Studio 5 Contributor, Dr. Margit Lister, shares eye-opening facts about portion control and helps you size up what you’re eating.
Obesity is a national epidemic. This is not anything new. According to the latest statistics from the National Institute of Health. 2/3 of adults 20 years old or greater are overweight or obese. 72% of men and 64% of women. If you look at it another way, only 31% of all adults are in a healthy weight. This is shocking. What happened?
Obviously, if we could answer that question, we wouldn’t be here. This has happened slowly over time. But one of the largest contributing factors is PORTION SIZE. Super size, Mega, Jumbo, Extra large. Large glasses, larger bowls and larger plates, these lead to larger portions and too many calories. How do we get back to a normal portion size? Today, I would like to talk about what constitutes one serving size.
Then we could go thru the match up game with Brook and/or Darrin, see how they do.
We could also take a regular glass of milk and put in a cup of milk (one portion size) and look at how small the size looks in the large glass.
One of my favorite lines to patients who gain excessive weight during their prenatal visits is “what are you drinking?” a lot of the time they will answer OJ or Apple Juice and they are PROUD because it is 100% fruit juice. I congratulate them on making a healthy choice but remind them that a cup is one portion size and has the calories of 4 oranges and you can drink it in a few gulps. How often do you sit down and eat 4 oranges?
My rules are short (because I only have a few minutes to make an impact on my patients) 1. Watch your portion sizes 2. Don’t drink your calories 3. Watch eating out.
When eating out-order an appetizer only, kids meal or only eat half of your entree. My favorite fast food is the kid’s meal at Subway. 4″ sub, apples and a drink. Can’t beat it!
Dr. Margit Lister is an OBGYN with Intermountain Health Care. If you would like to schedule an appointment, visit: www.intermountainclinics.org.
Add comment