Portion Control Secrets: How to Enjoy Your Faves Without Overeating

question is all about cold press juices. So Leanne, they see clients as you do, and every so often I'll ask a client rather than sending me a food diary, which sometimes it is controversial because people think food diaries are a very authoritarian approach, But rather we tend to use them to give insight into eating behavior and really look at what's going on, because you can describe in the morning a couple of pieces of toast with veggimite, and that could be a tiny couple of high protein

bits of toast with no butter to a jumbo slice of sour dough laden with butter. So sometimes a diary can be helpful in terms of mindfulness around what people are eating. But even more specifically, sometimes I will ask for photographs from my comments if I'm not quite sure what's going on, and they'll just describe to me a meal. If I have a look at the photo, it tells me so much more about what's going on. And in particular,

the thing that routinely comes up is portions. And the three probably key areas that spring to mind straight away or four are avocado, cheese, chocolate, or actually I do mean to say chocolate. It just came off my tongue

about alcohol. And then the portions of protein. So you know, for example, if I have a client describing a palm size piece of meat, it doesn't necessarily describe how thick that is or the cut, whether it's lean or In the case of avocado, you can have a tiny avocado and a client might sayy eight a half, but you can have a jumbo one and they've eaten a quarter.

you may not even notice. So, for example, on your dinner plate, if you fill it with three quarters salad and vege, you would naturally eat a lot less meat, as opposed to if you're having you know, putting the meat on first and it's already a set portion. So I certainly am not a dietician who recommends clients be weighing things and measuring, but I think it is good to have a reference point with the foods that are

slipping in. And another classic example is making a salad and putting in avocado and feta, cheese and oil, Whereas if you want to have all three, you've really got to put a very small amount of fetter and really crumble it down, or use shave cheese rather than sliced cheese because you'll use less, and be really mindful of how much of that oil you're pouring, because we taught on cooking shows to do what I call a Jamie

Oliver pour of olive oil. And whilst it's good for us, it's certainly really dense in calories, and you do have to be mindful when we're trying to keep a calorie deficit or even prevent weight gain of those portions of those little extras that can really add up.

the side. The serving of chips is genuinely the issue for a lot of people if they're trying to lose weight. If you're not trying to lose weight, look, your budget is probably a lot higher. But you know, if your goal is true fat loss, and then you're getting a two fifty gram I feel it. Plus you're getting some greens on the side, that's wonderful. But even too fifty grams for some smaller people could be too much, but it could be too much protein then if you're adding

on like a creamy sauce to that. And honestly, cafes and pubs will use more chips than they do vegetables because it's much cheaper. It's far cheaper, particularly because they cook it in not so great oil. So it's far cheaper to give someone more potato chips than it is to give them more broccolini or more carrots or more mushrooms. So you'll always get more chips, particularly if you are

eating out of those pub style places. So I often was said to my clients, like, if you want, you can share a bigger style rup, like a three hundred gramd rop. You can share that, share half the chipper's and then grab an extra salad and split that between a friend as well. Sometimes that can be a good idea, just to give people a reference of veggies, because it's all well and good to say, all right, let's cut down our portions of avocados and oils and potato chips

and meat. But then I think that that gets a lot of us into that negative mindset where sometimes I have clients say, well, you know, what can I have? Or I feel like we're just cutting down on everything, and it's like, that is the point in a calorie deficit. To lose weight, we need to cut down or shave off some of those calories, but we certainly want things

that we can focus on and add more in. So in terms of a standard server of vegetables, the guidelines are five plus serves of vegetables or salads a day. The kicker here is that nearly ninety five percent of Australians don't eat enough. I have so many clients and say I eat tons of veggies and then when I really get them onto the right portions are like, oh wow, I thought I ate enough, but I really didn't. So a server of vegetables is about seventy five grams give

or dake. That looks like about half a cup of cooked vegetables, so half a cup of pumpkin, half a cup of carrots, broccoli. That's one serving you need five plus a day. Or half a cup of beans or las games or pulses, so canned beans, lentils, chickpeas, or a cup of green like mixed leaves, salads, kale, lettuce,

that sort of thing. So you might have two cups of salad greens, half a cup of broccoli, half a copper carrots, half a cup of spinach, and you're still not at your daily total, which is why Susie and I are stressing to put more veggies into your lunches and also your dinners, particularly if you're not such a huge fan of vegetables. So that's a standard serving of veggies.

