Portion Your Plate Right with MyPlate

If you haven't heard already, the Food Pyramid is no more, and has been replaced with a colorful, ideally sectioned plate. Introducting MyPlate from the USDA.

The idea behind the new concept is that people more easily relate to a plate since they use one everyday for most meals. Plus the guidelines offered by MyPlate are made to be simplier and easier to follow and stick with. So check the following short video on MyPlate and see whether it can help you in your meal planning.





To Your Enjoyable and Guilt-Free Food Experiences,

Using Your Hands for Easy Portion Control!

You hear it all the time. Watch your portion size when looking to eat healthier and manage weight. It seems so simple, but like most "easy" things, is easier said than done for most. To make portion control work, I feel its best to get to the most elementary level possible. How much more elementary can you get than your hands? My hands you ask? Yes your hands, and this time it really is as easy as it looks.

Check out this hand portion control chart to learn more. For instance the chart states one "cupped" hand is equivalent to half a cup of cooked vegetables, pastas, icecream, pudding etc. This tool is not about using your hands as utensils, but it's certainly an easy place to start. It's really all about having a visual in your head of everyday portion sizes so that it becomes second nature. Then you can truly become portion savvy.


To Your Enjoyable and Guilt-Free Food Experiences,

Do The Prepackaged Foods From Most Diet Programs Measure Up in Taste?

Prepackaged Diet Plan foods like those from Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers etc. guarantee sure results in calorie controlled portable and convenient meals, but many times these do not measure up when it comes to taste. Recent research from Consumer Reports found that out of a number of prepackaged meals from the most popular Diet programs available, only five were palpable, all coming from the Jenny Craig program.

Although pre-made, prepackaged diet plan foods as part of an overall weight loss program offer convenience and easy meal planning, it could be argued that the same is so with portion-controlled frozen entrees from the supermarket. There are a wide variety of such entrees to choose from and many of these are generally better tasting and maybe even cheaper when you factor in supermarket sales and coupons.

Therefore many prepackaged diet plan foods could be replaced by store bought frozen entrees. They are just as quick to prepare, convenient, portable, and give much more variety than a Diet plan's pre-set menu items. Plus because of the many brands and varieties of frozen entrees available, it is a wonderful way to break the monotony of daily meals. Add a soup and salad if desired, and you have a more balanced meal.

Some of the healthiest brands to consider include Lean Cuisine, Kashi, Trader Joe's, Healthy Choice, Marie Callender's Fresh Steamer and Pasta Al Dente products, Amy's Kitchen and more. The use of wholesome frozen options can truly offer a little culinary exploration and an easy portion control method.


To Your Enjoyable and Guilt-Free Food Experiences

Eat In Moderation Effortlessly

Here's a tool to help you to improve your "portion savviness", if you need greater visuals of food portions to aid you in weight management. Perhaps you feel that portioning food into measured amounts works best for you, but you can't be bothered with scales and measuring cups.

I think that weight management should be simple, straight forward, non-imposing, and accommodating to your lifestyle. Meal Measure, advertised as a "portion control on your plate" solution to weight management, meets all these criteria.

It also meets recommended amounts for starch, veggies, and protein containing separate sections for each. The good thing about this tool is that it allows you to spoon out controlled portions right on the plate. However, I feel that no one should measure food indefinitely regardless of how simple it is.

The best approach I think is to utilize Meal Measure as a teaching tool to provide skills which you can use for the rest of your life. Then once you get used to the food portions, you can go on to make portion control decisions without the aid of any tools.

Check out the Meal Measure to see if it's something that could work for you.


To Your Enjoyable and Guilt-Free Food Experiences:

Have You Had Your Dried Fruit Today?

Raisins and other dried fruits provide a nutritious, filling snack and make for a great addition to recipes. Dried fruits are especially appealing as they count towards our fruit serving for the day and provide concentrated amounts of fiber. Raisins, apricots, and dates are also good sources of iron. For dried fruits, one nutrient which would be reduced during the drying process is Vit. C.

