Portion Distortion

How Much Food Should I Eat?

 

Cookies as big as frisbees. Muffins the size of flower pots. Bowls of pasta so deep, your fork can barely find the bottom. One reason people's waistlines have expanded over the past few decades is because food portions have too.

People today eat way more than they used to — and way more than they need to. This means that they're constantly taking in more calories than their bodies can burn. Unfortunately, lots of us don't realize that we're eating too much because we've become so used to seeing (and eating!) large portions.

Portion sizes began to increase in the 1980s and have been ballooning ever since. Take bagels, for example: 20 years ago, the average bagel had a 3-inch diameter and 140 calories. Today, bagels often have a 6-inch diameter and 350 calories. One bagel that size actually contains half a person's recommended number of grain servings for an entire day!
The price of such overabundance is high. It's common knowledge that people who consistently overeat are likely to become overweight. But they also risk getting a number of medical problems, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, bone and joint problems, breathing and sleeping problems, and even depression. Later in life, people who overeat are at greater risk for heart disease, heart failure, and stroke.
It's easy to understand why the food industry tends to serve way more food than is necessary: Customers love to feel like they're getting the best value for their money! But the value meal is no deal when it triples our calories and sets the stage for health problems.
So what can you do to take back control? A good place to start is knowing about two things that can help you eat smart: serving sizes and recommended amounts of different foods.

Help Yourself: The Truth About Serving Sizes

Look at the label on any product package and you'll see a nutrition information section that gives a serving size for that food. Contrary to popular belief, this serving size is not telling you the amount you should be eating. It's simply a guide to help you see how many calories and nutrients — as well as how much fat, sugar, and salt — you get from eating a specific quantity of that food.

Sometimes the serving size on a package will be a lot less than you are used to eating. In some cases, like vegetables, it's perfectly OK (and even a good idea) to eat more than the serving size listed on the package.

But when it comes to foods that are high in calories, sugar, or fat, the serving size can alert you that you may be getting more than is healthy. Let's say you buy a 20-ounce bottle of soda and drink the whole thing at once. If the label shows the serving size is 8 ounces, not only did you have 2½ servings, you also had 2½ times the listed calories as well as 2½ times the sugar.

Eat Smart: What's Recommended

Serving sizes tell you how much nutrition you're getting from a particular food. They don't tell you which foods you need to stay healthy, though. That's where the U.S. Department of Agriculture's MyPlate comes in.
MyPlate is divided into four sections with dairy on the side to represent the five food groups:

1. fruits
2. vegetables
3. grains
4. protein
5. dairy

There's a website, ChooseMyPlate.gov, that offers guidelines to help people figure out how much of these foods they should eat based on age, gender, and activity level. [Please note: By clicking on this link, you will be leaving our site.]

Once we know the types of foods and quantities we should be eating, it's easier to figure out how much of that heaping plate of food our bodies actually need as opposed to how much they want. Instead of going along with what your school cafeteria or favorite restaurant puts on your plate, you can take control by eating only the amount you need.

 

The Divided Plate and Other Portion Tips

Serving sizes on food labels and recommended amounts on the ChooseMyPlate site are usually given in grams, ounces, or cups. Of course, most of us don't carry around food scales and measuring cups. So how can we translate those amounts into quantities we can relate to? That's where the following visual cues come in. (Just be warned: Some might seem small, especially to recovering super-sizers!)

One easy way to size up portions if you don't have any measurements is to use your hand as a guide:

• A clenched fist is about a cup — and a cup is the amount experts recommend for a portion of pasta, rice, cereal, vegetables, and fruit.
• A meat portion should be about as big as your palm.
• Limit the amount of added fats (like butter, mayo, or salad dressing) to the size of the top of your thumb.

