What’s a Portion Size and How Do I Find It?

2017 is still young and it is not too late to begin your new years resolution to get fit and motivated. There are lots of things you can do to get into shape, like redeeming that good ol’ gym membership, or going for walks in the sun, and of course, the big one, watching what you eat.

The latter is an obvious one, but is the knowledge of food portions as obvious? I don’t think they are. It’s the fresh produce; the fruits and vegetables that don’t come with labels that give you portion information. So where do you find out? A lot of people don’t know what the basic vegetable intake is for a meal.

A good source for all your health and nutrition enquiries is the Australian Dietary Guidelines, Eat For Health, which has all the serving size information.

As stated by the Australian Government Department of Health, a serving size of cooked vegetables is half a cup, salad vegetables, one cup, dried peas, beans or lentils, half a cup and one medium potato.

According to the Australian Dietary Guidelines, if you are trying to lose weight, you should half the meal you have, and serve it with vegetables or salad as a side dish even when eating meals like pasta, lasagne or risotto. ‘By eating more vegetables in your meals, serves of other foods will be smaller and the overall meal will have fewer kilojoules’.

When it comes to eating out, portion control can be hard to maintain. So here are some tips to stick to your portion recommendations:

1 – You can take half your meal home with you, or even ask if half your meal can be doggie bagged before it is even served.
2 – Share your meal with another person or just get an appetizer as your main meal.