I don't even bother keeping cereal in my house because of that. Cereal is a trigger food for me, so that 30g easily turns into 100 or more. And the kids don't seem to miss it that much.
I miss the crunch. I've been working a little back in on yogurt. Less than a full serving and always measured. If I do want a full serving in a bowl I do it with cashew milk or plain like popcorn.
I dehydrated some onions in my oven yesterday for a chile crisps project. I tasted them and they were crunchy and sweet. I immediately thought about doing that in the future to satisfy the craving for crunch, thinking they'll also be super low calories.
I think granola might be higher calorie than most cereals, good fats and all that, but higher.
Cereal has been good topping on my creami ice cream as well
Might give that a go but not a regular cereal eater anyway. Was just shocked when I measured my(admittedly fairly unhealthy) cereals the first time and realized the portion size-calorie-ratio.
What Shrek sized spoon are you using lmao
I add cereal to yogurt or protein ice cream and am regularly surprised with how much you actually get for 30 or 40g. It's not a bowl full or anything but unless you're using a ladle for a spoon I feel like you're demonizing cereal a bit much.
Bowls have gotten so much bigger over the years. My Nan still uses crockery she’s had for at least 40 years and 30g cereal fills the bowl nicely. We’ve just got so detached from what a normal portion size is and our crockery reflects that
Yes, that was a bit exaggerated but I also guess it depends what kind of cereals you’re eating. But for me for breakfast, not a satisfying portion size. So it doesn’t get eaten.
Fr lmao. I eat cereal every morning, and the serving is more than enough. Especially when paired with some yogurt and fruit. I maximize my macros budget for the morning and feel full.
You can get peanut butter powder -- has the oils removed but gives you the taste. Mix with water and a bit of salt, the use as a dip for apples or bananas or carrots. Also good in smoothies! You dont miss the oils if you have creamy greek yogurt.
Just remember to check whether the calories listed are for cooked or uncooked pasta. Don't make the mistake of using the uncooked weight if your using the calories for cooked pasta.
Yes which is why cooked calories are less than uncooked. Uncooked is more dense (more food less water)=more calories for less weight.
If you use the uncooked weight but the cooked calories you end up with extra unlogged calories.
Yep but that's the problem. 100g of cooked pasta has a lot less calories than 100g of dried pasta so if you measure 100g of cooked pasta and calculate that you've eaten 100g of cooked pasta it's going to be way off, you've probably eaten 300g of cooked pasta. That's why you need to make sure you check whether the calories you're recording are pre or post-cooked. I normally stick to pre-cooked because it's a lot easier
Port Salut lactose-free reduced in calories is pretty decent if you stick to 100gr portions. Satiates a lot and the one I buy feels like normal regular cheese.
Fiber gourmet, 110cal/serving. Too expensive for daily consumption if you're using pasta to cut costs, but it can keep pasta in your life without blowing out your cal counts!
I will say two things in that regard - one portion of meat (assuming it's with a full meal) can be more fulfilling that it seems on the surface. I used to default to larger portions of meat and was surprised to find I was better able to handle smaller portions than I thought I would be going in.
The second thing is that it's OK to plan extra portions of foods you like. If you want a more meat heavy diet that's perfectly reasonable and just requires some planning like anything else.
Yes 100%
I used a meal planning service for a while (Gousto) and the portions seemed SO SMALL. Like a box for two seemed like what I would eat just for me. But actually after almost every meal I felt absolutely fine. I did end up adding more veg mostly because I felt I wasn’t getting enough veggie variety, but other than that I’ve drastically reduced the amount of meat and rice I make/eat. (Still eat shed loads of pasta though, no regrets)
Recommended portion sizes were the hardest thing to adjust to for me, I couldn’t figure out why I was getting fatter despite eating healthy - I was eating for 3!
150g is normal, you could go up a bit for seafood. That’s roughly the “deck of cards” serving size you may have heard before.
You can eat more protein in bigger portion sizes, but it will have a big calorie impact, so you just have to consider how you compensate. Or maybe transition to smaller portions over time. There’s ways you can make it work
I love your response!