Another great way to visualize appropriate portions is to use the concept of the "divided plate." Think of your plate as divided into four equal sections. Use one of the top quarters for protein. Use the other top quarter for starch, preferably a whole grain. Then fill the bottom half with veggies (or a combination of vegetables and fruit). None of the foods should overlap — or be piled high! Not only will dividing your plate like this help you keep portions under control, it can also help you to balance your meals.

Portion-Control Tips

Being aware of realistic portion sizes and using the "divided plate" concept can help you avoid overeating. But sometimes these visual cues can be hard — especially when foods are difficult to measure, like a sandwich. It can also be hard to estimate foods like chips and cookies that you might eat right out of the bag.
More tips for portion control:

• Eat your meals on a smaller plate so your meal looks larger. A sandwich on a dinner-size plate looks lost; on an appetizer plate it looks downright hefty.
• Avoid taking an entire bag of chips or a container of ice cream to the couch. You're far less likely to overdo it if you serve yourself a portion in the kitchen first.
• Try single-serving size foods (like those cute little 8-ounce cans of soda!) to help your body learn what an appropriate portion size is. These days all kinds of snacks and beverages are available in "100-calorie" portions. Of course, the key is to eat or drink just one!
• Eat three well-balanced meals (with vegetables, fruit, proteins, and starch) and one or two healthy snacks at regular times throughout the day. Skipping meals or waiting too long between them can make you more likely to overdo it at the next meal.
• Add more salads and fruit to your diet, especially at the start of a meal. This can help control hunger and give a sense of fullness while controlling calorie intake.
• Try not to rush through your meals. Eat slowly and chew well — giving yourself a chance to feel full before you take more. If you do want seconds, go for more salad or veggies.
• Be aware that most restaurant portions are three or four times the right serving size. Try sharing meals with friends, ordering an appetizer as a main dish, or packing up the extra to take home before you begin to eat.
• Don't be tempted to go for the giant value meal or the jumbo drink just because they're only a few cents more than the regular size.

Most important, make it a habit to let your stomach rather than your eyes tell you when you're done with a meal. The key to maintaining a healthy weight is to listen to your body's natural signals about when it's hungry and when it's full. Sometimes these signals can be confused by constant overeating or constant dieting, which is why it pays to watch portion sizes and make smart food choices.

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How to be happy??

So happiness - isn't that the thing that all of us strive to find and keep? Nobody is happy all of the time, but some people are definitely more fulfilled than others. Studies on what makes people happy reveal that it doesn't have much to do with material goods or high achievement; it seems to whittle down to your outlook on life, and the quality of your relationships with the people around you.

Steps

 

 

1. 1
   Be optimistic. In the 1970s, researchers followed people who'd won the lottery and found that a year after they'd hit the jackpot, they were no happier than the people who didn't. They called it hedonic adaptation, which suggests that we each have a baseline level of happiness. No matter what happens, good or bad, the effect on our happiness is only temporary and we tend to rebound to our baseline level. Some people have a higher baseline happiness level than others, and that can be attributed in part to genetics, but it's also largely influenced by how you think.^[1] So while the remainder of this article will help boost your happiness, only improving your attitude towards life will increase your happiness permanently. Here are some excellent starting points for doing that:
   
   
   

   
   
2. 2
   Follow your gut. In one study, two groups of people were asked to pick out a poster to take home. One group was asked to analyze their decision carefully, weighing the pros and cons, and the other group was told to listen to their gut. Two weeks later, the group that followed their gut was happier with their posters than the group that analyzed their decisions.^[2] Now, some of our decisions are more crucial than picking out posters, but by the time you're poring over your choice, the options you're weighing are probably very similar, and the difference will only temporarily affect your happiness. So next time you have a decision to make, and you're down to two or three options, just pick the one that feels right, and go with it. Never regret the decisions you make though. Just live by the 3 C's of life: choices chances, and changes. You need to make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change.
   
