To think my portion was too large (photo)?

[Ribrabrob]

I’m living a bit ‘on the road’ at the moment (essential) and relying on eating out - trying to be as healthy as I can as I’m trying (!) to lose weight.

I have attached a photo of tonight’s evening meal, my only meal of the day plus a few snacks. My photo isn’t the best unfortunately but it was a bowl of spicy rice and a bowl of bean stew/soup (I’m vegetarian).

Aibu to think I had too much? Would you have eaten all of it? Unfortunately through years of dieting and binge eating I have lost sight of what a normal portion of food is and how ‘normal’ people eat.

Ps i appreciate it doesn’t look very nice but it was actually quite tasty!

@Shitfuckoh

Oh goodness OP you aren't supposed to ask about serving sizes on here. This is the place where a chicken does a family for a crazy amount of days & people live on 1 A4 sheet of paper for a month.

I do need to read the rest of the comments though, only read page 1. This is going to be interesting

Can you have ketchup with that paper? 😁

It's a lot of rice, but then I also binge eat and could easily clear that.

I find my appetite responds really quickly to what I eat, so if I only ate one meal a day for two or three days in a row my appetite when I did eat would be tiny and I’d manage about a quarter of each of those bowls. Whereas on December 27th I’d take that amount as an aperitif

If you eat one meal a day it looks fine. But please have some uncooked veg with it, it's crying for some colour and crispy vegetable next to it.

Of course it's not too much.

It's your breakfast, lunch and dinner altogether. Probably 1000 calorie all in. Half of daily allowance.

The stew looks lovely but like some pps it would probably fill me up and I wouldn’t have much of the rice. Not because I’m anti carbs, just wouldn’t really want it with bean stew. If it was mashed potato I’d want it more! But the pile of rice does look a bit big for one meal unless you were very hungry.

OP It's fairly simple to judge portion size for most kinds of beans - about half a standard tin of baked beans or chickpeas by volume, unless the beans are gigantic.

Rice should (surely?) be around a mugful, heaped if you like.

Where are the green veg (the more the better) to go with the rice and beans and the additional colourful veg such as spinach/peppers/tomatoes? Or the strong-flavoured garnish (eg chillis/ corianderleaves/limes?) Or a few nuts for extra food value?
.
Two meals a day are usually nutritionally better than snacks, unless you are very careful about snack choices.

OP, the very question gives me the idea that you suspect it is a bit too much. But you probably ate it anyway.
Good Luck if you are trying to rebalance your food intake and your exercise level.
It is hardly ever easy, and few people make huge mistakes.
Little and often would be preferable and/or reduce as the day goes on.
That is difficult for most of us given lifestyle and working practice.
But enjoy your food.

@britnay

I stand by my conviction. Maybe that's why I'm a size 6/8?

HAHAHAHA!!

My image isn't quite as forgiving @SideEyeing

Home grown lettuce? Are you mad? You'd need to be in Olympic level training to be fit enough to grow a lettuce. And what if you found a worm in it and dh wasn't home?Don't you mean a very expensive and neatly shrink wrapped lettuce with the exact nutritional content included?

For one meal, that is too much for me. For a whole day, though, it's about right.

Why are you only limited to one meal a day?

With all that rice, that's a ton of food imho!

I could feed a family of 6 for a week on that amount.

I'd say a third of the rice and half the chilli would be a normal serving.

I would probably just eat one or the other not both, or half of each?

It would be a large portion if you were also eating two more meals a day like most people do. However, you're only eating one meal a day, and that doesn't look like very calorie-rich food, even though there's a lot of it. The fact that you seem bothered by how big it is even though you're only eating once a day would make me think you might have gone from binge eating to a different kind of eating issue tbh.

If it is a cereal bowl and a tea cake then it looks fine - if it is a pasta bowl and a dinner plate then probably too much.

tea plate, not cake.

Sorry. Didn't mean to talk about cake.

It's quite a lot. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't eat it.

Different people need different amounts of food. If you're 6ft tall you will likely need more than if you're 5ft2. If your job is manual labour on a building site you will likely need more than if you sit in an office all day. If you are running 10km before doing weights you will likely need more than if your idea of exercise is a slow walk around the block. There's a lot of variables here.

This is Mumsnet - that’s probably going to feed a family of 6 for a week - maybe even manage to freeze some and that’s with a husband with a huuuge appetite. He can eat 3 chips in one sitting when he’s feeling hungry.

I'd say it was enough for two adults.

Those bowls definitely look like ones to put in the middle of the table to share among others - looks like a huge amount of food for one person to me.

Looks like a massive amount of food to me.

Way too much rice for me.