What is a Serving Size? Here’s Why You Don’t Need to Portion Your Food
I remember learning about serving sizes for the first time in a high school health class. Before that, I haven't really given much thought to portioning and the labels on the backs of cereal boxes.
But when that thought crept in my mind that my body couldn’t be trusted around food, I began to latch onto serving sizes like the Bible. Where as before, I would portion out what seemed right, I began to lose touch with what my body needed and began to eat according to rigid portion rules.
For example, I used to pour myself cereal in a bowl and eat what felt good in my body. But when I became aware of serving sizes, I would measure out a serving of cereal, as recommended by the food label on the box, and only allow myself to eat that.
Needless to say, I quickly found that the recommended serving sizes never quite seemed to fill me up. I began to doubt myself and my own body. What doesn’t a ¾ cup of dry cereal (the recommended serving size) actually feel like enough food? Why do I want to eat more than a “normal” portion size. There must be something wrong with me. These were the thoughts that went through my head as I tried to figure out how much I should be eating.
And the thing was, I thought I was doing this to be “healthy”. I thought the recommended serving sizes on food labels were something that should be followed religiously if I wanted to achieve any sense of health whatsoever.
Instead, I found misery at the bottom of my bowl and on every empty plate after I finished eating. The truth was, serving sizes didn’t offer satisfaction, and every meal felt like a painful punishment as I delved further into undereating.
This was a trigger into further restriction, where food felt more chaotic, and I became enslaved to rigid food rules.
Making Peace With Food Without Portion Sizes
A big part of my healing journey came with letting go of all those rigid rules I formulated around food. It definitely took time to undo the damage to my body and mental health after years of ingrained beliefs that I couldn’t trust my body. But gradually, I allowed myself to eat the amount of food I needed to feel satisfied, satiated, and energized.
I learned that food was so much more than micromanaging serving sizes and true health came with making peace with my body. The right amount of food wasn’t based on food labels or serving sizes, but rather, what my own individual body needed to be content and thrive.
One big “ah-ha” moment for me was understanding that recommended servings sizes had no validity in deciding the amount of food that was right for me. And I was not a failure for eating more food than the allotted amount determined by arbitrary serving sizes.
More than that, I realized how food rules, including eating according to serving sizes and not in alignment with what my body needed, was a surefire recipe for sucking out ALL the joy from food and eating.
And you know what?
A healthy relationship with food is so much more than the foods we eat or the amount of food we eat. Yes, food is meant for nourishment, but it’s also meant for pleasure and enjoyment. And that aspect of eating is just as important as the nourishment part of food.
Giving myself permission to eat the foods and AMOUNTS of foods I needed brought joy back to eating again. It also cleared up so much more mental space in my brain, allowing me to have the energy to focus on the things in my life that really mattered.
Now, as a mom of 5, I can’t imagine trying to abide by arbitrary rules around food. Life is meant for so much more than eating the littlest amount of food possible or taking up the smallest spaces.
You can read more about my journey here: “Eating Disorder Recovery: My Story and Hope for Moms Struggling”
If you’ve been struggling with food rules, I want you to know the same is true for you too.
Don’t be Enslaved to Serving Sizes
For starters, you are more important than any food rules, and a serving is how much YOU need to eat for your body - not how much you should eat.
And the only person living in your body is YOU! That means your body houses the innate wisdom you need to navigate portioning with food. It’s about responding to what your body needs and tuning out those external rules that try to dictate what you should be eating.
Because last time I checked, those rules know nothing about your body, including the unique needs you have to adequately support your physical and mental health in whatever season of life you might be in.
Eating in adherence to serving sizes alone and not in accordance with what your body actually needs creates a down spiral of negativity and a false sense of control. And truthfully, eating will always be worse if you’re stuck in a vortex of negativity and control.
If you’ve been jumping from one fad diet to another or have struggled with disordered eating, I know it may be challenging to let go of serving sizes and portioning rules around food. They offer that false sense of control that can be difficult to let go of, even if it’s making other aspects of your life harder.
But I know you’re reading this because the idea of finding freedom with food is inviting, and living life on your own terms is exciting to envision.
If you’re ready to let go of rules around food, specifically those that involve serving sizes, keep these 3 tips in mind to begin freeing yourself from rule-bound eating.
Become the Best Expert of Your Body
Only you can best determine what amount of food feels best in your body, not some arbitrary food label or recommended serving size.
Instead of focusing on portion control, be aware of the information your body is telling you: what are some signals that help you know you’re hungry? What makes you feel satisfied?
It can be challenging to listen to your body’s internal regulators if you’ve ignored them for so long, but the good news is that they’re still there! Yep, your hunger and fullness cues still exist and aren’t broken. They’ve just been buried under all the noise and rules.
