How do you measure portions?

I have no clue how to measure portions, so being correct on the calorie intake is really hard.

Forgive me if your question is more complex than it seems, but why not just use a measuring cup or a scale?

lol well that would be obvious, but I never eat at home, so finding those tools is hard.

I use the palm of my hand when not at home.  A 3 oz. piece of meat is about the size of your palm and 1/2" thick or thinner.  A 1/2 cup of fruit would also be about the size of your palm, single layer.  It may not be exact, but it helps ALOT!

Oh, lol. Maybe this will help.

A serving of meat is about the size of the palm of your hand, or a deck of cards.

An ounce of hard cheese is about the size of a standard matchbox.

A half cup of cut fruit is about the size of a small fist.

A half cup of cooked vegetables is about the size of a tennis ball.

A serving of rice, pasta, or noodles is about the size of a baseball.

I have a single cup measuring cup and a scale that came with it.   It fits nicely in my laptop style bag I take to work.   I don't guess, I measure.   I'm not perfect at measuring a cup of anything without a measuring cup... so it's great to have a tool that useful and small.  Heck the cup flips over and fits onto the scale so it doesn't take up but a little space :)

As for foods?   What do you need to measure?   If you buy some fast food, you just look up the calories.   If you make a burger or something, then you are cooking and thus you can easily fit a tiny scale into your world.   If you are eating fruits and veggies then you count em by their general size or quantity (1 grape = 2cals for example) not necessarily needing to weigh anything.   If you buy pre-packaged yogurts and stuff then you get the nutrition info right there anyway.

So, I'm curious what foods do you eat on the go which would need measuring?

I measure at home and use ziplock baggies or tupperware containers.  That way I don't have to estimate, I know.

I usually have salads, which is every day or a wrap

Do you make the wrap yourself?   If so what of that needs measured?

You know for lettuce you don't have to mesure by cup you can measure by leaf or by the portion of the head of lettuce you used.  There's many ways to figure out how many calories are in what you are eating here on CC.   Like tomatoes... I can use the slice measurement or just get the calories for the whole and figure out what portion I had.   For salad dressings and stuff like that you could use a simple tablespoon.   Beyond that, I'm not sure what you really need to measure that would require extra tools.

In the case that you need a measuring cup, they do make some small ones... they are easy to fit in pretty much any size bag.  They don't have to be glass and heavy.  The plastic ones work great and are super cheap $$$ wise :)

I measure out everything.  I bought a food scale for about $30.00.  I measure everything in grams. So if I am having a ham sandwich with lettuce, tomato and mayo, I weight each thing individually on the scale and compute my calories that way.

It is a royal pain in the behind but I do not seem to have the ability to eyeball what a portion size is. If I don't do this I start packing on the calories. If I make a recipe from scratch I use the recipe analyser above and give myself one portion size.  The one thing I started doing was mentally seeing what a portion size is. So for instance if I am measuring out the ham sandwich in the above example I will try to guess what each item weights.  I am getting better but not good enough yet to give up my scale.  

Wow thanks for the advice girls

I just bought a scale. The good news is, my guesstimates have been pretty durn accurate!

My scale has a "Tare" function... have no idea what that word means, but when I press it, it zeros out the scale. So for example if I'm making a salad, I put the plate on the scale, then hit the Tare button to zero it out. Then I add the lettuce. Write down the weight showing on the scale. Hit Tare again and zero it out before adding the veggies. Hit Tare again and zero it out before adding the tuna or chicken or whatnot... and on and on.

So it's actually much less trouble this way, then mucking around dirtying various measuring cups!!

The scale has a choice of grams or ounces, and is nice and sleek looking so it fits in with my kitchen scheme. I got it at Target for about $30.

I'm a cashier at a supermarket so I'll explain what Tare is.

When you buy produce at a supermarket many people use a bag to hold the fruits and veggies. When something is sold by weight, the supermarket can only charge based on the weight of the item being bought, not the container it is being held in.

As a result, the supermarket scales at the cash registers are configured to automatically deduct the weight of the bag when say a bag of apples is being weighed.

Tare is essentially the weight of the container used to hold the main product.

Jenmac,

I don't think you need to measure your lettuce and vegies there are hardly anything in them and you can pretty much eat as many vegies as you can except for ones that are high in carbs, peas, some beans, corn. Just trying to assist.

Julie

this might be a dumb question, but here it goes. When I was serving myself 1 cup of ice cream, I was fiiling up the measuring cup to the top line, but I didnt "compress" or "compact" it. When the nutrition info says 180 cals/cup, is that compressed hard to the top of the measuring cup or what?

Compacted I assume. I mean, there are not going to be that many empty spaces in between the clumps and if there were, it wouldn't be a cup at all. So yes, definintely packed down.

....see that's why I never liked measuring with a cup, to me it seems too wishy washy, I also guess it is because in Europe we don't measure in cups and that stuck with me moving to the USA, I weigh everything, I hardly ever eat outdoors though, so I can see foxy's problem.

If you're eating salad you don't really need to worry about the portion size except for the salad dressing. Nobody ever got fat eating lettuce/tomato/typical salad veggies...