Portion Control Key for Weight Loss and Maintaining Weight

Bigger is not always better. In fact, in the case of food bigger can be very detrimental to your health and wellness. In past times, it was often necessary for Africans who led  a more labor-some life to eat a carbohydrate loaded breakfast of a large heaping of bread or fufu from the previous night to fuel a long day of walking and work. Or even to eat a large amount of rice or fufu in the after noon and evening to provide the necessary fuel to get throughout the day and fill up after a long tiresome day. Even with consuming such large portions of carbs, populations remain rather slim and diseases like diabetes were almost non-existent; a foreign disease.

But why now the change? You might ask. Why now has the incidence of obesity and related disease like diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases skyrocketed? Obviously the change of the quality of food we eat is a culprit. But also lack of portion control for the new less active lifestyles we lead. We no longer need to eat two large helpings of fufu or even a mountainous plate of rice alone. We have to learn to curtail the sizes of the simple carbohydrates we eat, and in place add more veggies and lean protein. This simple move, can add much more nutritional value to our food and simultaneously decrease the calories. Two cups of white rice, what might be commonly eaten by the typical african man in one sitting, though low fat, has just over 400 calories and close to 100grams of carbohydrates. Add your oily filled stew, some meat, fried plantains, and what ever else may be eaten with the rice and you could be eating close to 800-1000 calories in one sitting.

What two cups of white rice roughly looks like

After seeing this pic you might even think, I easily eat more rice than that.

Next time you eat rice put the amount of rice you normally eat, then cut it in half. Add veggies to the half of the plate you took away rice. 1 cup of mixed veggies are roughly only 60 calories. Then add one serving of lean meat about the size of your fist, palm side up. You can cut nearly half the calories.

So in order to lose weight you obviously will have to cut calories. But in order to maintain the weight loss you will also have to continue consuming less than what you were previously consuming at a higher weight. And adding more veggies to your plate is a great way to trick your body  by continuing to eat the same volume or amount of food, but with less calories.