When It Comes to Food, What’s More Important - What I Eat or How Much?

Oct 3

I’ve been in the online space for over ten years now talking about, reading about, and eye-rolling about dieting, nutrition, and weight loss methods. I’ve done tons of research and I’ve learned how much misinformation is out there.

There is a ridiculous amount of conflicting information, not to mention the outright lies told about product performance designed to make people buy weight loss supplements (anyone remember Anna Nicole Smith and TrimSpa?) The onslaught of lawsuits over the years forced the hands of lawmakers to better regulate the claims of these products, but still…it’s not pretty, cuties.

So what to do?

Here’s what you do: Buy a food scale and educate yourself on what portion sizes actually look like. I know that I talk about following hunger cues and not cutting out all of your favorite foods, but unless you’ve actually been using some form of weight measurement over the years to portion out your food (measuring cups and spoons are not accurate; more on that in a moment), then you probably are not aware of the volume of food you’re consuming.

Those of you who are thinking, “What on earth is this bitch going on about? I eat like a bird and I still can’t lose weight,” I’d like you to really pay attention to this.

The amount of food we are served in restaurants these days is about 3-4 times the amount we actually need to eat at a meal. Years ago I began the practice of dividing my meal in half every time I go out or ordering an entree to split with someone. There are times when I don’t just cut my serving in half, I’ll cut it into thirds or fourths because my God, that’s enough food to feed an entire preschool classroom. (I’m looking at you, Cheesecake Factory.)

And the same goes for measuring cups and spoons. Eyeballing “level” on a cup or spoon isn’t accurately giving you 8 ounces of anything. You need to weigh it to get the precise amount. Measuring dry stuff is different from measuring wet stuff, too. A food scale cuts out the guesswork. (You’ll be surprised at how much better it makes the consistency of foods that you bake as well, since accuracy counts in baking.)

Now before you come at me, hear me out. I’m not telling you any of this to shame or judge you…I’m telling you this to educate you. I’ve talked to countless women who insist they eat less than a mouse, but when I ask if they know about portion sizes, they are often confused about what that actually means.

Here’s a classic example: A tablespoon of mayonnaise is like, the size of the tip of your thumb, and that shit is 90 calories! So in making “tuna salad” just to keep the tuna from being dry you end up using like a 1/3 cup of mayonnaise with the can of tuna and you end up with 540 calories of mayonnaise. And that’s before you even put it on the bread.

I experienced that type of shock myself on the first day of my MFP existence 12 years ago (see this blog post about my weight loss story for more). When my boys were toddlers, I used to use Coffee Mate Italian sweet cream-flavored creamer in my morning coffee. And because they were little and born so close together, I drank A LOT of coffee.

So that first morning I put my cup on my newly acquired food scale to measure what I typically used in my coffee. I was using about 4 tablespoons per cup. One serving (15ml) has 35 calories. So every day I was drinking about 140 calories in each cup. That is SIGNIFICANT when you’re 1) drinking a pot of coffee before noon, and 2) actively trying to lose weight. Just cutting back on that creamer made a big difference that first month.

I’m not the calorie police, and I’m NOT suggesting you start “counting calories.” Fuck that nonsense. If you’re not going to do it for the rest of your life, then don’t start doing that. I just have a lot of experience from weighing and measuring my food back in the day. This is only to point out that portion size makes a difference in our perception of how much food we actually need. As portion sizes have grown in America, so have our asses.

The scale I use now is the photo below. Here’s an Amazon link to purchase it:

Dana's food scale of choice