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It's easy enough to say "everything in moderation" or "portion control is key" but in reality it's very hard to put those two phrases into practice. Unless you're eating at home or carrying a food scale and measuring cups with you every time you eat out it's extremely difficult to know how much you're eating. Restaurants give us huge portions and we're pleased because we think we're getting such a great value for such a large amount of food. And as studies have shown when we're given more food we simply eat more food.

When I eat at home I do measure everything and the digital food scale I recently bought has been an absolute treasure. I'm still struggling to figure out portion sizes in restaurants but I've found some particular visual estimates extremely helpful in knowing when that bowl of pasta is 3 times what I actually should be eating. To know if something is equal to one portion size you have to first know how much a portion size is. Here are some common items and their appropriate portion sizes.

Pasta = 1 cup
Rice = 1/2 cup
Salad Greens = 1 cup
Meat or Fish = 3 oz
Hard Cheese = 1 oz
Shredded Cheese = 1/4 cup
Peanut Butter = 1 tablespoon
Mayonnaise = 1 teaspoon
Cereal = 1 cup
Milk or Juice = 1 cup

Now the visual cues that I've found most helpful

1 cup = a tennis ball or an average sized fist
1 oz = 4 dice grouped together
1 tablespoon = 3 dice grouped together
1 teaspoon = 1 die
3 oz steak = a deck of cards
3 oz chicken or fish = a cassette tape