How Much is Enough

I was making my first coffee this morning and checked the label  for calories.  Regular coffee doesn't have any calories but I drink French Vanilla and it does have 5 calories per teaspoon.  Which brought me to the question, "which teaspoon"?.  A teaspoon is not a teaspoon.  The teaspoon you see printed on labels means a "baking" size teaspoon.  Not the teaspoon you stir your coffee or tea with.  That said I measured the amount of coffee I would normally put into my cup against a real teaspoon.  Okay, I use two teaspoons, that's 10 calories per cup.   On to the Coffee Mate.  Oh, Oh.  Here I was in trouble.  Normally I put in 2 heaping spoons.  Measured out that translates into two tablespoons, not teaspoons.  Darn!  That is 90 calories at 15 per teaspoon.  Now my morning coffee is 100 calories and I haven't eaten anything yet.

Next I toasted my Weight Watcher's brand bagel.  150 calories.  I used Becel spray instead of butter so that was 0 calories.  The marmalade, measured correctly this time weighed in at 80 calories.  Breakfast has now cost me 330 calories.  And, I haven't had my second cup of coffee. 

A big part of lifestyle changes is changing your perception of how much is enough.  This is the super size me generation.  Once upon a time you went to a restaurant and had supper on a normal sized dinner plate with regular sized portions.  Now we often get our dinner served on a platter and the portions are huge.  Many times I have taken half home for supper.  Two meals for the price of one.  But how many people eat it all, plus desert?  Too many as we can see just by looking around us at the supper market or on the street.  Body sizes have increased dramatically over the past forty years.  We read about it every day.   Portion control, or a severe lack of it, is the culprit in many cases.

How much is enough?  Pasta, rice, potatoes and other starches should be served by the cup or ice cream scoop.  One cup or one ice cream scoop is enough.  A portion of meat is the size of a deck of cards, a serving of bread is one slice or 1/2 a bagel or bun. A serving of pizza is ONE slice not half the pizza.  Two slices for a large man.  Starchy vegetables like peas, corn, winter squash or sweet vegetables like carrots and beets should be served in 1/2 cup portions.  Surprised about the carrots?  They contain quite a bit of natural sugar.  

There are, however, a number of foods you can eat to your hearts content.  Leafy greens, celery, radishes, onions, mushrooms, mustard, sour pickles, cabbage, kale and bean sprouts to name a few.  You would have to eat so much of them to make a significant calorie count that you would get sick of them first.

Erma Bombeck's mother had a great diet.  You could eat as much as you wanted of anything you didn't like.  The problem with that is that eventually you would acquire a taste for what you originally didn't like and you'd overeat that too.  People with food issues have an uncanny ability to adjust their eating habits to encompass what is available and then eat too much of it.

The next time you are putting salad dressing on your low calorie salad, measure it out properly.  You might be surprised to find that you are pouring a couple of hundred calories onto that wonderful, low cal salad.     I will have to rethink my favourite morning coffee as well as other foods I obviously don't measure correctly.

Calories do count but in the end it all boils down to one thing, portion control. A little can go a long way.