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Stop Fooling Yourself with Small Servings

A common scenario:  You go to the grocery store and buy yourself some snack items for the week.  You pick out a few chips, cookies, biscuits… stuff like that.  Instead of getting the really big boxes you decide to go for the small snack packs in an attempt to control your portions, thinking that you’ll eat less if you get the food in small servings.  Well, you’re wrong.

Studies show that it is the total amount of food available, and not the size of the package portion, that greatly influences how much people eat.  Say, for example, if you buy five 20-gram pouches instead of one big 100-gram bag of chips, you aren’t exactly making much of a difference.  In fact, since little portions of the same food usually cost more than one big one when added together, you are simply spending more in the feeble attempt to control how much you eat.  Having small packets of food won’t help if there are tons of them stacked in the closet.  For as long as you know they’re there, you won’t be able to stop thinking about opening one after the other.

Controlling portions for weight loss isn’t a bad idea, but you have to know how to do it correctly.  If you’re planning for cheap weight loss by imitating the scenario above, you already know that’s not going to do you any good.  So how should you do it, then?

3 Ways to Control Food Portions

Either:

  1. Buy small portions of high-calorie foods in small amounts, or 
  2. Purchase large boxes of healthy, guilt-free snack items without thinking of having to reduce the size of your meals.  Either way is okay, and doing both at the same time is also a good idea. 
  3. The third option involves buying a portion control plate like this one. It's reminiscent of cafeteria servings or kindergarten meals, but hey, whatever helps!

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