Serving size

I have always talked about calories and how many calories different foods have. However one thing that I have not talked about is serving size. Therefore as promised in an earlier post here it is…I was talking to someone a few weeks ago and they told me they had tried the Special K diet. You know the one where you eat Special K two times a day and then a sensible dinner. But she told me that she didn’t lose any weight, that in fact she had gained some ounces. At first I could not understand it but then she told me that she would make two big bowls of cereal every day. I then asked her if she knew that a serving of Special K was only about 1 cup; she said she didn’t know that. Then the other day I had a 6in sub and I buy the Special K cracker chips to eat with my sandwiches. So MH saw me counting out the chips as I put them on my plate and he said are you really counting your chips. So I said yes these chips are only 110 calories but that is per serving and a serving is like 30 chips. About that time is when he realized that his serving size for a bag of chips was how mine use to be for a pint of ice cream, he’d just eat them until they were gone. I think when I first started to try to lose this weight; serving size was the first thing I noticed on the box after calories. If you are eating something that is 90 calories per serving but you are eating more like 2 or 3 servings that may not be good. Now everyone does not have the same caloric intake requirements so some people may need to have a bigger bowl of cereal than others. Then again caloric intake is not the only reason to pay attention to the suggested serving size. There are other important factors to take into consideration also. For instance sodium, cholesterol, fat, and carbohydrate percentages are also based on serving size. This information could impact you if you have diabetes, high blood pressure and or high cholesterol. So for health and weight loss purposes you should always pay attention to what is considered to be a serving of the foods you eat. Because if you don’t you could be setting yourself up for failure if you’re not failing already.