When it comes to fruit, as standard serving is about one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty grams, so that looks like two smaller pieces of fruit might be two apricots, two plums or two kiwi fruits, or a medium sized fruits so an apple, banana or an orange, or if you're looking at like fruits are a little chopped up fruit, it's roughly a cup of fruit. That's a standard serving of fruit. And we are told to aim for about two serves of fruit to day, and no,

they're not interchangeable. If you don't like veggies, you can't have five serves of fruit and two serves of veggies. You need to stick at around the two servings of fruit and five servings and vegetables a day. So portions matter for the high calorie foods when we're trying to lose weight, but also we need to get in enough of the good stuff as well. And I often find that if you're focusing on adding more fresh fruit and vegetaes into your diet, the other things will naturally decrease anyway.

Like hot chips come into our diet so often. And you were describing in terms of the oil quality, and I think I always say, if it's an amazing fry, I enjoy it. But in many cases they've sat there for ages, they're cold, they're not always the best quality potato.

And if you're having wedges, it's probably more like fital six.

So if you're having fried shit sel or another fried food, you can see it. It really adds up. So I think, particularly coming into silly season where we're eating out a lot and socializing, be really mindful of those little extras slipping in, particularly the hot chips when you're eating out, and if the goal is to really not eat them, you've got to have a rule in it, because two or three or four or five off the kid's plate, and then all of a sudden, you've had an extra

hundred plus calories and ten grams of fat. And they're those little extras that really derail us, and it's a bad habit, I think, So just be mindful of how often that is slipping in. I think I already said I tend to encourage if people love a bit of flavor through things using things like a grated cheese or a shaved cheese, or buying one of those cheese shavers, because if you buy sliced cheese, they're quite heavy slices. You're getting fifteen twenty grams per slice, whereas a slice

of light yasberg. All those thinner ones you can get in branded varieties from wilies and coals or only ten grams. So that's another way to they're a lot lot thinner and they are smaller. But with cheese often you just need a little grating or shaving of parmesan and you get all the flavor for a lot less. So that's

a great way. I think using about stomach vinegar through addressing will give it some moisture or even a marinated fetter where you'll use a couple of cubes and then get the moisture so you don't necessarily need to add

lashings of oil as well. And then with the avocado, you know, go for smaller variet of things, you know, go for kiss size or smaller avocados, because then you will and spread really thin and like chunking it up on the toast is adding one hundred plus calories already to the actual meal.

so you actually someone's even want to cut that in half. So, you know, something controversial ideal, and people who don't like food waste don't like it. But if I'm having a bread roll, I'll always take the middle out an animal. You can give it to someone else. You could use it and hold it for bread crumbs and make that later. But then I'll be able to get more salad and more protein into a bread roll.

Everyone's different. I've got clients you can have a square or two of lint, no problem, and I've got clients without a doubt I cannot have a block of chocolate in the house and have to limit and prefer a portion control bar of something because they know and everyone's different,

and that builds over time. But I do think it's also worth, like you describe, really keeping in mind what you're craving and what you're feeling like, rather than I'm allowed to have, which sort of lends itself to that mindless over eating, rather than really leaning into what you're feeling like. So in all those examples, whether it's cheese, whether it's hot chips, whether it's chocolate, it's really important that it's actually what you're feeling like, rather than just

it's there, I'm going to eat it. And in many cases we don't even feel like it, but we're eating it because it's there and in an easy reach, which is why some of the easiest times to not order it, or not have it on the plates, or keep the kids food away from yours if you know that you're constantly snacking on kids leftovers and extras that you know are just crossing your path you wouldn't have had otherwise.

