Saturday Snippet: Portion Control & Weight Loss

The story of my journey to lose 25 pounds without dieting. How portion control can help with long-term weight loss and some ideas if you want to try this approach to losing weight yourself.

Hello my friends!

I’m popping in today to share a few personal things and goals I’ve had that I hope will help if you are struggling with the issues of portion control or weight loss. As I’ve said before, this is not a “health food” or a “diet” blog. But I am hopping on to share a few things to hopefully get the conversation going about some of these issues that so many of us struggle with.

BACKGROUND

Back in August of 2017 I decided I was unhappy with my body weight.

To give you a little background, we were already eating fairly healthy. I was cooking most of my meals from scratch, and we hardly ever ate out. I was already exercising. I ran about 9 miles every week. Basically I had a lot of good, healthy habits. And despite all of that I was still gaining weight.

It was especially apparent to me after our anniversary trip my husband and I took in August 2017 to the Big Island of Hawaii (which was a BLAST by the way). Here’s a picture of me in front of a cool little church we found on the island.

I remember looking at this picture when we got home and thinking:

Wow. Who is that? and How did I get there?

I had always considered myself a fairly healthy person, but the person staring back at me in the picture was pretty much unrecognizable to me.

HOW I GOT THERE

The person I had become didn’t happen overnight. And body weight really had never been an issue for me before. Then that later-in-life baby happened in my mid thirties and with babies come weight gain. Which is normal and fine. But for me the problem isn’t losing the baby weight after I have the baby. The problem for me is the appetite increase that happens when I nurse my babies.

My twenty-something body was able to recover quickly with my other babies, but this time my thirty-something body couldn’t keep up with the appetite increase so I started to put back on the weight as the baby stopped nursing as much.

WHAT I DECIDED TO DO ABOUT IT

I decided that I wanted to lose the extra weight, but I did not want to “diet”. I wanted my changes to be long term. I wanted to change my eating habits so I could not only lose the weight, but be empowered to maintain the body weight I was comfortable with. And I was willing to be patient and allow the weight to come off slowly (just like it had built up slowly).

I thought about several options but in the end I decided that I would try losing weight through portion control.

When I first started, it was hard. I’m going to be honest with you. A lot harder than it is now. There was not much progress.

Even though I was making all of these changes I really didn’t see much in terms of the weight loss for several weeks. The scale would show maybe a pound loss here and then maybe not. Sometimes it would just go back and forth. But because I was in it for the long haul and not just doing it for the immediate results, I stuck with it.

THE RESULTS

This was me 8 months later. I was able to lose 25 of those extra pounds and drop by two sizes. And it was all done by portion control.

The reason I’m sharing this story is because I think there is so much garbage and gimmicks about losing weight out there and so so many of them do more harm than good. I wanted to share my story so you know a real life person that lost weight on their own without dieting.

Now I know this path is not for everyone. Some of you will need to take a different approach. For me my weight loss journey was about time + patience + learning self-control.

I did not count calories. I did not starve myself. I did not even go without sugar or treats during that period. I still ate whatever I wanted (within reason). I just ate LESS of it.

What I’ve learned through this process is that consciously making a choice to eat less can be very difficult.

I love good food. Period.

And somehow I had gotten to the point where I was ignoring (or no longer feeling) the natural cues my body was giving me when it was full.

I’ve learned through some of my own personal research and also from studying what others have to say that certain foods seem to block those natural cues that tell you when you are full. And it’s hard to stop eating those foods. I’ve found that some of those foods for me are sugary treats, processed snack foods, and breads made with white flour.

Like I said before I still eat those foods on occasion. After all this is not a diet. But I have learned that I have to teach myself to eat less of them. One or two cookies instead of the whole pan. A handful of chips instead of the whole bag. One roll instead of five.

