If you are trying to maintain your weight and especially lose weight, checking the serving size on a food item before you dig in, is one of the best tips to help you be aware of your calorie intake throughout the day. In fact, if you are trying to gain weight or need extra calories, do the opposite of this tip. Before you buy or dig into a bag of crackers, check-mix, chips, or open a granola or protein bar, etc., check the serving size, so that you can effectively moderate a healthy portion that fits your unique calorie needs, based on your personal goals. For example, say you have some crackers in the pantry, and you are feeling munchy, you grab these crackers and some dip from the fridge. Without knowing the serving size to calorie ratio, you might overeat this snack, and not even know you are overconsuming calories. Now when you check the calories, the crackers say 120 calories for 6 crackers, and the dip is 80 calories for 2 tablespoons, so grab 6 crackers from the box, and put it back in the pantry, so you don’t go for more. Now portion out 2 tablespoons of dip. You now get to know that you only ate 200 calories for your snack and no more. Imagine if you ate double these portion sizes, that’s 400 calories – that’s a small meal. It’s not hard to eat larger portion sizes, especially when snacking during the day, and it’s ultimately a demise to our nutrition goals when we aren’t mindful of it.
Moderation, in my opinion as a nutrition coach, is the most important nutrition principle, not just from a caloric standpoint, but also for optimal digestion throughout your day. When you start checking the labels on food items, you will be shocked sometimes by how high and also how low the calories can be for a serving – depending on the food of course. When you portion out your snacks before you eat them, you eat less than you would be eating out of the container and you also typically eat slower, chewing through your food. I have mentioned in previous tips, that this helps aid the digestion of the food. Lastly, checking the serving size may also lead you to not purchase/waste money on snacks and certain foods at the store, and rather guide you to explore other lighter and healthier options. *However, just remember, that just because a food is lighter in calories does not always make it healthier than a food heavier in calories, it all comes down to healthier ingredients in that case, and moderation!