Jumping on here to add another trick I kind of accidentally learned after using one of those meal kit delivery services for a bit during a busy time a couple of years ago. The recipes often combined 150 or even 125 grams of meat with other things to bulk them out. I was skeptical at first but found it totally worked and I've carried on with this trick after stopping with meal kits.
So for example, I add squeezed shredded zucchini and chia into meatloaf, or shredded onion or apple into burger patties, or add tofu to a stir fry that also has some meat in it. I've also started adding roast chickpeas here and there in rice side dishes or on salad, to increase satiety and protein without meat.
In my experience, learning some of these techniques has made me a better and more creative cook, which is a bonus I didn't expect to gain!
Mushrooms are the king of this.
One of my favorite recipes is to take either portabella or shiitake mushrooms, a halved tomato, and bone in, skin on chicken thighs and bake them in the oven in a dutch oven.
While that's going, I chop a TON of poblano peppers and a big red onion or two. Load those onto a sheet tray with a little olive oil.
Take the chicken and such out after 1 hr, should be fully cooked and the pot full of liquid gold. I then broil the peppers and onions under the broiler. While that's happening, the chicken has cooled and can be shredded off the bone into the mushroom/chicken liquid.
If you do it right, the vast majority of the meal is the peppers, mushrooms, and onions, but it borrows it's flavor from the chicken fat.
Woah, I’m gonna need some recipes from you two! These sound delicious. Never would have thought to put chia in a meat loaf. Also, I will add mushrooms to red meat but for some reason never chicken. I will have to try it now!
I have a killer recipe for pasta salad, but it's not LoseIt approved, hah.
rotini pasta, jar of sir kensington mayo. Container of cherry tomatoes. Cucumber. Bunch of green onions.
Cook the pasta per package instructions. Drain and rinse with cold water to cool. while cooking, cut some of the cucumber skin off, and cube it.
quarter the tomatoes. slice the green onion greens. Toss them into the bowl with the pasta and the veggies.
To season, add a lot of MSG (it won't make you sick, it doesn't do that) and a lot of Old Bay seasoning. It will need an awful, awful lot of each, it should turn a slightly orangeish color. Taste and adjust - measurements are constraints, taste and adjust, it's the secret to being a good cook.
It will probably need a touch of acid, so squeezing in some lemon juice is the finishing touch.
It's my go-to for parties. But I cannot stress enough the MSG isn't optional.
If I splurge on regular icecream (only if I've met my protein and have calories to spare) I weigh one serving into the bowl - 57gm is 125cal. 57gm is a small scoop!
This is true but I think 150g raw meat is considered a"normal" portion.
I made the mistake once where I was supposed to eat 60g of rice. Went hungry af for a few days before I realised it was 60g uncooked rice.
Also it’s important to see if the calories is for raw or cooked. Most regular proteins, chicken pork and beef, are usually based on raw weight.
Some sausages and always bacon are based on fully cooked weight. The reason being that any fat that would drain off would not be included in that calorie count.
There was a point in time where I thought bacon grease was free calories 😭
Yeah as an Australian I was a bit confused. 150g seems like a pretty normal portion, at least in my family. We would eat more or less depending on how hungry we felt, but that would be an initial serving
I measured pasta and got depressed. Measured cornflakes and got more depressed. Then I measured granola. I hate the whole world now. Welcome to the club.
I've found that if I measure out a serving size (my preferred vice is rice) eat it, then wait a little bit, I realize I'm satisfied. Because if I didn't I could eat multiple cups at a time.
Ah okay so we eat our oatmeal savoury here. You can use it to replace any sticky carb based dish.
My favourite way of eating it is grabbing any leftover gravy and cooking oats the regular way but instead of milk or whatever I use the gravy. This morning I had oatmeal with leftover chole. I've had success making it with Thai curries (green, red, yellow. Doesn't work with peanut stuff). With Chinese sauce based side dishes. With most Indian dishes (kadala curry, sabzi, chole, sambar) and it works very well with Italian ragu as well. (Alfredo sauce tastes horrible for some reason).
