to not 'get' portion control

[thecatneuterer]

This is my first ever AIBU so I’m a bit scared.

So I was just eating an enormous bowl of porridge and I got to pondering the subject of portion control. Nearly every time I see discussions of weight loss/control on MN or on TV or wherever, portion control comes up as being essential. And I just don’t get it.

I understand what it is of course, I just don’t really understand the point of it. Surely if you eat a large quantity then it just means that you won’t be hungry again for much longer than if you’d only eaten a small amount, so you will eat less often. So the total quantity of food you eat in a day won’t be any greater.

I understand that eating a huge amount just before going to bed would be a bit silly, as you don’t feel hungry when asleep so you don’t need to ward off hunger for a long time then. And I totally understand that portion control should be exercised in relation to say doughnuts or chocolate cake, but with healthy meals then I don’t get why it really matters. And I can even imagine it would lead to more snacking on potentially unhealthy stuff.

Or is it that when portion control is encouraged the idea is that, even if you are really hungry after your small meal, you still need to wait until your next set mealtime before you eat? So in other words it really means that you should spend a certain number of hours a day being hungry? I can understand that would work. Is that really the aim of it?

So AIBU to think that if you only eat relatively healthy stuff, and you only eat when hungry, then portion control is pointless?

muminscotland Yes I can totally understand how having set mealtimes would make a difference and prevent the 'eating when hungry' thing. Of course I was just thinking that if you don't feel hungry then you don't eat until you do feel hungry, but of course for people with families it's not that simple.

Metabolism is abit like a fire.. feed it small amounts then it'll burn steadily throughout the day. If you dump a whole load on it at once, it'll take a while to get going again.

you're supposed to stop eating when you stop feeling hungry. not when you feel full but like everything else.. if you're enjoying what you're doing, it's hard to just stop when it's time and you get into that habit of over indulging so it's normal.

The total amount I eat in a day doesn't really change.

Then that means that you've got a pretty solid perception of the connection between your appetite and the amount you need to eat. But lots of people don't have this, or it gets distorted by environmental influences.

What you do is portion control though. All it means is that, averaged out, you don't regularly consume more than your body needs in a day. You can do it by relying on fullness cues from your stomach over the course of the day, which is what you do. Or if someone has trouble relying on those cues, they can count calories and break them down into 3 or so meals a day to make it easier for themselves. Or you can do it visually, which is probably what most people do, but as I have said humans are not that good at visually estimating food.

I think there's a distinction between 'portion control' (=not overeating) and 'portion control'(=weighing out so many grams of food at each meal). The latter is just a means of achieving the former.

I think the notional portions given on the sides of food packets are not that helpful though - they are just notional, as there are so many factors that influence how much is the right portion for you that imo it is best to ignore them and work it out for yourself. What is a portion for a strapping 19 year old boy will not be a portion for me, for example.

I moved to the US and put on quite a lot of weight mostly because of this kind of thing. I'd never been overweight before or had any kind of disordered eating. But everything was bigger. Plates were bigger, so my sense of how much to serve onto a plate at any one time gradually changed. Cups and mugs were bigger. Servings in restaurants were bigger. And all this, over a period of years, shifted my appetite and my perception of how much I needed to eat and I put on about 2.5 stones.

Actually metabolism depends a lot on your activity through the day as well.

I spent an hour full-on spring cleaning before eating and then had white toast and jam. Another 2 hours cleaning and I was shaking like a wreck.

Fine again after some more white toast and protein instead of jam.

I've wondered this too. I am a normal healthy weight and if I only had the recommended mealtime portion sizes I'd be utterly ravenous all the time. I'm always slightly suspicious of the advice because I reckon that on the whole, meals are the healthiest things we eat. If I'm hungry between mealtimes I will fill up on sweet fatty things, like cake or whatnot, which is surely far worse than eating a shed load of rice or pasta as part of a meal so that you don't then feel hungry until the next one. I see this with certain family members, who will refuse dinner on the grounds they had a 'big lunch', but then eat half a chocolate cake as an evening snack instead!

lalouche that's exactly it! If I occasionally eat with other people they will always usually eat less than I do, and occasionally remark on my appetite. Then, a couple of hours later, they're on the biscuits or buying a muffin or crisps or whatever, while I'm still not hungry.

FairPhyllis yes I do get what you mean that I am probably exercising some sort of portion control when you take the day as a whole. But I was of course referring to the portion control that is generally recommended by experts, such as the two spoonfuls of pasta malarky.

I still haven't had an answer as to whether you do indeed get used to such small portions and can eat a meal with two spoonfuls of pasta and genuinely not feel hungry again for say four hours. I still can't help but think that for portion to control to equal weight loss then it does rely on you putting up with a certain amount of hunger.

