Travel Fit Tip: Know Your Portion Sizes

Controlling your calorie intake while traveling is difficult enough when tempted with appetizers, tasty side dishes, desserts, and alcohol at business meals, but unfortunately restaurants make it even more difficult by serving up portions that are often triple or quadruple what we should eat.

Consider these serving size recommendations from the Food Guide Pyramid:

• Starches - 1 slice of whole grain bread, 1/2 bagel, 3 or 4 crackers, or 1/2 cup rice, pasta, or mashed potatos
• Vegetables - 1/2 cup cooked or raw vegetables, or 1 cup of leafy raw vegetables
• Fruit - 1 medium piece of fruit or 1/2 cup chopped fruit
• Dairy - 1 cup of milk or 1.5 ounces of cheese
• Meat and Protein - 2 or 3 ounces of cooked meat; note that 1/2 cup of cooked dry beans or 1 egg counts as 1 ounce of lean meat, while 2 tablespoons of peanut butter or 1/3 cup of nuts count as 1 ounce of meat.

Now consider that 16 ounce steak on the menu last night. Even if you are an active individual eating at the high end of the food pyramid serving recommendations, that steak represents almost twice as much meat as recommended for the day.

As an alternative, consider that a typical bagel shop bagel represents four times the recommended serving size. Sandwiches come on two slices of bread (assuming you aren't getting a giant sub roll), so for those of you eating at the low end of the pyramid recommendations, between breakfast and lunch, you've consumed 100% of the recommended intake of starches for the day. So much for bread, pasta, or rice at dinner or crackers or pretzels on the plane!

If portion size isn't immediately obvious from the menu (as in the case of steaks), here are some handy guidelines for guess-timating:

• Meat - 3 ounces = deck of cards or bar of soap
• Cheese - 1 ounces = size of four dice
• Vegetables - 1 cup = size of a baseball
• Fruit - 1 serving = size of a tennis ball
• Starch - 1/2 cup = size of a cupcake wrapper (not the whole cupcake!)

For more information on the Food Guide Pyramid, visit the USDA web site.

For more information on estimating portion sizes, visit the American Cancer Society's web site.