   
   
   
   
3. 3
   Make only just enough money to meet your basic needs, not more: food, shelter, and clothing. In the US, that magic number is $40,000 a year. Any money you make beyond that will not necessarily make you happier. Remember the lottery winners mentioned earlier? Oodles of money didn't make them any happier. Once you make enough money to support your basic needs, your happiness is not significantly affected by how much money you make, but by your level of optimism.^[3]
   
   
   • Your comfort may increase with your salary, but comfort isn't what makes people happy. It makes people bored. That's why it's important to push beyond your comfort zone to fuel your growth as a person.
4. 4

Stay close to friends and family: Or move to where other members are- so you can see them more. We live in a mobile society, where people follow jobs around the country and sometimes around the world. We do this because we think increases in salary will make us happier, but the fact is that our relationships with our friends and family have a far greater impact on our happiness than our jobs do. So next time you think about relocating, consider that you'd need a salary increase of over $100,000 USD to compensate for the loss of happiness you'd have from moving away from your friends and family.^[4] But if your relationships with your family and friends are unhealthy or nonexistent, and you are bent on moving, choose a location where you'll be making about the same amount of money as everyone else; according to research, people feel more financially secure (and happier) when they're on similar financial footing as the people around them, regardless of what that footing is.^[5]

1. 
   
   5
   Have deep, meaningful conversations. A study by a psychologist at the University of Arizona has shown that spending less time participating in small talk and more time having deep, meaningful conversations can lead to an increased feeling of happiness.
   
   
   
   
   [6] Have a deep, meaningful conversation.
2. 6
   Find happiness in the job you have now: Many people expect the right job or the right career to dramatically change their level of happiness, but happiness research makes it clear that your level of optimism and the quality of your relationships eclipse the satisfaction you gain from your job.^[7] If you have a positive outlook, you will make the best of any job, and if you have good relationships with people, you won't depend on your job to give your life a greater sense of meaning. You'll find it in your interactions with the people you care about. Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't aspire towards a job that will make you happier; it means you should understand that the capacity of your job to make you happy is quite small in comparison to your outlook on life and your relationships with people.But some people think that this is simply a linguistic trick. One can not forcibly find happiness in the job, unless he knows how to be happy.
3. 7
   less is more: Moreover it is easier to make someone (who is younger to you, say your son)happy for his whole life . Let us see how. What we are throughout our lives depends 90% on the persona frozen in first 18 years of our lives. Therefore if somebody has in his childhood had not seen the exuberance , but a little shortage of small things in life say soft drinks or apple pie or voyeurism, he is destined to find happiness switch in his post-18 life even by these small things which he will find easily in his adulthood. Therefore make your children a little craving for things till 18.
4. 8
   Smile: Science suggests that when you smile, whether you feel happy or not, your mood will be elevated. So smile all the time! In addition, having enough money to pay the bills allows you to focus your energies on more productive aspects of your life, such a the pursuit of happiness as opposed to keeping the 'wolves from the door'.
   • See How to
   • See How to
   [8][9]Smile to Be Happy.
   Smile for Better Health.
5. 9
   Forgive: In a study of college students, it was found that an attitude of forgiveness contributed to better cardiovascular health. You could say that forgiveness literally heals your heart. While it is unknown how forgiveness directly affects your heart, the study suggests that it may lower the perception of stress. Later it came to their knowledge that this was the other way round. They could forgive because they were already happy.
   [10]
6. 10
   Make friends who share your interests or faith: In a 2010 study by Harvard researchers published in the journal American Sociological Review, it was discovered that people who went to church regularly reported greater life satisfaction than those who didn't. The critical factor was the quality of friendships made in church. People who went to church and didn't have any close friends there were no happier than people who never went to church. When the researchers compared people who had the same number of close friends, the ones who had close friends from church were more satisfied with their lives.^[11] It's thought that the forming of friendships based on mutual interests and beliefs (and meeting consistently based on that mutual bond) is what makes the difference, so if church itself is not your thing, consider finding something else you're deeply passionate about and making friends who you can connect with regularly based on that.

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