Learning to become the best expert of your own body again involves turning down the outside noise and getting familiar with your own body again.
Discover what it feels like to be hungry. And when I say hungry, I don’t mean HANGRY (like the extreme form of hunger). If you’ve waited to eat until you’re HANGRY, you’ve likely been waiting too long. I mean, what are the subtle cues that help you understand if it may be time to eat. It could be things like thinking about food or feeling a subtle grumbling or emptiness in your stomach.
Similarly, pay attention to how your body responds to food and how you feel when you eat. When you’re feeding yourself adequate amounts of food, you’ll get to a natural place where you can stop.
Relearning what this feels like in your body can help guide you with your food choices and empower you to become the best expert of your own body. And remember, your body has the best source of knowledge about how to eat and take care of yourself.
2. Focus on What Makes You Satisfied
There’s a difference between eating until you are full and eating until you’re satisfied.
Satisfaction after meals allows you to walk away from your food because you feel content and leaves you able to move on and focus on other things.
On the other hand, fullness can result from having a volume of food in your stomach. But if you’re not including a variety of foods that allow you to feel satisfied in the amounts that work best for your body, you can leave a meal feeling full but still wanting something more.
As an example, you might push yourself to eat a big bowl of salad with a ton of vegetables because that feels like the healthy thing to do. But if a big bowl of veggies wasn’t really what you wanted to eat or you’re not including other foods to support satisfaction, like protein, carbs, and fats, you’re going to get to the end of that salad bowl wanting something else.
Finding freedom from rule-bound eating involves thinking about what foods taste good to you and including those foods and amounts in regular meals and snacks for yourself.
Instead of trying to manipulate your food to eat smaller portions, ask yourself what foods sound good to you, and allow you to include the things you actually enjoy eating.
3. Give Yourself Permission to Eat:
When we eat for enjoyment and don’t try to micromanage our own plate, we walk away from meals feeling more content, which decreases a risk of binging later in the day, or mindlessly eating the scraps of food off our kids’ plates because we haven’t eaten enough.
Restrictive eating and feelings of deprivation around food often cause an opposite reaction. Our bodies don’t want to feel restricted or limited from eating the foods and amounts we need to feel satisfied and will drive us to get what we want and need from food.
This is why restrictive eating with food or rule-bound eating typically results in becoming out of control with food. It’s not that you’re out of control with food, addicted to food, or don’t have enough willpower or self-control. It’s simply that your body wants to be fed and nourished adequately, and it doesn’t know the difference between restricting calories and starvation.
Intense feelings of deprivation can lead to uncontrollable cravings, which often results in overeating and binging. Things can go much better with eating when you give yourself permission to eat and to actually enjoy the food you’re eating.
Challenging engrained rules and beliefs around food can be difficult, and you’re taking a brave step forward for yourself and your family in doing so. You deserve to experience freedom with food.
This is not just important for you but for your children as well. You want to model body trust to your children, and help them know they can trust their bodies, listen to their bodies, and eat in accordance with their bodies’ needs, not what a label on the box says or any other food rules might dictate
What About Kids? What is a Serving?
As a mom and dietitian, I’m frequently asked, “What serving sizes should I give my kids?” Many parents I talk to just want to do the right thing when it comes to feeding their kids and are worried about underfeeding or overfeeding their children.
Here’s the thing I like to remind parents about: Your children are born with the innate ability to self-regulate their intake from the foods you offer them in order to best support their growth and development.
And yes, while there is no shortage of serving size charts out there for kids that will tell you the exact portion of every food you should offer, I’d like to gently guide you to something better: Your own child.
That’s right, your child is the best judge of how much they need to eat from the foods you provide. Your children can be trusted to eat the amounts of foods they need to grow at a rate that is right for them.
In general, I do find children do better while child-sized helpings. Meaning, if you’re just plopping a large amount of food on your children’s plates, they may be overwhelmed by the amount of food and become disinterested in eating.
If you are serving food for your child, start with smaller amounts knowing your child can always get more if needed. It’s also critical to be aware that kids’ appetites widely vary and may change over time, according to their activity levels, growth patterns, temperaments, and more.
Some kids have bigger appetites. Others have smaller appetites. Wherever your child falls on the spectrum is OKAY. The most important thing is that you’re being respectful of their appetites and trusting them to eat.
Focus on your jobs with feeding and trust your children to do their parts with eating. This is more important than hyperfocusing on portioning food or dishing out the “right” serving sizes. Because ultimately, your child is the best one to decide and determine what the “right” amount is. And that is an amount of food that contributes to their satisfaction and satiety each time you offer them food.
For more support about this, be sure to read this blog post here: “The Feeding Relationship: How to Build Trust With Your Child Around Food”
No matter what your journey has been, it’s possible for you to find freedom with food and to enjoy that freedom as a family.