Hit a Home Run with Portion Sizes

When you're trying to eat right, nothing can sabotage your efforts faster than servings that are too big. When you're eating out, it's really difficult to find normal size portions.

For instance... muffins. When I was a child, a muffin was a small 2" x 3" affair which may or may not have contained blueberries. Simple and straightforward.

According to Calorie-count Plus, a homemade blueberry muffin that weighs 57 grams is 162 calories and 6.2 grams of fat. These days, if you buy a muffin, you will notice that it is a much bigger muffin. More muffin equals more calories. A 135 gram blueberry muffin at a well-known coffee shop, is 470 calories and 24 grams of fat.

See the problem?

Portions are getting larger, which means that the calories we consume are also growing, almost without us even realizing it.

How do we combat ever-expanding portions? By having a few good reference points available that help us to see when we're holding a normal size portion or something that could easily satisfy a family of four.

Luckily, baseballs haven't changed in size since I was a kid. A baseball is a good tangible item to gauge portion sizes. 1 baseball equals 1 cup. 1/2 baseball equals 1/2 cup.

So, one baseball is equivalent to a normal apple. One baseball is a one-serving baked potato. 1/2 baseball is a serving of rice, pasta, mashed potatoes or ice cream. Think in terms of how many baseballs in each serving, and you will quickly see how large some servings really are.

And if your next muffin is bigger than a baseball, find someone to split it with.

Photo of muffins courtesy of Simon Jauncey/Getty Images

Photo of baseballs courtesy of Grant Faint/Getty Images