenty years. In addition to eating fewer calories, decreasing portion size has the added benefits of allowing people to feel better, having more energy and improving their digestion. Here are some strategies to help with reducing portion sizes. If you are eating at home, try some of the following:

·      Use smaller dishes. This visual cue will relay to the brain that you are obtaining enough food.

·      Start your meal with a salad or liquid-based soup. This starter will begin to fill you up so that you are not as hungry for the remainder of the meal as well as the added benefit of consuming more fiber.   For more about the benefits of fiber, click here.

·      Don’t serve dinner from the table. Otherwise, it becomes too easy to grab for seconds and tack on additional calories. Keep your serving dishes on the stovetop or counter instead.

·      Wait 20 minutes before getting seconds to determine if you are actually still hungry. It takes about that time for the satiety hormones to register and let you know that you are “full”.

·      Avoid eating out of a box. Place an amount into a small bowl instead and put the box away. It is too easy and tempting to keep it in front of you while limiting yourself.

·      If you are hungry between meals, snack on fruit, vegetables or salads.

·      Load your plate with lots of vegetables, which will fill you up without a lot of calories. If consuming animal protein, only have it take up 25% of your plate.

·      Go easy on the starchy foods that are easy to overeat without a lot of nutritional value.

·      Become acquainted with serving amounts. Measure out a serving of cereal and see how much is really a ½ cup. After a bit, you will know by sight how accurate you are.

If you are eating out, remember that restaurants love to serve large portions. People also tend to eat all the food that is placed in front of them. The result is too many calories! When eating out, here are some useful strategies:

·      Choose an appetizer as an entrée where appropriate. It may be completely filling and more economical.

·      Split an entrée with your dining companion or bring half your meal home with you. If you bring home a “doggy bag”, you’ll save yourself the effort of preparing an extra meal while cutting your calories.

·      Pass on the bread basket. These are calories that can easily be shaved off the daily count.

·      If eating out with others, try sharing a few dishes. You’ll be able to get a variety of foods without feeling you need to eat everything on the plate in front of you.

Other useful cues that can help with portion size are below. All the examples are for one serving size.

·      3 oz. of animal protein= 1 deck of cards

·      ½ cup of fruit/vegetables= 1 computer mouse

·      1 baked potato= 1 fist

·      1 slice of bread= 1 CD case

·      ½ cup grains (cereal included)= ½ tennis ball

·      2 tablespoons peanut butter= 1 ping pong ball

Consuming smaller quantities of food are essential to one’s weight loss goals. We need to overcome the many sensory cues we experience to stay the course and be more attuned to our body’s hunger signals. The result will be fewer pounds on the scale.

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Eating Well to Lose Weight: Look at the Label

2/12/2014

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You’ve worked all day and come home to hungry kids. What do you serve for dinner? Food manufacturers to the rescue, right? Well, if ease is your priority, then yes. If providing nutritious food is paramount, then probably not. Packaged foods were designed to make our lives easier and to be convenient. However, food manufacturers’ primary goal is their bottom line, not our health. They want you to come back for more and keep eating their product to increase their profits, but at the expense of your waistline. As food consumers, we need to look at what is in our food to ensure that we are obtaining good fuel for our bodies and not consuming compounds that adversely affect our metabolism and weight.

My first article (click here) in this series focused on eating more unrefined food. As much as eating a whole food diet is the goal, sometimes packaged products find their way into our shopping carts. To make better choices, let’s look at the all-important nutrition label since descriptions on the package provide guidance but can be misleading.

First, let's start with the front of the package. Do you grab the bag that says “reduced fat” thinking that it is better for you? Or maybe it says that it's "natural" or "sugar free". These all imply that they are healthier for you as an enticement to buy that particular product. The nutrition label on the back of the product is more important in helping to be a guide. But, only half of shoppers actually look at it. Here are some common mistakes made and ways to make better purchasing decisions.

•   Ignoring serving sizes. All food labels will give a number of servings. Sometimes, you eat more than the recommended serving size. If that's the case, you need to adjust the rest of the numbers accordingly. For example, if a bag of chips contains three servings and you eat the whole bag, remember to triple the calorie count as well as fats, sodium and sugars. You can see how the calories can quickly add up.

•   Misunderstanding the terms "reduced", "light" and "free". They connote something better for us. Here's how they are defined. The term "reduced" means that it has 25% less than the norm. While a product with reduced fat may sound beneficial, it is then manufactured with more sugar to compensate, which doesn't promote health. The term "light" is defined as possessing half the amount as you would normally find. And "free" doesn't necessarily mean zero. It can mean zero or that a product has less than the 5mg cutoff required by the FDA. This is directly based on serving size. For instance, a product can be labeled as having no trans fat if one serving is below the 5mg threshold. The only way to determine if a product is free of an ingredient is to read the ingredient list.

•   Not reading the ingredient list. Looking at the exact ingredients in a product is the best way to know what you will be eating. The higher up on the label, the larger quantity of that ingredient the food contains. Try choosing products with words you recognize. Many processed foods will contain artificial sweeteners, coloring agents and preservatives. If you can't pronounce the ingredients, it is an indication that you probably don't want it in your body. In the case of trans fats, they will be listed as "partially hydrogenated", "fractionated" or just "hydrogenated". A Harvard nutrition expert has deemed trans fats to be "the biggest food-processing disaster in US history." Trans fats are associated with increased heart attack risk as well as raising bad LDL cholesterol and triglycerides while reducing our good HDL cholesterol. For more information about trans fats, click here.

Keep in mind that packaged foods have been highly processed to give them flavor, texture and taste, all desirable qualities. Yet, this is done at the expense of beneficial nutrients. Typically, many nutrients are removed during processing with only a small subset being added back in. The product is then labelled as "enriched" even though it is net negative on its original nutrients.

Salt, or sodium chloride, is another prime additive in packaged foods. Seventy-five percent of our salt intake is from processed foods. Salt is hidden in many foods such as canned soups and vegetables, sauces like soy and Worcestershire, fast food products and cured or preserved meats like bacon, ham and deli turkey. While sodium is necessary for chemical processes in the body, too much disrupts our finely regulated fluid balance and can result in higher blood pressure and difficulty in muscle contractions and nerve impulses. Even though salt contains no calories, salt makes us retain water and is addictive resulting in consuming more food. The end result is eating more calories and gaining more weight. The recommended sodium intake is 1500mg of sodium per day, which is equivalent to 3/4 teaspoon of salt. However, the average American ingests about 3400mg of salt per day--more than double the recommended amount! Older individuals should consume less to account for their natural increase in blood pressure with aging. On labels, equate salt with any ingredient having sodium as part of its name. An example is MSG, monosodium glutamate, a favorite additive containing salt.

Eating a diet rich in whole foods will eliminate many unwanted calories. To see a sample dinner with unrefined foods, click here. Cutting down on processed foods can help you achieve your weight loss goals. Here's to a diet filled with more fresh produce, lean protein and healthy fats!

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Eating Well to Lose Weight: Portion Control

Eating Well to Lose Weight: Look at the Label

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