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One of the biggest keys to weight loss is managing your portion size. While a lot of people are careful to monitor the type of food they consume and maintain a regular exercise regime, the often forgotten element is the physical quantity of food you consume at anyone siting.

As children we are often told to eat everything on our plate and this behavior often translates into the adulthood. We fill the plate with food and not finish until we have consumed its entire contents. Similarly the size of the plates has grown over the past century, and particularly in the past 20 years, increasing from 23 cm to 28 cm.

Add to this the growing package size of processed foods over the years. With the sales pitch of getting better value for money, food manufacturers are selling the notion that we can receive an extra 10% to 20% more for the same price. This leads to the consumer’s perception that the larger packaged quantity of food is a normal portion size.

Everything is becoming gargantuan, from your average humble muffin through to even your coffee (a takeaway small coffee now is the size of a can of soft drink). This gradual increase has lead to people recalibrating what they think is the normal size of a snack or meal.

While you may be eating a well-balanced healthy diet, consuming excessive calories translates to an unused energy surplus. This storage of excessive energy ends up around the usual parts of the body being the tummy, butt, thighs and arms.

Adam who has been with Fitstyler for two years is extremely active, as well as going to the gym Tuesday and Thursday nights and playing hockey he attends our boot camps twice a week. He has seen fantastic improvements in his fitness level, including now having a resting heart rate of 45 bpm. As a funny side story, when Adam was recently having his blood pressure taken the nurse was concerned that his resting heart rate was so low.

Despite this Adam noticed that the extra padding around his waistline would not disappear, no matter how much exercise he did. So Adam introduced some minor changes to his portion size, without any dietary changes, that showed amazing results. It made a massive difference to his weight loss and he lost 2cm from around lower stomach.

What is An acceptable portion size.
Harking back to the old measurements you can use your hand as a rough guide to finding the right food proportions.

Rice, pasta, fruit & vegetables: 2 x cupped hands
Meat, fish & poultry: The flat section of your hand (excluding fingers
Carbohydrates: A clenched fist
Nuts: A cupped hand

When is enough?
Try restricting your portion size to a smaller plate and resist the temptation to get second or third helpings.
The biggest trick is to learn when you have had sufficient food as opposed to eating to the point where your stomach feels uncomfortable.

Another way to successfully downsize from the current consumption levels is to slow down when you are eating. This will give your digestive system time to process the food and to send the signal to your brain that you are full.
If you do feel hungry top up with another serve of vegetables rather than more meat or carbohydrates such as pasta or rice.
Written by Andrew Talati

An easy way to reduce your energy intake/calorie consumption is to reduce the size of your plate.

Over the past 20 years, the average Australian plate size has grown from 23 cm in diameter to a whopping 28 cm. While a lot of the increasing plate size can be attributed to creating visually appealing dishes which only occupy a small part of the plate surface area and are more aesthetically pleasing.

While the principal of having elegantly presented meals in a restaurant is very appealing, it has led to the gradual increase in the size of the plate. Now when you go out to a restaurant the large plates can be up to 31 cm, which in turn leads to a greater surface area for the food to be distributed on.

Most fine dining restaurants will still have a massive area of white being visualable when presenting their dishes but the humble pub meal has been supersized. When you get your typical pub meal served on a larger plate, I have found that any white plate surface is filled with chips and salad.

Back to the consumer, this has led to the purchasing of these lovely plain white plates as used in the hospitality industry, however unlike the restaurants, we tend to feel entire available space with food.

Like many children, me included, we were taught to eat everything on our plate which is great as a little kid unfortunately this behavior transfers over into adult hood. So when we go out and buy these 28 to 31 cm plates, will tend to fill the entire surface area with the contents of whatever we’re cooking. In turn will lead the entire contents of the plate being filled which leads to the increase in consumption.

It’s interesting the change of oiur eating habits over the centuries. Harking back to the Roman period, people in the banquet situation would choose from dishes and place a small portion on their serving plate.

Even in the Victorian Area, the plates size was a more modest size, maybe guestamating at under 23cm when comparing the saucer size of the APC Flinders range compared to the Victorian era..

As you can see from the images the plate size was quite small when compared to the current Godzilla size of plates.

One Australian Company, AFC-Flinders has an assortment of plates. Their standard dinner plates from 16.5 cm through 31.2 cm.

While the range of plates are primarily catering to the hospitality market, the larger plate ranges are available to the general public.

An easy way to reducing calorie intake is to reduce your plate size, maybe try 23 cm which is more than adequate to provide the necessary food for healthy adult.

Often when we think about weight loss, we think of changing the ratio of energy consumption verses energy expenditure which is great however if you are truly not committed and truly believe it will happen then your chances of success are very low.

When you get down to the nuts and bolts of weight loss, it’s more like 20% based on the frequency and intensity of exercise, 20% about what you consume, the amount and the frequency but more importantly 60% is based on what you are thinking.

Think about the Yo-Yo diet, you get weight loss results then just as quickly you get weight gain, how can this be? Well if you don’t have the belief systems in place and the right mind set then old habits will return very quickly.
It’s like a children’s seesaw, one day you are in perfect balance where everything works, both children are of similar weight and contributing equally then the next day a different kid sits on the other end of the seesaw who is heavier or lighter or maybe isn’t contributing to seesawing by just sitting there or is pushing off too hard and making the other kid fall off.

If you don’t have everything in sync with the kids on the seesaw, ie the right weight (nutrition), the right level of exertion (mind) and contribution (exercise) the seesaw doesn’t work.
You can compensate on the seesaw if one kid is heavier or not contributing enough by one person working harder but this can only be sustained for a short period of time BUT if one kid does nothing and just sits there, guess what? nothing happens no matter how hard the other kids tries.

So if your scared of the seesaw, you don’t believe you have the skills to use it or you were forced to play on the seesaw by mum nothing will happen, similarly you wont lose weight.

I like the analogy of the hole in the footpath, you can either keep walking into the hole every morning or change your thought patterns and beliefs by choosing a different street with a different footpath.

The mind plays a massive role in everything that happens in our life, what we do, how we do it etc so get the mind in tune and the weight loss will follow:))

It’s the simple things that help weight loss, today’ tip is about resisting the temptation to buy all the energy rich, fatty food that tastes yummy but is hard to resist.

I was talking to a Fitmate who lacked the self control and discipline when it came to chocolate and ice cream. Actually I’d say a lot of people have a weakness, especially the home made variety. Rather than rationing the chocolate over a few weeks or even a month it became a competitive eating event to finish off the sweets as soon as possible. Every hour of every day, the temptation was too strong to resist, whether you are eating for emotional reasons, for comfort or enjoyment it’s these re-occurring thought patterns that take over.

The simple solution is too remove the temptation all together by simply not buying the sweets in the first place. I’m not saying to go cold turkey and remove the fun food from your life but key strategies need to be adopted until the thought patterns leading to chocolate eating feasts are changed.

Like anything is life, if you can get through the cold turkey period of withdrawals, in time your body will no longer crave these sugary, fatty treats. Belive it or not, your body can adapt to change.