SKINNY SIZE ME: 10 Tips to Shrink Your Portions

Jul 12, 2021
5 min read

Food | Dieting | Weight Loss

Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows that the single most important thing you have to do is to eat smaller portions. Too much of anything, healthy and unhealthy food choices, is still too much. Simply put - eat less. You can work out until you pass out, but, like it or not, weight loss happens in the kitchen, not in the gym.

So, you need to shrink your portions. Simple enough, right? Hah! If reducing portions was that easy, no one would be fat. We develop attachments to food. We use food to soothe ourselves. We convince ourselves that the All You Can Eat Buffet means we need to get our money's worth. So, we overeat. We are bombarded daily with ads and the allure of extra large everything. And, before we know it that “extra large” applies to our pants too.

How do you shrink your portion sizes? Beyond the tried and true methods of using smaller plates and eating more veggies, how do you cut your portions to shrink your waistline?

Here are Ten Tips to Help Shrink Your Portions:

1. Gimme 10! Take a break.

When you finish your meal, push your plate away and take ten minutes to have a few sips of water, a conversation or even a stroll around the neighbourhood before you assess whether you are still hungry and need to eat more. More often than not you won’t head back to the kitchen for seconds if you give yourself a minute to digest.

2. Screw the clean plate club. Many of us heard all about the starving children while we were growing up. We were encouraged to be part of the “Clean Plate Club” but as a grown up that really means part of the “Fat Ass Club.”

·NEVER eat when you aren’t hungry.
·Don’t be afraid to leave some food behind.

3. Pack up the kitchen BEFORE you sit down. This one can get a little tricky between timing your meal to the table and getting to it before it’s cold but try packing up your leftovers, particularly leftover carbs, before you sit down to eat.

Related to this is to pack tomorrow’s lunch

tonight before you sit down to dinner.

4. Never eat from a package or bag! When you are trying to shrink your portions you have to know how much you are eating.

Get yourself some cute measuring spoons, cups, and a food scale, and start using them! We’ve gotten away from understanding what a portion size really looks like.

FYI: Sticking your hand in the bag or spooning up ice cream from the carton are dieting disasters.

5. Carbs are a side! Let's repeat that: CARBS ARE A SIDE!

Whether it’s thrift or habit, we all tend to use starch as a base for meals. To cut portion size, start with carbs. Pasta, potatoes, and rice should not be the center of your meal.

Shrink your portions by keeping in mind that 1/2 cup of rice or pasta is a serving.

Remember - Carbs are a side dish!

Make veggies the star of your plate.

6. Single servings are your friend. If you want to eat something that doesn’t fall into the “Healthy Food” category, consider single servings. Purchase prepackaged individual servings and limit yourself to one. If you want a cookie, stop at the bakery and buy ONE. You can’t eat a dozen if you don’t have a dozen to eat. Simple math.

7. Eat dessert first – but make that treat a bowl of fresh berries, chopped mint and lime.

Re-train your taste buds to crave something fruity at the beginning of a meal, instead of a calorie laden dessert dripping in guilt at the end of your meal. You could go with a fruity tea at the end of your meal too.

After a few weeks you should start to find the craving for dessert after every meal begin to subside.

Fruit is the sweet treat that won’t leave you feeling like a failure, but it does digest faster than anything else, so it’s usually better to eat it before other foods to avoid uncomfortable and gassy indigestion.

8. WATER first. If you want to eat less, drink more. Water that is. This tip is an oldie but a goodie. A nice tall glass of water helps fill your stomach so that a smaller portion of food feels more satisfying. Study after study confirms that drinking 16oz of water 45-60 minutes before you eat will help you eat less.

9. Tight trousers. Here’s a fan favorite. Wear your skinny jeans to dinner. Yoga pants say, “Hey! You want that second helping? Go for it! I’m stretchy! I can take it!” Your tight trousers, on the other hand, say, “Sweet Mary put down your fork. I’m about to burst.” Listen to your pants ladies.

And no cheating by unbuttoning the top button!

10. Ambience. A meal should be a lovely sensory experience. You will be more mindful of your serving sizes when you eat off of a pretty plate that contrasts well with your food, in an uncluttered space, free of distractions. You are worth the extra effort. Put some flowers in a vase on the table. Add a cloth napkin. Sit by a window. Eat outside. Use real cutlery.

Studies show that dieters eat more when they are distracted!

So - stop watching TV or reading while you eat and focus on the task at hand. Enjoy your meal.

Changing the way you eat takes some dedication. And it takes courage. And it takes a willingness to try doing things differently.

Steps to Eliminate Portion Distortion:

Let yourself be creative!

·Make like a pre-schooler and share. Half a bag of chips, after all, has half as many calories as a whole bag. Generosity might be the key to shrinking your portions.

Or maybe you eat out a lot.

·Have an appetizer as your dinner entrée.
·Or ask the waiter to pack half your meal to go home before you begin.

Even when you dine out you can find simple ways to control how much you eat if you put a little planning into it.

Living in a world of near constant super-size ginormous portions and very persuasive marketing ploys makes it very hard to remember how much we should be eating.

My grandmother always used to say:

"your eyes are bigger than your stomach"

and she was right! As a society we have trained ourselves to expect unrealistic portions and consider them ‘normal’ and then we think we need to eat all of it at one sitting.

And then we feel stuffed and uncomfortable and disappointed in ourselves, when we should be feeling satisfied, and content and pleased because we thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

When we slow down and take a few extra moments to be mindful of our surroundings we tend to appreciate the meal more, eat slower, listen to our bodies more and ultimately eat less.

So, whether at home or at a restaurant, if you can find a way to shrink your portions you’ll eat less and that will help make your weight loss efforts a reality. But you need to be consistent!