First Monday Health Tip

I can't believe it's the first Monday again. Where did January go? But it's time to think about your health again. It's very easy to get into some bad habits and there are lots of things that encourage us to indulge those habits. The list is too long for one post but I'm going to concentrate on one that I was reminded of when we were helping my mom clean out her apartment. She had some old china stored away. It was beautiful and fragile. And small.

Most of you have heard this before. The size of our dinner plates have increased over the years and we tend to fill them up from edge to edge. The china dinner plates my mother gave to my daughter had plates that were only about 2/3rds the size of a modern plate. In controlling weight, portion size is a very important part. It's very tempting to fill our plates, never thinking of the capacity of the plate or the actual ounces of food we're piling on.

Prepackaged items are equally deceptive. Read the nutritional information on the back of that health drink or whole grain snack and very often there is more than one serving contained therein. Eat the entire bag or drink the entire bottle and you need to double the number of calories listed on that little chart.

So check out that portion size. Eating less is as important or more important than trying to avoid certain foods.

Are you careful with your portion sizes? Do you read the back of packages and make sure you eat only one serving? Do you use big dinner plates? Did you see January flying by at supersonic speed?