"Portion control is where it's at when it comes to getting rid of unwanted pounds and eating low carb! I can't say it enough...portion control, portion control, portion control!
Do you love ice-cream? ME TOO! BUT, when dishing it up, remember that one portion is 1/2 a cup, NOT the whole bowl, not half of the bowl, but 1/2 a cup! Believe it or not, once you realize this and start measuring what you put into your bowl you'll see the error of your ways quickly. We love ice-cream so have switched to the brands that are 1/2 the fat, thereby cutting out many calories, 1/2 the fat and many carbohydrates. We use ice-cream as one of our dairy servings per day, so have been eating it on a daily basis! What better treat in the evening than ice-cream?
You'll be amazed to know that a serving of meat is equal to a deck of playing cards! Typically, that would be about three ounces of meat. We recently went out for a special dinner at Cattleman's...steak, baked potato and salad. We hadn't eaten beef in about a year, and it was the best steak we'd ever had, by far, but the portion size was incredibly huge at eight ounces! Granted, about an ounce of that was fat, but still, it was so much more than we were used to eating we planned to bring half of it home for a second meal. Well, you'll be unhappy to read that we did NOT do that, but instead we ATE the entire steak! We also ate plenty of green salad, but only a small portion of the huge baked potato. That potato was equal to about SIX potatoes of the size we now eat at home! So, lesson learned here is that even with good intentions you can still go wrong.
Portion control would dictate that when served a meal in a restaurant you would ask for a doggie bag up front and remove the portion from your plate immediately that you plan to take home. This way you're not even looking at it while you're eating and will not be tempted by what you cannot see! Better yet, try this: If there are just the two of you, buy ONE MEAL and ask for two plates. Restaurants really do NOT mind when you do this and are quite happy to let you have it your way. My husband was embarrassed to even try this, but once he did he now considers it a great way to save money...his favorite past time.
We supplement portion control with snacks throughout the day so that we are eating almost constantly. Almonds, apples, turkey jerky and low-carb snack bars are all great snacking foods. We keep plenty of them on hand so we're never tempted by other things. When we go out for several hours or a day of shopping, garage sale-ing, etc, I almost always pack a bag with goodies so we're not tempted to swing through a fast food restaurant.