It must however be remembered that dried fruits also contain concentrated amounts of calories for the same quantity as their fresh fruit counterparts. For example 1 cup of grapes vs. 1 packed cup of raisins has about 100 calories and about 500 calories respectively. Therefore, one must be mindful of this and exercise portion control when consuming raisins or other dried fruits as a snack or part of a meal.

Some dried fruits are treated with sulphur dioxide to preserve the color, but I personally prefer those without such a preservative. Sulfur is not really necessary and it makes the fruits less wholesome. Newman's Own Organics Dried fruit is a line containing no sulfites and you can find other varieties of organic dried fruits in the Natural/Gourmet Food store which also are free of sulfites. Trader Joe's also carry some unsulfured dried fruit varieties.

Dried fruits are so versatile that it really makes sense to find ways to incorporate them into daily meals as much as possible. Enjoy this Free Collection of Cookbooks from Sun Maid Raisins dating from the vintage versions from the earliest years of the company to the ones from the most recent years. For some of these recipes you could mix up the raisins with other types of dried fruits or replace them all together with different dried fruits.




To Your Enjoyable and Guilt-Free Food Experiences,

A Diet For Life?

Like most other people, I am always faced with someone around me looking for the ultimate answer to weight management. Often the answer which most people expect is in some form of diet recommendation or extreme calorie restricted meal plan. For many Nutritionists it’s therefore easy to succumb to the Diet Doctor role, because that’s what people expect and it's where the demand and cash is.

Diets are often geared towards short term weight goals. So they have their purpose. However, in the case where someone gets wonderful results from a diet, there is often that awkward post-diet period where the weight has been lost, but the person doesn’t know how to or is not willing to let go of the diet.Even if there has been no desirable results, the tendency is to get on another diet.

Although, it can be hard to break free of the routine of such structured eating, one has to ask themselves the question “Can I or do I want to be on a Diet for Life or for any extended period of time?” Especially when undergone for extended periods of time I've seen dieting easily lead to Anemia and reduced nourishment in some form or the other. It makes sense with such aggressive elimination and restriction of individual or entire groups of foods, and not to mention the 'laxative' diet teas and questionable 'magic bullet' concoctions. Although diet bars, shakes etc have evolved somewhat they are no substitute for real food.

The Savvy Non-Dieter advocates things like regular meal intake without skipping meals or starving oneself, incorporating the most healthy forms of carbs, protein, fats in the diet, eating mindfully with attention and purpose, portion size awareness, increasing appreciation and understanding of the food we eat (quality and wholesomeness, freshness, sustainability, organic certification status etc.), among other things.

It pays to be a Savvy Non-Dieter, not simply as a type of defiance against all things diet. It’s about being empowered to more often bring quality of life and quality food encounters to the forefront of our eating experiences. It pays to be a Savvy Non-Dieter in a Food Phobic World.

Plate Size and Portion Control

Plate Size in relation to portion control seems so simple a concept, but one which has mostly gone unnoticed at the dinner or restaurant table. I have written before regarding how helpful it is to look at not only the utensils but also the size of the plates we use when dishing out food. It just so happens that a few days ago on Food Network’s Food Detectives the Plate Size/Portion Control connection was confirmed with a scientific experiment conducted in collaboration with Dr. Brian Wansink.

The experiment was performed on two groups who were each served the exact buffet-style meal, one group using a small plate and the other using a significantly bigger plate. It was found that the group with the larger plates ate about 38% more food than the group using the smaller plates, and that was even with the smaller plate group having seconds.

What The Findings Indicate:

The findings show that plate size does truly matter when it comes to eating, because we usually tend to eat what we put on our plate. So instead of measuring food, as a diet would have you do, begin with changing your plates instead. That way food portion management becomes something you can begin to do with very little thought. Take in consideration the Total Diameter of the plate including the rim or border.

Things get so much easier when we don't have to think about them all the time, and then they actually work. Switching to a smaller plate size and only eating what can reasonably be added to the plate is a simple thing to do. As a true Non-Dieter you must pledge to no longer be a slave to food; and finding ways to make weight management and mealtime effortless is key. Changing your plates is an easy start.