I was talking to a friend who's a very well known exercise physiologist, and we were talking about the type of training and are saying, look, I'm really into my weights, I'm trying to lived a bit heavier, I'm really making some good progress this year, saying how proud I was, and she was like, that's great, particularly in your thirties, and she's like, it's something that a lot of people don't start doing until later, or they do it really early,

but thirties is where you want to build the foundation. And it got me thinking about talking about exercise for the decades because I've written an article before. It was many years ago, I think it was for WHO magazine, and I talked about nutrition through the decades, and I thought, you know what, it'd be a really great topic to talk about exercise through the decades. So starting off in our twenties, and I know the bulk of our listeners

are probably in their thirties or forties. Well we do know, we've surveyed our listeners. But for some of our young ones out there in our twenties, these are your you know, like your prime years physically speaking, right, so you in your best pick physical conditions. So what you really want to focus on is getting into a great routine and

habit with exercise. So you want to set yourself up for the great habit of regularly exercising, so it's not something you feel like you have to force yourself to do. It becomes this really enjoyable natural part of your daily or weekly routine. So in your twenties, you can pretty much pick anything. You just want to focus on something that you enjoy. You might want to. If you're not someone that's exercised regularly, you might have done a lot

of team sports throughout school. That's a really fun, social active way to keep that going through your twenties. You might play social netball, you might play you know, football or touch. If you're not someone who was regularly exercising through their school years, you might want something with a bit more structure. You might join a gym, you might want to start experimenting with some of these groups, you know, high intensity type classes RPM, body attack, body pump, that

kind of thing. Or you might just want to do something like more what we call this cross training, where you might want to you know, do things like burpies and jump squad. You might go for a run one day, you might do a bit of a walk or do some rock climbing another day. There's no hard and fast rules in your twenties, we just want you to build a sustainable habit and ensure that you're doing something that

you actually enjoy. Now. When it comes to your thirties, particularly your mid to late thirties, also your early forties, this process called sarcopenia starts to occare. So this is age related muscle loss so the data shows us that in your forties or late thirties to forties, your muscles

drop off by about two percent every single year. So particularly in your late thirties, you might start to notice some of your muscle tone decreasing a little bit, and particularly it's in your late thirties and forties and fifties, it's about three to eight percent per decade. So we sort of get to that point in your late thirties where it's like, if you don't use it, you'll lose it.

So regular strength and resistance based training through your thirties to build that healthy foundation and habit into your forties is really really important. The research tells us about two times a week at a minimum from a strength and a resistant style perspective. Now, what also tends to happen for most women in their thirties is that we may

have a baby or two, or three or four. Right, So this pre natal and post natal period of your life in maybe your late twenties and your thirties becomes particularly important for a healthy pregnancy, for a healthy delivery, and also to support recovery as well. So you might want to work one on one with a women's health physio or somebody who's been trained in women's health and pregnancy to really work on strengthening things like your pelvic flow.

You want to continue to exercise leading up into a pregnancy, during pregnancy, and also postpartum as well, but you will likely have to modify some of the things that you're doing as well, so it's really important that you get that appropriate advice. So in your thirties, we want to focus on a strong public floor, a strong core, supporting healthy pregnancies, if that's what you choose to do, but also building in some of that regular muscle strength and

conditioning as well. Now in your forties, as I mentioned, that's where some of this or mass tends to drop off. So at a minimum, we want to resistance based or strength based sessions a week now your forties. In this decade, a lot of people aren't raising children, they're working full time, they're progressing in terms of their careers, and they're very, very busy. A lot of us are doing school drop offs, we're running a household, we're working full time. Those midiar

lives are really, really, really busy. So exercise is something that tends to drop off for a lot of people. In their forties, and we see that with the research they do it well through their twenties, they're into their thirties, and then it drops off right into their forties because life gets really busy, so you just want to try

and establish a good regular habit for yourself. It might be that you drop the kids off to school on a Monday and a Friday and then you go straight to a nine thirty body pop class at the gym. Or it might be that you meet a friend for a coffee every Saturday and you go for a walk or a rock climb or do something together. It's basically about rebuilding in those habits and making sure that exercise

is still that priority in your forties. How you might not do six sessions a week like you did in your twenties, but you want to make sure it's a consistent priority through those forties because with your muscles, if you don't use it, you'll lose it. So you don't want to end up in your fifties having lost a tunnel mass on musk and being on the back foot.