A FEW TIPS IF YOU WANT TO TRY LOSING WEIGHT THROUGH PORTION CONTROL

1. Eat Less. (Duh). This is a lot easier said than done. Here’s what I do. I think about the portion I would normally take of something and then consciously put half of that on my plate. Once I’m done with that, I wait for a few minutes and see if I’m satisfied. If I am satisfied (even if I’m not as full as I am used to feeling), I stop eating. If I’m not satisfied then I will allow myself a little more, but this is the exception rather than the rule. 99% of the time I’m satisfied after the first portion. Over time I have become better at recognizing the difference between still being hungry and just wanting to eat more.
2. Curb the Cravings. If I am satisfied but still want to eat more I usually curb the cravings in a few ways. Brushing my teeth or chewing a piece of minty gum are two of my favorites that always work. I never like to eat after brushing my teeth cause the taste gets all weird in my mouth. So immediately my craving for more food stops. If it’s the middle of the day, I chew gum and the chewing action and minty flavor helps curb the desire to eat more food.
3. Do Meaningful Things. One of the main causes for my overeating is boredom. I’ve noticed that I eat a lot more when I’m sitting around. When my mind and body are engaged in meaningful things I don’t think about food as much.
4. Act deliberately. Once I paid attention I noticed that a lot of what I was eating was food I was being offered that I wasn’t necessarily planning to eat. Food samples at the store, a snack the kids made, desserts or treats after an activity. All of that adds up. And it was adding to the problem of me eating too much. I now deliberately decide ahead of time that I’m not going to sample the snacks at the store (unless it’s chocolate of course – hahaha). Or I’ll go to an activity and say to myself, no I’m not going to try that dessert this time. I act with intention rather than just acting by habit. Let’s be honest, there are plenty of foods that we are offered that are just not worth the calories.
5. Don’t Eat Emotionally. I really have to watch out for emotional overeating. For example, eating when I’m sad, at certain times of the month, when I’m lonely or upset or frustrated or mad. I’ve had to learn more effective methods to deal with those feelings so that I don’t end up overeating.
6. Start the Day Right. I eat smaller meals for breakfast and lunch and a larger meal for dinner. Dinner is by far my favorite meal of the day and the one I want to eat the most of. So I allow myself the leeway to eat a larger dinner by making sure my other meals are less. My two favorite meals that I eat for breakfast regularly are: (1) a fried egg, small piece of fruit and a small glass of milk and (2) a breakfast smoothie packed with greens and usually made with kefir milk (this orange julius or this strawberry smoothie milkshake with a handful of spinach added are two popular ones in my regular rotation). For lunch I try to eat a salad about 3 or 4 times a week. If I’m running errands I bring food so when I’m hungry I’m not tempted to stop and grab something.
7. Eat Food that Satisfies. This is a big one. I’ve learned through this process that one of the reasons that I overeat is if the food does not satisfy. Have you noticed this? Here’s an example. We have pizza in our family every Friday night. That’s been our tradition for as long as I can remember. I usually make yummy homemade pizza. When I started my portion control journey I decided that an appropriate portion of pizza for me each week would be 1 normal sized piece of pizza (or at a max 2 but I always start with 1 instead of 3 or 4 like I used to). In addition, I sometimes have a salad or a plate of veggies with my pizza so that I get full. A few months into my journey we went out of town and the people we were staying with picked up pizza from Little C’s. I ate my allotted piece and some veggies and I was not satisfied like I usually am. I wasn’t actually still hungry, but the feeling of being unsatisfied made me want to keep eating. I want to offer that eating garbage instead of satisfying food is a huge part of the problem with overeating. One reason portion control works for me is because I cook a from-scratch meal almost every night. I can eat less of it knowing that I will be getting another really tasty home-cooked meal tomorrow night as well. In many cases, processed and fast foods are simply filling our bellies without being satisfying.
8. Preparation is key. But making meals from scratch is harder, right? Making the choice to prepare food from scratch was hard at first, but now seems like a no brainer. Meal planning + having all of the ingredients on hand takes the hard part out of making meals from scratch. Batch cooking (and freezing) is a lifesaver. I often prepare a big salad at the beginning of the week that I can eat for lunch which has made things easier too.
9. Don’t Eat Between Meals. One of the toughest battles at the beginning of this journey for me was deciding not to eat between meals and then sticking with that decision. I like food. Yep you probably know that by now. And if you don’t yet, then just read my blog for a few minutes and it should become very obvious. 😊 One of my portion control decisions was to not eat snacks in between the three main meals I eat. Of course there are always exceptions. But I’ve tried to make a conscious effort to have some periods of time where eating is off limits instead of just snacking all day. It makes sense to me that if we want our bodies to burn extra fat we need to give them a chance to do that by not constantly giving them a steady stream of fuel to burn all day long. To lose weight our bodies need to be given the chance to rely on the fat stores we already have and start burning those for energy.
10. Resist Late Night Craving. This goes along with #9 but I also cut out the bedtime or late night snacking that I used to enjoy. Dinner is the last thing I eat for the day. Again there are always a few exceptions but they are exceptions rather than the norm now.
11. Waste. There are a lot of mindset things that I could talk about here but this is a big one. I’ve heard a lot of people (especially other moms) tell me they will eat something even if they are done so that it doesn’t go to waste. And I get that. I don’t like to waste either. But the problem is often that thinking leads to overeating. And here’s my new thought to overcome that mindset. Whether you overeat or you throw it away, both are wasted. And which is worse? Overeating hurts your body in the process too. So I feel like that’s the more wasteful option of the two.
12. Learn to be happy with who you are while accepting that you have the power to change who you are. This may not be as obvious as some of the others I’ve listed but I think it actually plays a huge part in this whole journey as well. An important part of changing is to accept who you are and how you got to where you are. Then if you want to change, do it for you. Not for your spouse or your best friend or your daughter or anyone else. Do it for you. By allowing yourself to be who you are right now and learning to love that person with all of his or her imperfections, you will feel empowered. And I’ve noticed that maybe even more than anything else, it’s that mental frame of mind that eventually makes it possible for the desire to change to become a reality.

Okay I know that is A LOT to process.

I actually started the post a couple of years ago and it’s taken me this long to decide to share something this vulnerable.

A few things that I’ve learned since writing the original post.

Weight loss and weight gain cycles with a normal body. And that’s okay. But sometimes unhealthy stress levels, family challenges, vacations, catastrophes, and more cause the body to get stuck on a weight-gaining cycle. This has happened a time or two since I wrote the original post and I’ve had to fall back on the things I’ve learned once again.

In fact, that’s what finally made me decide to share this post. I want to share a pattern that has worked for me. Not to brag. Not to say it’s the only path or even whether it’s the right path for you. But as a reference in case you want to try it too. And to start the conversation about healthy ways to lose weight and maintain it.

What thoughts do you have, my friends? What successes have you had? Or what has been your biggest challenge? Thanks for listening and I’d love to hear your thoughts.