Reflections on portion sizes
I’m two months into my fitness journey and can proudly report I’ve lost 12 pounds and 3.5% body fat. My body is slimming, and I’ve added muscle in places I didn’t even know I had muscle.
I barely lost any weight in the first month, largely because I wasn’t looking closely at the number of calories I ate.
Guess the calories
Even though I was preparing healthy dishes, I had no concept of the number of calories in specific foods and what portion sizes I should aim for.
For example, how many calories are in 4 ounces of chicken breast and what does that amount look like? I’d ask the same about ½ cup of brown rice or 1 cup of strawberries. My guesses about these foods and portion sizes were all wildly off.
When would I have developed the skill to make educated guesses about these things? It’s the sort of adulting knowledge people only acquire if they’re on a fitness or weight-loss journey.
And to answer the questions above, 4 ounces of chicken breast is 187 calories. For ½ cup brown rice: 108 calories. For 1 cup of strawberries, it’s 46.
Calories are also just one element of food. How much protein or other vitamins and nutrients do these foods contain?
The question I’ve been wrestling with as of late is how much food my body actually needs each day to function versus how much food I previously assumed by body needed.
When these two things collide, I sometimes notice resentment bubble to the surface. Let me have more! This is ridiculous — that’s all I need to eat? Really?! There’s an occasional, feisty pushback to the amount of food I’m now consuming.
The voice is clearly coming from “inside the house”, but it’s not based on anything other than past meals and, I suppose, the eating habits I’ve gathered throughout my life from family, friends, and culture.
Portion distortion
The term “portion distortion” is also a new concept to me. This is a phenomenon where “our perception of what constitutes a normal portion size becomes skewed due to the prevalence of larger serving sizes in our environment”.
When going to restaurants, it’s easy for there to be an “I want to get my money’s worth” mentality that significantly drives up the amount of food we consume.
Too often when it comes to portion sizes, we go with what we were raised with or what we see at restaurants, rather than considering what our body needs.
As averse I am to math and science, these two are saviors when it comes to determining what our body needs.
Pleasure and portions
Other thoughts that have come up during this journey center around pleasure in the experience of eating. Whether that comes from certain foods (I’m talkin’ sweets) or types of cuisine, too often fitness or weight-loss journeys bring with them a restriction of specific foods.
Don’t eat this. Never eat that.
The minute someone says I can’t have a certain thing is exactly when my cravings furiously fume — Give it to me!
I’ve been letting myself have the occasional treat, or even daily treat, as long as it fits within my designated calories for the day. This is pleasure, with guardrails. It’s lowered my resentment and helped me to see food in less black and white, good/bad terms.
What’s been important in these last two months is doing it my way. Making it feel like my journey, and I believe that’s made a big difference. Here’s to the next two months! ▪️