I enjoy savoury and sweet foods and have recently reduced my portion sizes. I admit to feeling a little peckish between lunch and dinner. I eat fruit and wholemeal breadsticks between meals as oppose to the crisps and biscuits that I used to scoff

I do not weigh my food but eat meals from a side plate. As another poster stated, you should eat until you are no longer hungry.

I also write down my food consumption and take more notice of calories in food.

I have lost a few pounds so it is working for me.

I think if you're eating an amount that will let you lose weight, then you're bound to be at least a bit hungry for some proportion of the time. But that doesn't have to be desperately hungry, and will certainly be a lot less if you exchange a volume of rich food for a similar volume of veggies or wholegrains - that way you can feel equally full without as many calories.

Most of the 'portion control' advice also includes what proportion of your meal ought to be meat / carbs / veg, and that's one area where people can make a big change without having to go for tiny platefuls.
I look in disbelief at one of the slimming-meal ads on the tv lately - yeah, we could all lose weight if we had such a tiny plateful of curry! The trick is how to switch your eating longterm, not something unsustainable for a few days followed by feelings of failure that lead you straight back into the cookie jar.

I used to work with someone who was vastly overweight (size 24 ish at under five feet tall).

One day we went out to fetch lunch together. She picked up salad and some prawns from Sainsbury's, and a hot jacket potato from the sandwich shop. And because she had had "light lunch" she was going to splurge on a big tea.

All fine, except that the potato was approximately the size of a butternut squash, the prawns were drenched in Marie Rose sauce and were intended to serve three to four people, according to the label, and it was a whole plastic bowl thing of salad.

Portion sizes, yes.

tiggytape I agree that you probably wouldn't eat less at your next meal. What I'm saying is that it would be a lot longer before you actually wanted to eat your next meal.

However I can see that if you have three meals a day regardless then the portion size will make a difference. I suppose what I'm saying can only work if you can be flexible about meal times and content. For example if I have two big meals then I might only have those and a small snack before bed or something, or even one big meal and just a few small snacks. It all just sort of works out in the end.

I do get the difference that having set meal times and a family commitments would make.

I'm absolutely not saying that I'm right and portion control is pointless. It's just that I've never really understood it and it's very interesting to hear opinions.

thecat your premise is that if you eats until you stop being hungry then stop you will have eaten as many calories as you need to balance for the day.

Unfortunately this would only work if you brain can perfectly integrate your likely activity levels and match them precisely to your calorie intake.

What if your brain thinks you need a more calories to balance than you actually do? Or less? It is just a big mushy ball of neurons...it can't get everything just right all the time...

I know from experience that if I eat only when I am hungry, eat slowly and pay attention to my hunger signals and stop eating the moment my brain says enough, I will gain about half a pound a week (2 stone a year). Or in other words my brain thinks I need about 10% more calories to balance my outgoing than I actually do. If I want to maintain my weight I have to feel hungry a lot of the time.

I know a work colleague with the opposite problem. His brain thinks he is over eating even when he hasn't yet hit balance. He has to basically force food into himself while feeling full just to maintain his weight.

We are probably extremes...most people have only a slight mismatch. But measuring your actual daily calorie requirement and then using portion control to match your intake to it is totally essential for some people.

I lost quite a lot of weight when I split up with my ex. I used to "match" my portions to his. He's a big bloke and did lots of sport. I'm an average sized woman and do bugger all very little sport. I really didn't need to eat as much as him. I did though, out of habit.

When we split up, I was just cooking for me and DS (then 4) and my portions reduced so I was eating roughly half of what DS would have, for example if we had sausage and mash DS would have one sausage and one spoon of mash, I'd have two of each. When I was with exP, we'd have three sausages each and cover half the plate in mash!

Anyway, I don't feel any less hungry now. I was over-eating before through habit rather than hunger.

Oh, and however much I eat at breakfast, I'm always ravenous by mid-morning. My metabolism must be quicker in the morning!

You'd be better off having a moderate portion of a meal and having a healthy snack if required than loading up on an unnecessarily large portion in the first place. I'm wary about huge portions of foods like vegetables, not that that's bad in isolation, but because to be used to eating that volume, you'd have a calorie overload to eat the same volume when you're eating calorie rich foods.

I was permanently hungry in China as the bulk of the diet was rice based. The locals would plough through huge bowls of rice, and we just couldn't fill up for a long time as we were used to smaller portions of calorie dense food with a higher GI. We were stuffed before we'd had enough food to sustain us as it was rice, a bit of veg and a scrap of meat.

If you live with a man who cycles 30 miles a day then portion control is essential! I would be huge if I ate the same amount my DH does.

And honestly, 2 spoonfuls of pasta is enough.

The other thing I have learned on 5:2 is it's OK to be hungry. Nothing happens, the world doesn't fall in, you don't faint, you can still concentrate and do your work, etc. It's just that you're a little bit hungry. It's fine.

You also need to recognise when you're truly hungry - is a slight pang that soon passes actually proper hunger?