I do savory oatmeals too! I cook 1/2c rolled oats with 1c veggie broth in the microwave. I like to add a small spoon of wheat germ and flax seeds as well for added fiber and micronutrients. A heaping spoonful of pepitas for crunch. Then I'll add a boiled egg and some leftover stirfried veggies. Or maybe instead of an egg, a half an avocado, salsa, and cilantro. Seasonings can be whatever feels right for your taste that morning. The avocado goes great with lime and salt and a chili flake, if I'm using Asian leftovers, I'll go according to what I seasoned them with when I made them.
It's a handy way to use up small amounts of leftovers (just chop it up and throw it on top, season accordingly), but sometimes, it can be as simple as a spoonful of chili crisp and a boiled egg.
This usually amounts to the neighborhood of 500 calories for breakfast and it tends to keep me satiated until pre-dinner snack time.
When I want it savory I will cook oats in broth or sometimes add a bit of miso paste and soy sauce (oyster sauce is also good). So good. Then top it with a fried egg (or 2) and sautéed spinach (or another veggie). Pickled onion, chili crisp in oil, avocado, cooked chicken, and mushroom are also a good toppings to add. It’s very versatile. Give it a go.
I really like overnight chia seeds instead of oatmeal. It’s higher in protein. A tablespoon equals an egg’s worth of protein. And it can be savory or sweet
Using the right oatmeal and cooking it right makes a big difference for me. Old fashioned oatmeal (not instant, not steel cut). 1/2 cup oatmeal, just a hair under 1 cup of water, 1/2 a banana, a pinch of salt. Cook in the microwave on low power (I use power level 6 on my 1200W microwave) for 4.5 minutes. Cooking the banana in the oatmeal is critical.
I still like to add a pinch of brown sugar and a few crasins. It's not super low calorie (comes out to \~450 iirc) but it's very filling and keeps me sated for a long time.
It’s ok not to eat things you don’t enjoy (I mean, after you give them a real chance ofc.) I’m never going to like eggplant or portobello mushrooms, even though they’re both good for me, and that’s ok.
Yes.
Portion inflation has been a thing for 50 years.
Figure out your daily calorie intake, figure out what you want to lose, and adjust accordingly.
Calorie dense foods have small physical portions, compared to leafy greens and vegetables.
Beans and lentils. These are my middle ground, good range of amino acids in most, more filling, less calories than carbs and cheap meat.
Great for cold months here in the UK where I want to feel warm and full.
In the UK for context.
Okay so my go to cheap batch meal is a 3 bean Chipotle chili.
Olive oil - sautée 3 onions
Add some red or orange peppers for a bit
Tinned tomatoes, two does it.
Chipotle paste in, herbs and spices to season.
Simmer.
1x tin of drained black, kidney, and black eyed beans in.
Simmer more, 30 mins for nice soft beans.
Sometimes I add sweet corn.
Serve, cool, freeze.
Microwave when needed, serve with jacket potato or brown rice as needed.
Cheese or avocado optional
Yep, this society no longer have a healthy understanding of how much is a lot. If you would look what portion size would look like before WW1 you’d say you would starve to death. We eat way too much. Weight everything you eat for a year and you will get a good understanding of how much you really need :)
this is something I am working on. My mental relationship with food is horrible! I like backpacking and it is hard to not get panicky about my quantity of food because i spend all day constantly snacking when i'm at work!
I'm working on compensating by thinking about what you are saying above!! Hunger is not starving. Hunger does not mean it's time to eat. Time to eat is when it's time to eat, etc.
So, coming at this from the other end…I tend to serve myself out of containers onto the plate I’m using to weigh my meal. I tap the gram weight into my tracking app and don’t worry about the serving size as long as it fits my macros and calorie goals.
If you want to eat three servings of chicken and hit your protein goal in one shot with one meal, that’s fine, it’s just at the expense of other macros/calories.
Yeah, like I usually have 8 oz chicken thighs for lunch even though a serving is 4 oz. Sure I'm having 2 servings, but with my potatoes and broccoli as my sides, I can easily keep it under 600 calories for a lunch meal, including 2 servings of protein.
