Why Portion Size is so important

Yesterday I talked about portion control at my diet and fitness classes that I hold at the Holiday Inn in Leicester. Having taken the same class in this hotel for 23 years there isn’t much I haven’t talked about to my members, particularly as most of them have been attending during that time! But portion control is one of those subjects that should be right at the top of the list of priorities if you are trying to lose weight, alongside low fat eating and exercise.

In January 2008 we launched Rosemary Conley Portion Pots. They come in a set of four brightly coloured measuring cups which accurately regulate how much cereal we should eat, how big our portion of rice should be and so on. If you live alone, you measure your uncooked rice in the blue Portion Pot and then cook it. If you are cooking for others as well as yourself, you cook your basmati rice first then take a red Portion Pot-full of cooked rice and place it on your plate. They both offer 183 kcals and it’s accurate within a calorie or two.

Every morning I measure my Kellogg’s Fruit ‘n’ Fibre with my yellow Portion Pot and I know that’s the right portion for me. The yellow Portion Pot measures 125 ml of wine too. That’s a pub measure and the sort of quantity 20 years ago we would have accepted happily in a pub, served in one of those little round-topped wine glasses. But pour a yellow Portion Pot of wine into one of today’s enormous wine glasses and it looks ridiculous. And that’s the problem. We are just ‘getting used to’ bigger portions and it is ruining our figures!

Lots of prospective dieters have wonderful intentions. They are determined to stick to the diet and exercise regularly. They eat the right foods and stop eating Mars bars mid-morning and crisps with their wine. But unless we watch our portion sizes, we are going to find the rate of weight loss extremely slow and that’s disheartening.

If you are wanting to lose weight and you wonder why you’re not losing weight as you should, think about treating yourself to a set of our Portion Pots. They come with a card giving almost 50 different foods that can be measured in them. They are cheap but revolutionary – and they could double your rate of weight loss. If you join a Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Class they will be given to you free when you join, but if you can’t get to one, check out our website where you can order a set.