Dude learns portions

I struggle with portion size. I’ve known for a long time that my “stop eating mechanism” does not work. I love food, I love making food, and I love eating it. That makes for a dangerous combination when you’re trying to lose weight.

For one thing, the food that I cook doesn’t break down into easily identified portions. So, I’ve always just eaten too much.

The discovery that is helping me is that many premade foods are made in discrete portions, whether large or small. While I don’t plan to eat manufactured forever, it is really helping me gain an understanding of what a portion of a food means.

A frozen chicken burrito is ten points. That’s quite a few points for what amounts to a large snack or light meal, so the delicious chicken burrito will remain a guilty pleasure.

A Hebrew National hot dog with a slice of American cheese on a Flatout wrap with spinach and mustard is 9 points. Makes for a decent lunch, especially if I throw in a banana or carrot sticks.

A bagel with cream cheese is over 10 points. Holy cow. That makes a bagel portion like 1/2 bagel. So I have to ask myself: is the bagel really worth it? Well, I love bagels, so I’ll save them for a weekend when I have a few points banked.

And then there’s beer. A single beer is 5+ points. I suspect that microbrews are more, and they’re sold in 16oz pints. So, a pint of a good IPA is probably 7 or more. They go down easy, and so do the points. Wine is a bit under 4 points. So, I’m exploring red wines a bit more lately. Scotch is in the 3-4 point range as well.

So, I’m figuring out the give and take of portions. The tricky part is balancing all of these pieces, so I’m trying to figure it out. But the practice I’m getting from prepackaged food is helping me a lot.