Because we do know that some of those hormonal drops that we see through those peri years through our forties, they're even more influenced if our muscle mass is going the opposite way to which we want it as well. So coming into our fifties, this is where muscle and bone regeneration starts to slow down a bit. So if you haven't engaged in any form of sort of resistance based training or weight bearing activity to date, this is

absolutely the time to get started. So there's been a lot of research and studies that have linked weight bearing activity, particularly in this age group in the fifties, with improvement in bone mineral density and also muscle mass retention. Now, for some people, you might get a bit of joint pain, there might be a bit of instability. They can be sort of factors to begin with, so you just want to kind of take it slow and ease yourself into it.

You might want to start with just using your body weight for resistance, maybe using some resistance bands, maybe some light hand weights. You might just want to do some

body weight lunges and squats as well. It doesn't have to be that you get into a gym and you're squatting really heavy under a squat rack if you know you haven't really done that thing before, but it could be a really great time to engage a qualified personal trainer to really ensure that your technique and your form is correct, particularly if you want to start lifting a little bit heavier than body weight and actually using some

weights as well. And then in our sixties, this is really where experts recommend, and my friend was saying this eighty twenty split between moderate aerobic activity and resistance bace exercise, So a couple of days a week she recommended. Really that aerobic type activity might be dancing, might be briskwalking, You could go for a jog, you might go for a cycle, or just do something low impact like some swimming.

And then the other twenty percent split one or two days a week is that resistance bace training we still want to maintain. And in then in your seventies plus,

she just recommended enjoyment and strengthen balance. You might want to do something like yoga or tied cheer or a little bit of body weight squats and resistance based activity because this can help just basically keep the bodies strong and healthy, help to protect against falls, and that can be something that's really disabling in that seventy plus age group is once they fall, you know, you can have issues with your hip, you might break bones, that sort

of thing. So you're really setting up those foundations through your late thirties, forties, fifties and beyond to keep yourself strong and mobile and just as functionally foot as you can be well into your seventies. So whatever decade you're in at the moment, really ensure that you are exercising regularly, because I think a lot of us say, I'm too busy, I'll do it later. I'm too busy, I'll do it later. But for how many of us, when did exercise drop off? Was it years ago, was it a decade ago? Is

it something that you're starting back now? So I think it's really important to focus on the areas that we know are really helpful each decade, but to really try your best to build that health and that habit foundation. Because you don't need to be doing exercise every single day. You want to, and you can, that's excellent, but if it's something that's really difficult for you to fit in from an enjoyment or a lifestyle perspective, just try to

build the habit of twice a week. And that's why a lot of people will use personal trainers for accountability reach out to your friends or your colleagues. They might be someone who's struggling themselves to find that accountability with exercise. You might be able to meet up with them for an hour or thirty minutes on the weekend and do

any form of exercise together because that's great accountability. Plus you're getting a bit of a social catch up at the same time, so it's kind of win win all round. So that's sort of what I was talking to my good friend about. In terms of trainings through the decades, do you have any thoughts or topics on this, Suzi or do you find that your clients are doing the right type of training for the decade that they're in.

the metabolic benefits. And I understand it, you know, you get it hurts to train hard.

it really quickly. So the best advice I can give with cardio is to change the routine and mix it up doing different things. Get a skipping rope, invest in a bike, And I think in the last week I've se encouraged three or four clients to get a bike because I find that even if they're great walkers, there's always a reason not to go. It's too late, it's too cold, it's raining, it's too dark outside, when say

to look after the kids. Whereas if you've got a bike, which are not overly large, because I think you've got an assault bike, which is the hardcore one but you can do five minutes, you can do ten minutes anytime of the day. You don't lose the time and commuting, you can watch a TV show and it also allows you to control heart rate because you can see if it's one twenty, you can see the difference between that

and one sixty. And then you can train yourself, which is so efficient, even though it might be a relatively big out layer to get a good one. Mind you, on Facebook marketplace there's always cheat ones that people are bought and getting rid of, But I think that mostly in answer to your question, they're maintaining, they're not training, and even if they are going to the gym with a personal trainer, they've done the same workout for a

long period of time. They're lifting a similar number of weights, a similar number of reps. They're strong, but they're not burning fat. So be very clear, there's a difference between

maintaining muscle mass and burning body fat. And if your goal is to reduce your waste measurement to burn more body fat, it's about depleting that muscle and almost doing the muscle weight training like a cardio workout where you're quickly changing in between sets, so you're quickly going up, or you're doing a higher number of reps and then skipping in between. You know, there's a reason boxes and athletes like that train in that way because it's extremely efficient.

