Portion Control Tips

So all this food logging and measuring can be a bit overwhelming. It's gotten to be second nature for me to whip out my food scale and my measuring cups/spoons whenever I'm preparing my food. Here are a few tips I've learned along the way:

• Re-package your food! We've all been there. You know what I mean, sitting down on the couch with that box of Cheez-its or bag of Lays with the intent of just eating a few. Before you know it, you're scraping the bottom of the bag! How did that happen?! Well, a good way to avoid this is to re-package that box of Cheez-its into easy to access one serving packets. You can use baggies, reusable food containers, etc. Then, when you have a hankering, you can grab just one!
• Have more than one set of measuring cups/spoons. Head over to the Dollar Store and load up on measuring cups and spoons. After washing them, keep each one with a specific food. For instance, I keep a 1/3 cup with my oatmeal. Then when I'm making oatmeal, the cup is right there!
• Use smaller dishes. When I first started focusing on portion control, putting my smaller meal on my regular dishes made it so much harder to feel full. The plate just looked so empty! Once I started using smaller dishes, the meal started looking a lot bigger, and I started feeling a lot fuller. Funny how the mind works.