Change Your Plate Size

It's been said that the size of your dinner plate can trick you into actually eating more than the recommended portion size.  We are visual eaters ... therefore, we tend to dish out our portions in relation to the size of our plate/bowl.

I often tell my clients that what we dish out and "think" is a portion ... will often be larger than a recommended portion ... therefore, we are eating more calories than what we think we are.

Test it yourself. Pour out what you consider a portion of cereal into a bowl ... but before you eat it, take a true measurement of it ... and compare it to what the serving size listed on the side of the box. You can do this for everything you eat. This is a good way of understanding how many calories you are truly eating throughout the day.

Believe it or not, the dinner plate has increased in size over the years ... and has been blamed for the increase in obesity. One source states that the average dinner plate in 1960 was only 9 inches in diameter. Fast forward to 2014 ... and the average dinner plate is now 12 inches in diameter.

You can trick your mind into eating less by simply using a smaller dinner plate. Check out the illustration to the right. The 12-inch plate appears to have a smaller portion as opposed to the 8.5-inch plate. In reality, the portions are exactly the same.

Plate Size in Relation to Calorie Intake:

• An 8.5-inch plate holds about 800 calories.
  
• 1 10-inch plate holds about 1000 calories.
• An 11-inch plate holds about 1600 calories.
• A 12-inch plate holds about 1900 calories.

A 3-inch increase in your plate size can more than double the calories that you are eating.