So I would say ninety percent of my clients are exercising, but they're not getting a training effect and hence not the metabolic benefits that come from doing resistance work but also cardio in the right way hundre percent.

eight to twelve weeks. So if you were still doing the training program, if you had a train and write your program, you know, six months plus years and years ago, and you're still using that exact same program, it is absolutely time to shake it up again, because, as Susie said,

the body is very it's very smart. It gets used to the same thing, and if you're not getting the results that you want, you absolutely need to stop and change up, whether that's a different form of exercise, whether it's different reps, whether it's pushing the heart rate a little bit, whether it's just getting out of the gym altogether and taking up a bit of running for a few weeks, or challenging it up and doing some hill sprints or doing some tabata on the treadmill instead of

just walking at an in climb at a steadi rate for forty five minutes, because you're no longer actually getting the metabolic burn that you were in the beginning. The body needs constant change. And that's the same with fat loss. It's the same with nutrition as well. We can't do the same thing for too long or the results slip off after a while.

then I say, oh, send me a photo. So I didn't photo it, so I have to toddle down to Aldi and find it myself because they just don't have anything online, so it's so annoying to be able to look up and see or compare products. You really do have to go in there, So I generally would spend a good hour or two when I go down to Aldi, because it's not like it's a bit further away from my closest. One's a good twenty minutes one way, and with small kids in toe, you know, it's a bit

of an effort. But I was cruising Aldi and I found these sweet potato chips and I thought they were pretty good, so I took some photos, and then I went past Coles on the way home and the coals ones were even better, which I was really quite surprised by because I'm not a big sweet potato person. I'll admit my Mea won't touch it, something to do with it being orange. She's like, doesn't want to buy a bit. But Tilly absolutely loves sweet potatoes, so I thought these

were really, really great. So I found them in Coals, the Coals brand, the Australian Sweet Potato Chips. They're seven hundred and fifty grams and they retail for five dollars. Now years ago we would have said, oh, my goodness, that's so expensive. But potato chips over all, whether it's normal white potato, whether it's potato gems, hash browns, they've just gone up in price. Like everything in the supermarket, they've gone up in price. So five dollars four frozen

chips is very normal these days, unfortunately. And if we look at the ingredients, they're pretty good sushi. So the first ingredient is sweet potato at ninety three percent, which is excellent. I think the aldi ones were high eighties and I thought, oh, that was actually pretty good. And then the rest of it is just the batter, so it has a little bit of a light coating on them,

which makes them quite enjoyable as well. And the batter is made up of rice flour, corn starch, mineral salt, thickener and a little bit of canola wheel and that sort of seven percent battered ninety three percent potato, and that is really really ideal in a little bit of sort of like a battered chip because you get you know, you're getting an enjoyment factor from that, like they crispen up a lot more as well, and the fact that

it's still majority based sweet potato is really ideal. So per one hundred grams, about six hundred and thirty kilodeles, which is roughly one hundred and fifty cows. So protein wise, is just less than a gram of protein per serve, which we would expect being in that this is a car based product, not a protein based product. Fat we've got seven point nine grams a serve, with saturated being on eight point seven, so very low saturated bat which

is good. Carbohydrates sixteen point seven grams of a serve, so that's about roughly a serving of carbohydrates, so that's really good. It's equivalent to about a slice of bread or a piece of fruit roughly the same, which is good. We want some carbohydrates in our meal, sugar wires, and this is all naturally occurring. There's no added sugars in here. Eight point nine grams of sugar. Dietary fiber is four point eight grams, which is excellent. We really like that.

And sodium is forty eight grams per serving, which is incredibly low, and they've added a little bit of salt in their purely just from a taste perspective, so ingredient wise and nutrition wise, I really really like these. They taste great, and yeah, I just think that there are top products and I would definitely recommend them. I have a lot of my clients who love supertato chips and these are absolutely the best that I've found on the market,

unless anyone else can find any better. And they're au strain made as well, which we like.

the freezer aisle is really strong nutritionally. And let's hope that Coals keep them out there, because a little while ago we had some great steak style potato fries that were really good quality and they ended up getting deleted.

