| CHAPTER 9 |
Proportion Distortion
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Childhood and adult obesity rates are on the rise, and I know you want to do everything you can to give your family the healthiest, yet still most delicious, choices possible. Sure, there are nights when you have to order your dinner through your car window, but fast food should be the exception, not the rule, for how you feed your kids.
One easy thing you can do to help your family make healthier choices is to simply pay attention to the size of the portions you give them on their dinner plates. For example, it might come as a surprise that the amount of potato for one serving is about the same size as a tennis ball. And no, I'm not talking about one bite—I'm talking about your whole meal.
Or take a golf ball. All the peanut butter you need for one serving is the size of that little white ball.
Learning to eat slower and with smaller portions is not easy at first because we think we have to eat until our eyes cross before we will feel satisfied. But did you know it takes our brains twenty minutes to send the rest of the body a message that we are full? Drink a glass of water before you eat and drink water while you eat, and you'll be surprised to find you are actually full before you know it.
Here are a few handy tips to remember when preparing your family plates. Learning to “eyeball” the amount of food you really need will go a long way toward helping your family maintain a healthy lifestyle.
A portion and a serving are not the same! A portion is how much you want to eat, which may be three times as much as the recommended serving. Stick with appropriate serving sizes and you very likely will stay at your optimal weight.
One more thing: don't eat while you watch TV! A distracted brain does not pay attention to what its mouth is doing. People eat four to five times more than they think they do while watching an entertaining show and eating a bag of potato chips. If you enjoy eating while you watch TV, don't take the whole bag to the den.