Tag Archives: Portion Control

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New York Times Featured Article: What Does 2000 Calories Look Like?

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We stumbled across this article on the NY Times today and HAD to share it with you all! Take a minute to share it with all of your clients, patients and anyone you know who’s interested in eating healthy and/or losing weight!

You’ll be amazed at how many ‘everyday’ meals your patients are eating that are over their entire calorie allowance for the day! Even as restaurants talk about smaller portions, they continue to serve a full day’s worth of calories in a single meal… or even a single dish. Keep reading…

What does 2000 Calories look like

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The 5 Most Amazing Tools to Have in Every Healthy Kitchen

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We’ve all been there! We’re interested in preparing healthy snack and meals at home. But, we don’t have all the right tools. It seems like in order to get ourselves back in shape, we have to spend a lot of money getting our kitchens back in shape too. Based on the foods that wreak the most havoc on our waistlines, there are only a few essential items that you need in order to update your kitchen and lighten up your cooking.

Salad dressings are one of the most commonly overused foods. If we’re eating a salad, it’s healthy, no matter what we top it with, right? The truth is that salad dressings hide a lot of empty calories. So, limiting the amount used on a salad is a great way to cut back on overall calorie intake. Reusable dressing lids that measure portions make it super easy to watch portions and still enjoy your favorite dressings. This tool is also great for kids as they learn how much dressing they should be using on their salads.

NCES Healthy Step Pasta BasketI don’t know about you, but in my house pasta is a staple in many of our meals. It offers a great base for many vegetables and proteins. The key with pasta, like with any other food, is to keep an eye on your portions. The Healthy Steps Pasta Basket is perfectly sized for an individual portion. Plus, it hangs on the side of your pot of boiling water for easy draining when the pasta is done and collapses flat for easy storage after use. Truly, it doesn’t get much easier than that!

The Perfect Portions Food Scale also makes keeping an eye on portions easier. Not only will it weigh your foods before you add them to your favorite recipes, it will also give you the nutrition information for that food, including calories, fat grams, protein and much more. It’s like having your own personalized nutrition label for any amount of any food!

The best way to add flavor to any dish is by using fresh herbs. Cooked in to your favorite recipe or cut fresh on top of a salad, herbs are a great low (or no) calorie addition. If you don’t use them quickly enough though, they tend to go bad. The Herb Savor Pod stores them neatly and also helps to keep them fresher longer, prolonging their life by up to 3 weeks.

And, finally, no healthy kitchen is complete without this hands-free countertop tool, the iPrep iPad Holder. As technology changes, printed cookbooks are quickly becoming ‘so 1995’. In their place are online recipes, meal planning sites and digital cookbooks. What’s better to access them from than an iPad? But, those mini computers aren’t cheap so you don’t want it setting on your counter with all of your ingredients while you’re cooking. Instead, have it safe and secure in the iPrep holder for easy recipe viewing. It also comes with a stylus so you don’t have to touch the screen with dirty, meal prepping hands. It’s basically the cookbook holder of 2014!

Cooking healthy meals can be a lot of work. However, with the right tools, you can really simplify the process. The Wellness Spot, backed by NCES, offers an entire line of products just like you’ve seen in this blog. We chose these five as essentials for every healthy kitchen, but there are many more available to browse through by category. If you have any ideas for healthy products that should be featured on The Wellness Spot, send them in and we’ll see about getting them added. We hope you enjoy your new tools and your healthier kitchen!

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Choosing Between Fad Diets and a Healthy Lifestyle

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NCES Food Models“You can’t eat carbs 2 days of the week” or “Just eat our 6 pre-portioned snacks and meals each day to lose 7 pounds in 1 week”. We’ve all heard them… the claims from all the fad diet promoters. Many of them are easy to spot and we do our best to avoid them. Or at least I hope that’s the case. However, some are a little trickier to identify. Here are 3 quick tips to help you spot a fad diet before you endure the roller coaster that is “fad-diet weight loss” again!

  1. Are they promising that you’ll lose 5-7 pounds each week? Experts recommend losing 1-2 pounds per week to maintain healthy body function and to avoid rebound weight gain.
  2. Is it so simple that it requires no thought to participate? Making healthy choices is about education and understanding what you’re eating. If everything is perfectly pre-portioned for you, you’ll never learn the basics of healthy eating. Dieting is about more than just weight loss! It’s about learning how you became overweight to begin with. It’s also about understanding the foods you eat and the impact they have on your body.
  3. Can you maintain this new ‘diet’ for a lifetime? Sure, it sounds easy enough to avoid restaurants and eat strictly fruits and vegetables for a 7 day cleanse. But, can you continue that for a lifetime? Odds are you can’t. So, as soon as you go back to your everyday life, you’ll jump right back in to your same old eating habits.

 To sum it all up, you’re looking for a diet that represents a lifestyle change. One that you can carry on through your lifetime! Make your weight loss about the journey, not just the destination. When you’re thinking about your food choices, don’t just consider the affects it will have on your weight, but your body as a whole. How does it support overall health and longevity?

Finding a diet that fits your personality and goals is very important! Focusing on the USDA’s MyPlate and dietary guidelines is a great place to start. For dietitians looking to help patients understand proper nutrition and portion control, NCES food models are the perfect nutrition education resource! I hope these tips help you and your clients choose healthy diets that will last a lifetime.

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Do We Need to be Eating All We Can Eat?

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Buffet Display

I know we say it all the time, but it’s not enough to just focus on the types of food your putting on your plate, you have to pay attention to the amount of food you’re putting on your plate. I was reminded of this concept during a recent trip to an all-you-can-eat buffet. I still struggle with the concept that many people struggle with… If I’m going to pay an all you can eat price, I need to eat all I CAN eat. But, in the words of Ellen Degeneres, “We don’t need to be eating all we can eat”. They make it so easy though. I mean, just leave your plate at the table and go get a new one. It’s like washing away all the guilt from the food that we just ate so we can clean our conscience and go eat more. We’ve all struggled with this… am I right? The key is to not give in to the temptation to eat all we can eat. Your body doesn’t get any more nutrition by eating 4 plates full of food than it does off of one healthy plate. In fact, you’re going to harm your body more by adding all the extra calories your body doesn’t need. So now, I try to look at it this way… If I’m going to pay $12 for lunch, I’m going to leave feeling full, satisfied and having enjoyed some of my favorite foods. When we over eat, it’s hard to enjoy the food because our stomachs begin to stretch and feel overly full.

So, how do you overcome the temptation to over eat when you’re at a buffet? You have to find a portion control tool that works for you. In the past, we’ve published the ever-popular hand guides for portions of different foods. These work great in a pinch, as long as you can remember all of the proper portions by looking at your hands (and don’t have abnormally large hands). An easy to use pocket portion guide, like this free NCES one, can be a big help too. But, we’ve got something that can make it even easier. Whenever possible, I take along my NCES Right-Sized plate so I can be sure I’ve taken the correct portions in each food group. It really doesn’t get any easier than that! You walk up to the buffet with your right-sized plate and Voila, no more guesswork! These plates are available for both kids and adults and really do take the guesswork out of portion control. Give one a shot today!

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