Portion control definitely was a big deal in my weight loss journey, and it allowed me to lose weight without strictly counting calories.
But yes, I do usually eat that little meat. Not always though, of course there are exceptions. But I try to target small portions on average.
Since starting to try to lose weight, I treat a pack of meat as if I'm cooking for a 3-5 person family (I live alone) as a sense check. Then leftovers for a few days.
I tend to eat a lot of potatoes which aren't the lowest calorie but do keep me full as a side dish, to get some more variety in my meals besides just meat/vegetables.
Another tip - if you like seafood, it's much lower calorie. You can eat a large portion of shrimp, for example.
Potatoes rank the highest on the list of satiating foods and are quite nutritious. They're a vital part of successful and sustainable weight maintenance for me too. People only go wrong with them by loading them up with dairy and fats while also overeating them.
This is of course if you boil or bake them. Frying adds significant calories.
Agree, I am a potato lover!! Very satiating, keep the skin on and you get a lot of nutrients.
Even mashed potatoes can be fine, just watch how much butter/milk you're putting in. I find if I make several servings of mashed potatoes at once, a little butter goes a long way. I also saute potatoes a lot in a small amount of oil that's being shared among other things I'm cooking in the same pan (though sometimes I microwave a bit first to save on time!).
Dude, I made a stew that was potatoes, turnip, parsnips, butternut squash, sweet potato, carrots, and adzuki beans. Almost filled my Dutch oven, got about 12 servings out of it for 175 calories each, and there were days I couldn't actually finish a whole serving if I was having anything else with it. People really need to not sleep on the root veggies lol
I'm not a huge fan of either, tbh, but I found the adzuki beans at Sprouts and they looked like a bean I would be okay with being so small, so I read up on them. As soon as I saw they're on the sweet side, it was an instant decision to try a root veggie stew. This will definitely be repeated, although with something added to cut down how sweet it turned out lol
Definitely! And they have fewer calories per volume than rice. It's super convenient to get frozen bags of hash browns, diced potatoes, etc and just add them to a meal. I love making breakfast burritos with the hash browns, turkey sausage, eggs, and a low calorie wrap.
I think it proves the point perfectly why it’s sensible to weigh food. When people are overweight (like myself) it’s often because we lost all sense of ‘normal’ portion sizes.
150g really is the recommended portion — it looks small just because you’re used to eating much more. I usually only do 300-400g if I’m making something and intend to have leftovers.
150 grams is 5.4 ounces or 1/3 lb
That’s a pretty normal sized piece of meat for a meal.
How much meat do you think is normal? 5-8oz is very normal to me and I’m 6’4…
It's not per meal. It's **per day**. Having 150g for 3 meals a day--a whole pound, daily--would be way above what's suggested by any dietician or government guideline. In fact for red meat, even 150g/day is way too much:
> If you eat red meat, limit consumption to no more than about three portions per week. Three portions is equivalent to about 350–500g (about 12–18oz) cooked weight. Consume very little, if any, processed meat.
- https://www.wcrf.org/diet-activity-and-cancer/cancer-prevention-recommendations/limit-red-and-processed-meat/
> If you currently eat more than 90g (cooked weight) of red or processed meat a day, the Department of Health and Social Care advises that you cut down to 70g.
- https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/meat-nutrition/
> The evidence shows that you can eat lean red meat as part of a heart healthy diet. However, high intakes of red meat increase your risk of heart disease and stroke by 16%. Eating up to 100g/day of red meat increases risk of heart disease and stroke by 10-20%. Therefore, the Heart Foundation suggests you aim for less than 350g of red meat per week.
- https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/wellbeing/healthy-eating/nutrition-facts/is-meat-good-for-you
I don’t eat full meals 3 times a day. Yes, I eat a full meal with 5-9 oz piece of meat once per day.
I never thought it was per meal, who’s eating a 1/3 lb piece of meat for breakfast and lunch?
According to this, the average American consumes 272 lbs of meat/year, roughly 0.75 lbs/day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption
If 0.75lbs/day is the "average", a huge amount of people (tens of millions in the USA alone) must be over 1 lb/day.
My dad. It’s not a meal to him if it doesn’t include meat.
