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Type 2 Portion size

woollygal

Well-Known Member
Messages
1,485
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Dislikes
Coffee diabetes
An incredibly dense question but how do you know portion size? I do t meanfor normsl food but things like nuts, chocolate and things like that?

Is it simply the serving size listed on nutritional values?

Bought loads of little pots today so aiming to weight everything out fir the week!!
 
Which country are you in?
 
Cana said:
UK
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Then the portion size is whatever you want it to be..
All the info on the back of the pack will be per 100g so just weight what you eat then record that.
Use the nutritional info on the back (not the front of the pack) and multiply that by the weight of what you eat.
i.e. 10g of nuts will have 10% of whatever the carb, fat, protein count is so multiply by 0.1 to get the value. Does that help?
 

Kind of.
It’s more knowing what I should be having so I don’t eat too much of it etc
 
Cana said:
Kind of.
It’s more knowing what I should be having so I don’t eat too much of it etc
Click to expand...
You will have to devise your own portions to fit in with your target and how you react to particular foods.
If you are for example aiming to have 80g of carbs a day and you typically have say 10 grams at breakfast, 20g at lunch and 30g at dinner, then that leaves 20g for snacks or some milk in your tea or whatever. Measure out what seems like a reasonable portion of nuts, or a square or 2 of chocolate and calculate the carbs to see how they fit into your plan.
 
Cana said:
how do you know portion size?
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IMO this has to be a compromise between how many carbs you find you can tolerate and how much you need to eat to feel satisfied and reasonably well-nourished. Initially you will need to faff around weighing the types of food you eat, or measuring it in cup measures if that's your preference. As a very skinny old woman aiming for very low carb, I find 50g of most lowish carb vegetables is enough for me. Ideally x 2 portions at lunch and dinner and x 1 portion at breakfast (because it is believed that insulin intolerance is worse first thing.) Since nuts are rather higher in carbs, I weigh out 10 or 20g portions of the lower carb ones (walnuts, brazils). I select the lowest carb cheeses I can find (lots of packet reading, or the supermarkets publish info online on carb content of everything they sell except fresh produce). I will eat up to 100g low carb cheese, but more often 50g. You will find different amounts suit you, this is just to give you an idea. BTW I do follow Dr Bernstein in trying to make up for the absence of carbs by eating more protein, and to a slightly lesser extent fat. 50g of low carb vegetable is much more satisfying when covered in melted grated cheese.
 
Cana said:
Kind of.
It’s more knowing what I should be having so I don’t eat too much of it etc
Click to expand...
Well that will completely depend on what you are trying to achieve.
What I do is to reduce carbs to as low a level as possible and then eat until satisfied (not stuffed) for my one or two meals a day.
For the first couple of weeks it might be an idea to simply record what you are having. Calories, carbs,fat, protein for all meals snacks drinks etc. Then you can establish a "now" position then you can try tweaking certain things.
For example cutting out virtually all carbs by having an egg and bacon only week. Also of course monitor what your blood sugars are doing at the same time so you can see the effect of various foods on your blood sugar levels.
Personally I'm not a great believer in "calories" per se so whilst I track them I don't build meals around them.
By lowering carbs ( a lot imo) you'll start to help your body recover form high HbA1c levels and get a more normalised blood sugar. At least that's what most people find. Just remember that fat and protein are nutrients that provide satiety (that feeling of fullness) and carbs are not. So I'd be basing meals around fats and proteins and see where you get to from there.
 
Hi @Cana - Initially when I was trying to work out where I was with things, I weighed stuff, but I approached a little differently to others thus far.

For me, things like leafy veg, say, cabbage, I viewed that as being "free". Obviously cabbage does contain some carbs, but you would have to eat a substantial mountain of it to accrue a high carb count. On that basis, I knew I never needed to feel hungry - especially as I might, or not decide to butter my cabbage for additional decadence.

For meat; that didn't see too tricky. I ate what I'd always eaten. I enjoy my meat, and it's carb-free, unless processed.

For nuts etcs., which sort of feels like what you're asking, this is where I did things differently - especially if nuts were to be my "I'm hungry and nobody's feeding me" food. (My OH is the main cook at home.) I also always had a small bag of salted peanuts in my handbag, so that I'd never starve.

In your shoes, if you have no idea how much you'll need to eat, I'd fill my little pot, then weight it (and note the weight) and then get on with my day. If I didn't et any nuts, they'd be around for the next day, but if I did eat some, I'd eat what I wanted, but then weight the pot and any remaining contents when I got home. That would give me my actually eaten amount.

In my mind, if I decided 30, 40, 50 or 100gr was a serving, and I'd mentally feel "obliged" to consume that amount, whereas my way, it was menatlly easier for me to vary my porrtions?

OK - all slightly bonkers, but that's more to show there are many, many ways to skin this particular cat.

It can take a little while to establish a good, easy routine, but preparation really helps in the early days.
 
I did something similar with butter. I would weigh out the amount of butter I allowed myself for a whole day and put it in a separate butter dish. When it was gone, it was gone .... no more butter for that day. No need to do this anymore.
 
As a snack, the NHS guidelines recommend 6 almonds as a serving but I know a lot of people on here don’t follow those guidelines for several reasons
 
Hi. As others have said, portion size is what you want it to be. Keeping carbs down is important to control blood sugar and a typical target might be 150gm/day or less. You then have as much protein and fat to keep you feeling full. You can then tweak all of those if your weight goes too far up or down. You don't need to weigh anything.
 
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