And you might actually be thirsty, not hungry. Try having a drink and see if the "hunger" subsides.

What's to 'get'? Many people do eat too much, and it's not just down to snacking.
I do the smaller plate thing, I also weigh out things like pasta, rice, porridge oats, cheese etc. I do stick to the recommended portion sizes, and yes, they are enough. It didn't seem so at first but now I have got used to them I realise I was overeating beforehand.
I don't feel hungry after a couple of hours either. This morning I had a bowl of porridge (with less oats than it said on the packet) with a banana and that kept me going for 6 hours.

I had hypnotherapy and it's allowed me to eat what I want and no longer be a slave to diets (not working). I used to eat massive portions (I craved that stuffed feeling, it was a comfort for me) and still snack on stuff all day/night. Now I have a tiny portion compared to what I could eat, ie one slice of buttered toast for breakfast vs 2 massive bowls of cereal and then toast at 10ish. My stomach was over stretched and took much more to fill but I'd still snack anyway.

I just can't do it now Asti makes me feel ill plus I love snacking on whatever I want and not feeling guilt. I can have one biscuit whereas before I'd have half a pack.

Portion control works better as you are also keeping your metabolism going and not letting yourself reach that actual point of hunger, it really is little and often.

OK so the portion control malarkey of the kind you are talking about is not something that I think anybody should follow blindly - if they do they are a numpty. Telling someone to have two spoonfuls of pasta in isolation from any other advice is utterly pointless - the portion you should have depends on how much energy you expend per day, what proportion of the meal the pasta comprises, how much else you've eaten or are planning to eat that day and your eating pattern generally - whether you like to eat at regular times or not. I have no idea where that kind of advice comes from - whether it's based on any research or whether it's just numbers plucked out of the air. I suspect the latter.

Ime the guidelines on portion size on packets etc are on the low side for the particular combinations of food that I eat, and I ignore them. They might not be for someone else though.

If you have got used to eating more than you need, then, yes of course, you will feel some hunger if you decide to try to readjust to eating amounts that aren't excessive. I had to get to used ignoring urges to snack and sometimes I have gone to bed peckish. But that's a temporary state. It's because your body has got used to sending you hunger cues that don't actually correspond to whether you need to eat or not, and has to readjust.

There's nothing actually wrong with feeling hungry for a while before a meal - that's a normal thing, surely? And there's a distinction between portion control to lose weight - where it is more likely to make you feel hungry - and portion control as just a normal part of your life when you are not trying to lose weight, but don't want to slip into eating too much.

Over a period of about a year, I have now got to the point where my body has readjusted to having slightly less food, and now if I overeat one day, the next I am a little less hungry and will undereat by the corresponding amount. Which is how it should be.

Most hunger is actually thirst. Drink a pint of water and see if you actually want food.
Hunger comes in waves, and they pass.

I've not eaten for 27 hours. I am now genuinely hungry.
But because my stomach has shrunk from 18 months of 5:2
my frittata supper that will come in at around 600 calories will leave me so stuffed I can hardly walk, and I'll then not eat again till lunchtime tomorrow.

It is much better for your digestive tract to give it breaks between meals - so it can hoover into the corners.

Drink more water, stop snacking, ban fizzy drinks other than in the evenings at weekends, close the kitchen after supper
then your appetite will start to shrink back to where it should be.

Not everyone has the same relationship with food as you.

Of course there's no point in portion control of your healthy meal and then gorging on biscuits later. Portion control and not snacking is very useful for some people though if they want to watch their intake.

27 hours TalkinPeace hells bells!

Generally I agree though that being a bit hungry just before meals isn't a bad thing. But I certainly can't cope with being really hungry - I feel faint and shaky and can't function at all.

Luckily though, as I said, I don't actually need to lose weight so this is all just hypothetical musings as far as I'm concerned.

All in all though I take most of your points and would agree that IABU

Sounds like you have a good relationship with food? If you don't, portion control is important as 1)eating lots too often stretches your stomach, 2) (I personally think) eating lots can make your insulin spike/"wake up" your metabolism so personally, for me only, if I don;t eat breakfast I'm often not hugnry till midday, but if I eat breakfast- even poached eggs on wholemeal toast or porridge or eggs and ham and cheese, or something else good/low GI/low carb etc, Im often hungry again at 11am.

Plus if you are an emotional eater/prone to binging etc, moderating what you eat, i.e not totally filling up when you are hungry sometimes helps balance out the times when you eat and eat and eat simply because you want to dull your own misery. (Although I am also aware of the starve/binge cycle). Finally if you are trying to eat more healthily, portion control can simply kick start awareness. E.g. this pizza has "only" 300 calories- oh but that's if I eat a quarter, not if I eat the whole thing. A "portion" of pasta is half what I usually eat. Etc.

If you have a healthy relationship with food, eat when you're hungry only, and have a wide and varied diet, then protion control is probably not important.