Healthy Eating - Portion Control

Hi I’m Candy Cumming a Registered Dietician with Sharp Healthcare and today we’re going to talk about portion control.

Because it's really hard to figure out how to set up a plate. I like to use my hands and a clock. Well, we want about 2 cups of vegetables on our plate, so that would be one fist for one cup, and the second fist for the second cup.

When we put the starchy thing on there you know, your rice, your potato, your corn, you just need one fistful or one cup of food. And then when it comes to the protein part, you know, the meat, the chicken, or fish, you’re looking at about four fingers.

Because each finger roughly is about the size of an ounce of meat. So you can think of your four fingers, or the palm of your hand is about the same size. Or if you want to, you can think of the deck of cards as the appropriate size of meat, chicken, or fish on your plate.

So I mentioned earlier that I always use a clock too. Because I like to set up my plate thinking of it as a clock face. Here from to you got your four fingers of meat, chicken, or fish, whatever you prefer. From to 6:00, you got that one fistful or one cup of starchy food, and then from to on the other side you have your two cups of vegetables.

So what does this look like? Well we actually set up a plate. Here it is. There’s your clock face, all dressed up with food. So you have this beautiful, two cups of vegetables here. Your four fingers or your deck of cards worth of meat, chicken, or fish and down here, your one cup of starchy food.

When you get all of that on a plate, you have only about 400 calories. It's really nutritious and really filling. Be mindful though, if you added a lot of extra butter or sour cream, or fried all that food, you could double or triple the calories on that plate, and kind of blow the whole thing with portion control. So remember, the clock face and your hands, and you can set up a really healthy plate. And now you just learned some really basics on portion control. .

As found on Youtube

Check this out for more diet tips

Check this out for more diet tips