And the good thing as well about Coals and home brand products is that they're relatively cost effective compared to some of the others, like that's five dollars per seven fifty grams, which like you would get I would hope to get two or three meals out of a packet that size with the family, So they end up being very cost effective too. So grete find out there, and you know, for all the people listening who would say, just make your own, because we do get that feedback now.

Of course, if you have time and you want to cut your own sweet potato fries, absolutely go for it. That's always going to be better with some extra vergin olive oil or some avocado oil in the air fryer in the oven. But I think in this day and age with women, we are just so time poor and there's no need to feel guilty about buying pre cut, pre made vegetables and salad if it means that it's easier for you to get the family to eat more fresh food.

I don't know, we haven't discussed this. I don't know if you're going to agree with me, but I just think that a fresh juice. You know, cold pressing is a processing technique that will minimize heat damage to juice. But I wouldn't be overly stressed if it wasn't cold press like I think it was one hundred percent juice. And keep in mind that as a dietitian, when the biggest fans of fruit juice, we're generally much bigger fans

of vegetable juice. But if a client was using a vegetable juice that wasn't cold pressed, I wouldn't freak out about it.

and veggies into like a pulp. They use this really high speed spinning action and there's a bit of a cutting blade and it basically cuts the fruit and that's what separates the juice from the solid part of it, and that's how they end up with the juice as a byproduct. This blade basically cuts through all the fruit and veggies Compared to a new cold pressed juice. They essentially crush and press the fruit and veggies between two

metal plates. They do it a lot slower and it's able to obtain a lot more juice as possible, which you know, prepa bons of cold prest juicing will say that that then retains more of the vitamins and the minerals as well, and sometimes it's a lot more fresh because it tends to be done at the point of sale. Like a lot of companies will cold press juice and then you know people will have it that day or

the next day. But when you actually look at the bulk of the research, the nutritional quality between both juices in the research was found to be the same. So if you were looking at you know, a little bit of fiber, or some vitamins and minerals, some vitamin C, that sort of thing, the research was actually the same from a nutritional quality perspective. So like you, I wouldn't be concerned if my client wanted a bit of juice.

I wouldn't say, oh, make sure it's cold press like I might say if somebody was buying olive oil, I'd say, make sure it's extra virgin olive oil. We don't just want olive oil or a blend of olive oil. We want extra virgin olive oil because we know that there's the research and benefits behind extra virgin. So with juice, like you, I don't strongly encourage it. But given that it is warming up and the weather's getting a bit hotter, like Brisbane was thirty degrees the other day in early

october's crazy. I nearly had to turn my egcorn on in October. So it's heating up and a lot of people are looking for something, you know, other than just a bit of water if they're going out. But I really can't justify spending ten twelve dollars for a cold press juice, And if I did, i'd want to share it with a friend and add a little bit of soda, water or something just to make it go that little

bit further. But I certainly wouldn't be ordering it in by the truck load just because it is improved nutritionally. So that's pretty much the bottom line is if you like juice, juice it yourself, or eat a whole piece of fruit because you need to get more of the fiber. It's a lower glacimic index if you're eating a whole piece of fruit, and it's a lot more satiating as well. But yeah, if you like juice, best to do it yourself. If not sure, you can use cold press juices, but

don't kid yourself. They're not significantly better than a normal supermarket based juice. We just want to ensure that whichever type you do choose has no added sugar in there, because the fruit itself is already adding then naturally sugar in there. We don't actually want any added sugar into that as well.

can be a bit messy. So yeah, I think it's good to be aware of sometimes where you might be paying a lot more for things that are not necessarily have to Everyone work out, of course their own budgets, but yeah, you've got to sort of not always think that throwing money will give you superior nutritional properties or that are worth that extra money, all rightly, and well, that brings us to the end of the nutrition couch

for another week. Please keep telling your friends about us, and if you haven't seen it already, we've got a new book out, Reset Nourish Burn, which contains all the information you need to reset your mindset, learn how to nourish your body and if interested burn fat effectively with twenty five of our recipe, so you find that online, also in an audible form if you're looking for something to listen to over the summer break. And we will see you next Wednesday for a regular episode drop.