Monthly Archives: May 2008

I have been thinking a lot about portion sizes and why my portion sizes are what they are today.  I thought it was just because, “they’ve always been that way”, but I started back tracking down memory lane and I realize, I didn’t always feel the need to eat Godzilla-sized portions.  When I was in high school, my best friend Kristy always used to tease me because I could never finish a hamburger. Ever.  It didn’t matter if it was the smallest burger on the menu, I could never finish it.  Of course I had a small fries and a med Coke to go with it, but I hardly ever finished those either.  I would probably eat ¾ of my hamburger and mostly all of my fries, but that little bit of burger would fill me up and last for quite a while. 

In college, lunch was usually a sandwich or Spagettios eaten directly from the can (good times, good times) or a few chips with Rotel dip.  Dinner was a mini pizza from the restaurant I worked in, or sometimes cheese sticks (the fried kind).  These weren’t perhaps the healthiest foods I could have been eating, but I would only eat about half of what was given before I was full.  I ate what I wanted and saved the rest for later.  Needless to say I was teeny tiny back then.  We also (my roommate and I) walked 3 miles everyday (I swear she was a Nazi about it!), and we went dancing every weekend, so I’m sure that contributed to my small waist, but my food portions were very small as well.  

After I got married, I worked a late shift 2-3 nights a week, and so my husband would cook dinner and wait until I got home to eat.  His idea of cooking meant Hamburger Helper with mashed potatoes and some sort of starchy veggie like corn or ranch style beans, or peas.  So when I got home, he would have dinner served up on a plate waiting for me.  Of course, he put huge portions of everything on my plate – he thought I would be starving, but the portions were equal to what HE would eat when he was starving.  I would tell him, “There’s no way I can eat all that!!” But I would try, and eventually I did, over and over again, until I got used to man-sized portions.  And that’s how it has been for the last 12 years.  I’ve tried “eating smaller portions”, but that is kind of a relative measurement – smaller than what?  Smaller than the Super Extra Gigantic Value Meal size?  Well, okay, but chances are I would still be eating way too much. 

Maybe a focus on child size portions would be better for now.  That might be easier to visualize in a pinch, don’t you think?  I would really like to get back to eating the amount that is right for me, and just like eating huge amounts has become a habit; maybe I can get back into the habit of eating smaller portions. 

All of this is in relation to a larger theme I have going on in my head lately – changing my thinking – about portion sizes, about certain foods and how I thought I loved them, about doing certain things because that’s the way I’ve always done them.  Hmmm…do I sense a SERIES of posts to come?  That might not be a bad idea, because although a lot of this is just a way for me to sort it all out in my own head, chances are good that someone else in the same boat could benefit from my ramblings.  Tomorrow’s post may be a part II of this series; we’ll see how it goes.

Check back tomorrow, I may have a brilliant post about CHANGING THE WORLD! Or if I am really tired, I may just have some dumb jokes and pictures of animals in drag, who knows.  J

 ETA:  I’m still getting comments about my last post, so I am going to wait until they are all in before I do a post about the comments on my post, and then I’ll comment on the comments…did ya get all that?! ;)

Posted by Jill in deep thoughts Tags: health, portion sizes