Serving Sizes and Weight Loss

Now, most people who are following a weight loss diet are given some way to control calorie intake - either by limiting foods or by specifying how much of each type of food to eat. Our Personal Diet programs use menu plans (a pre-set amount of food each day with a variety of choices you can substitute ) and also eating guidelines, which tell you how much and what kind of food to eat so that your diet is balanced and meets your personal goals. The eating guidelines give you serving sizes of each food in the group, and each serving has a specific amount of calories and other nutrients so that when you stick to these guidelines, you are getting the right amount and the right type of foods each day. This approach makes serving sizes simple because you know exactly how much to eat to lose the weight you want, and you can track your serving sizes and see if there are any trouble spots or patterns that you need to correct to reach your goal. This is really important to do if you want to reach your weight goal.  If you aren't following a diet plan like our PersonalDiets, you'll need to figure out how many calories you need to eat for your weight goal and then you'll need to keep track of the amount and type of food you eat to stay within your calorie range. Here's a few things to be aware of when figuring out how much to eat:

1. Packaged foods come in a variety of sizes, and it can be hard to tell how many calories you're consuming unless you read the nutrition label carefully. For example, a large carbonated fruit beverage may list 80 Calories per serving, but it may contain 2 1/2 servings per bottle. So if you drink the whole bottle, you get 200 Calories! Read the label to find out how many calories it contains and any other nutrient information that is important to you, but double check the number of servings in each package or bottle to make sure that you're getting the serving size you intended.

2. Bread and other baked goods are tricky when it comes to serving size. If you eat one large bakery muffin that would not be one serving of bread - instead, it is about 3-4 standard bread servings. Even plain bread comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. A standard serving of bread is about one ounce - that equals 80 Calories, but many types of bread are larger than that, so read labels for the calories and size of bread. It's very easy for this to add up quickly!

3. Meat portions are very large in restaurants and even in some packaged foods. A serving of meat is not one steak or one quarter pound hamburger. One serving of meat is just one ounce, so when you eat a  12-ounce piece of roast, you are getting 12 servings of meat! When you consider that very lean meat contains about 55 Calories per ounce and high fat meat has much more, these calories add up quickly.