Almost everything in society today is structured in such a way that becoming obese is fairly inevitable. We, as a society have become very lazy and as a result the weight just keeps getting added to the waistline. This is easy to claim with the invention of such things as the remote control gadget for just about everything you could ever want. Ceiling fans, stereos, televisions and car doors, to name only a fraction, pamper us into a state of laziness that was only a dream thirty years ago. We no longer have to really want for anything and society as a whole has become rather soft with the advancement of technology. As the advancement of technology has brought inches to our waist another event took place with little or no notice at all. What I am speaking of is portion control, or more precisely, portion size. The evolution of portion size has moved to a point that the average citizen does not even know what a correct size portion actually contains. Just a few short years ago you had to pay for every glass of a beverage that you ordered when dining out to eat. If you had a refill for a coke, you paid extra for that refill. In today's culture you can run a hose to your table and yet only pay for one glass, while consuming many more. Without our even noticing the average plate on your dinner table has increased in size by 30%, or more. Hamburgers are now huge, steaks for one used to feed a few. The list goes on and on and on until...well, you are fat.
When you grew up you were told to "clean your plate" and now the plate size is huge and so is our collective waistline. When you portion out your meals you should only serve up what what is a healthy serving and put the rest away. Unfortunately, most of us have no idea what a portion size really looks like. As you travel down your weight loss trail you will encounter many bumps along the way. If you do not have a working knowledge of a correct serving size then that bump will be portion control.
Many people tire of getting out the scale to weigh each and every morsel of food so let us train our eyes to see what we should be placing in our stomach.
A serving of:....................Visual Reference
Cheese............................4 Stacked dice
Meat, fish or poultry..........Deck of playing cards
Raisins.............................1 Large egg
Baked potato....................Size of your fist
Pancake/waffle.................Size of a compact disc (cd)
Ice cream........................1/2 size of a baseball
Butter..............................Postage stamp
Peanut butter....................Size of a ping pong ball
Cereal..............................Size of your fist
If you are like most you will need to wean yourself off the massive amount of food you take in when you eat. You need to retrain yourself that you do not "need" four scoops of ice cream. You do not "need" to eat the entire pack of cookies. You do not "need" to eat seven slices of pizza. Now that you know what you DO NEED and are able to separate it from what you WANT it all comes down to just how bad you really "WANT" to lose weight!
