Now to one of the important benefits of eating all of those vegetables–it should be a bit easier to reduce the portion sizes of the foods that you can’t eat with abandon. As I stated in my previous post, I control the portion size of all foods except vegetables at each meal–and I had to learn what a correct portion actually looks like–and then load up on the vegetables until I feel satisfied.
The first part of portion control I am going to talk about is using smaller plates and bowls. As I discussed in one of my earliest posts, I started having dinner on salad plates instead of dinner plates early on in my journey, and I still do to this day. When I am serving myself dinner, I imagine the plate as being split into quarters; I put the protein on one quarter, the starch on one quarter, and the vegetable on the other half of the plate. For my plates, that works out just about right for portions sizes. Here’s some examples of what that looks like:
As you can see from these pictures, the starch is often a starchy vegetable rather than something grain based. We also frequently have more than one kind of vegetable with our meal, depending on what is in season. We have lots more variety in vegetables during the summer, of course.
I also use smaller bowls when I am serving myself snacks, like nuts or dried fruit. Items like these are healthy, but the serving size is very small. If you put a small amount of food on a big plate or in a big bowl, it can look depressingly small. But put it on a small plate or bowl, where it fills it up, and you really can fool your mind into thinking that you are getting more.
Zumba My Butt Off 