Eating healthy portionsEat SlowerStudies have shown that if you chew each mouthful of food at least fifteen times you will eat less. If you gulp down your food you will overeat because your body has not had a chance to tell yourself that you are full, which can lead to becoming overweight. Use Smaller PlatesAnother good way to ensure that you are eating healthy portions is to eat from a smaller sized dinner plate. A few years ago 20/20 conducted a study on the amount of food that people put on their plate using different sized dinner plates.Those people with smaller plates took smaller food portions while those with bigger plates took bigger food portions. Did those people who had smaller dinner plates have seconds? No, they did not - they actually got full!
Eat Larger Portions of Raw FoodEating healthy portions is better for your health and also aides in controlling weight. For healthier portions 1/3 of your food intake should be raw foods, such as salad or other raw vegetables and smaller portions of meat.Older adults, who are not as active throughout the day, don’t need to consume the same amount of calories as teenagers and younger adults. How to calculate your calorie needs is easy. If you do light exercise multiply your weight by 12, moderate exercise multiply by 14. And if you are very active physically multiply your weight by 16. Example: Grandma Jones weighs 120 pounds. She is not physically active. Her calorie needs are 120 X 12 = 1440 calories for grandma. Compared to an active person grandma does not need that many calories.
Eat Salad FirstIn some countries, such as Italy, it’s customary to eat salad and fruit after the meal. But this seems counterproductive to me. By the time the bulk of the meal is consumed you may feel satisfied and not want to eat salad, or not very much salad.Numerous studies have shown that eating a salad or light soup before each meal helps with losing weight. This really works because you will serve yourself smaller portions of food by the time the rest of the meal is served. Understand that when you first experiment with eating healthy portions of food you may leave the dinner table not quite satisfied. But don’t give in to that urge to eat more. Promptly get up from the dinner table and walk away from the food. Surely as the sun will rise in the morning, you will begin to feel satisfied. Food takes about fifteen minutes to fully make its way into the intestines where it begins to digest. Anyone can cut down on the amount of food they eat at mealtimes. Don’t think of it as a diet. You aren’t restricting yourself from eating healthy portions. You are restricting yourself from eating unhealthy portions. Here is a good rule of thumb to remember. Any food eaten raw can be eaten in greater portions. Cooked food should be eaten in smaller portions. Happy, healthy eating!
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