Portion Control (dieting)

Portion Control (dieting)

Portion control is understanding how much a serving size of food is and how many calories or how much food energy a serving contains. Portion control is important for body weight management as the weight is defined by the total calorie intake. Healthy eating, using Aristotle's philosophy, is the desirable middle between the extremes of excess and deficiency (over-eating and not eating enough), the "golden mean." Portion control is eating a healthy balance of amount and types, of varied foods.

Food guide pyramids are used as a visual aid to help people eat a varied diet and control portions.

The failure to control portions is often caused by emotional factors such as a depressed mood or boredom. To avoid overeating triggered by emotions, planning meals ahead and using smaller dishes may be helpful.

Portion sizes can be estimated by using objects as a point of reference. One way of determining portion size is to compare hand size. For example a healthy serving of protein should not be larger than a palm size piece of meat. Carbohydrate servings such as pasta can be measured by fistfuls. A healthy serving of pasta should be one fistful.

Read more about Portion Control (dieting):  See Also

Famous quotes containing the words portion and/or control:

    Our ego ideal is precious to us because it repairs a loss of our earlier childhood, the loss of our image of self as perfect and whole, the loss of a major portion of our infantile, limitless, ain’t-I-wonderful narcissism which we had to give up in the face of compelling reality. Modified and reshaped into ethical goals and moral standards and a vision of what at our finest we might be, our dream of perfection lives on—our lost narcissism lives on—in our ego ideal.
    Judith Viorst (20th century)

    When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.
    Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)