Quick Guide to Portion Size v Serving Size

What you eat, and how much, completely determines the amount of effort you can put into your day, your workouts, and your recovery. Nutritious foods will help you heal and help you grow. But with so much information and fad diets floating around, how can you best control what goes into your body, and feel good about it?

Portion Control

Portion control is the idea of harnessing the amount of foods you intake at any given time. The definition for a “portion size” can literally be any “portion” you give yourself - one portion for your friend could easily be two portions for you. Which is exactly where the term control comes into play. Use the below as a quick reference guide for portions of some whole nutritious foods.

Quick Portion Sizes Guide:

• Fist Size Portion - approximately 1 cup. use for rice, pasta, fruits, and veggies

• Palm Size Portion - approximately 3 ounces. use for meat, fish, and poultry

• Handful or Thumb - approximately 1 ounce. use for nuts, raisins, peanut butter, or hard cheeses

• Tip of your Thumb - approximately 1 teaspoon. use for oils, mayo, butter, and sugar

• Pro Tip: Ordering Out? - divide your plate into 2-3 portions. typically, restaurant servings are 2-2.5x recommended portion sizes

Note: These are Not Serving Sizes. While sometimes (rarely) portion size and serving size are one in the same, for the most part, any given “serving size” can have between 2 to 5 portions easily disguised as one. And that can get out of hand, fast. A recommended serving size is a standardized unit listed on a product’s nutrition label. The back of the label tells you how many servings are in each package, and how many calories, nutrients etc are in each serving based on that size.

With these tools in hand, and a conscious mind while shopping and preparing, you’re ready to take on nutrition with a whole new lens! Happy Eating!