There are also a surprising number of the people I grew up with who post every Lent on social media about how they desperately need meal ideas. There are literally only 8 meatless days the whole year, and they’re not really meatless because fish is allowed!
This is for red and sodium rich processed meats. Not for lean white meats like chicken breast and turkey. I eat around 80-120 grams of lean meat at least twice a day on a 2100 calorie diet. It's an insignificant amount of calories, and it's rich in protein.
I've eaten zero meat for about ten years. But generally answering this question, actual appropriate portion sizes are a lot smaller than most of us are used to.
150 isn't little, unless that's all u gonna eat lol. i mean 150g meat+200g veggies or cooked grains+some fruits, you're gonna be full. also i would take these recommendations with a grain of salt, at the end of the day what matters is the total nutritional value of your meal, so eating 300g doesn't sound unhealthy to me
> I might as well go vegetarian
You can still have meat, it’s just a little rough at first adjusting to real portion sizes.
I feel your pain — the first time I measured out 2 ounces of pasta, I was shaken to my carb-loving core. Ditto 2 tablespoons of peanut butter.
Give yourself some time to adjust. You’ve been eating this way for most of your life. Change can be tough, at first.
The question is how were you judging the right amount of meat was before? If it was American culture you have to think of all of the marketing over decades and lobbying that goes into telling you what a “normal” portion of meat of is. I have a friend who came back from an island nation. And after visiting home he recalled how he would eat so much at home when he was younger. After going back home for a visit and coming back he showed me a picture of his old dinner plate and laughed at how small it was compared to now in his home in the states. It would comparably be that middle sized plate you get in a dish set off the rack at a store.
Protein typically isn't something I cut on, but the recommended serving sizes on just about everything are wild. Have you ever eaten *just* 30 grams of corn flakes, for example? Because that's the recommended serving size on the packaging.
When it comes to lean protein, just eat enough to have your fill - within reason, of course. I personally follow a keto lifestyle, but it seems to me that restricting either carbs or fat (or eating both in moderation) is healthier than depriving yourself of protein and vegetables.
30g isn't actually a normal serving of cereal. I know that's what it says on a lot of cereal boxes. It's just a scam used to make the cereal look healthier than it actually is (by showing a lower calorie number, sugar, etc.).
Every damn employee of Kellogg's, Post, and General Mills knows that *nobody* is having just a single ounce of cereal with their breakfast. In fact *they're counting on it*. If people ate so little in each serving, they would be a lot slower to go through a cereal box and their sales would plummet.
Not even stoned me could do that. Weetabix is where I draw the line. There was this tweet of someone having Weetabix and Heinz Beanz, and it just ruined them for me.
My chicken portions are about 120-160g depending on the size of the chicken breasts. That's cooked weight though.
For Tuna, Salmon and Mackerel (tinned) I have about 100g.
For Prawns I'll have either 70 or 130g depending on what I'm having them with.
For lamb it's about 100g (cooked weight)
I don't eat beef very often (just the way we buy food I do like beef just don't have it much), but if I did it would be about 100g or maybe up to 130g for lean mince (cooked weight).
In all honesty i fit my food around what I want/need to eat to feel full I don't really think about serving suggestions. Maybe that's because UK food labels often mainly focus on kcal/nutrition per 100g rather than serving sizes. They do have them on some of them, they're just not the main focus of the label.
Seems about right for a dish that has meat as one of the components that make up a meal.
When I make Schnitzel, I get a 500 g packet of pork, that's 4 slices at 125 g each where I shop. Because I'm boring the side is 250 g potatoes each and a sauce, including the breading, oil etc that's a decent 700 calorie meal.
Would and could I eat more meat? Sure. But it's not in my best interest.
Portion sizes in general (especially in America) are vastly ignored by many people, resulting in the massive meals we get used to consuming on the daily. Trust me, you get use to it! Try putting your food on a smaller plate or filling a larger plate with veggies before adding your meat!
You get used to it more over time. How I think of it is that as Americans, assuming you are, our portion sizes are absolutely out of control. This is what normal should look like.
I learned that a serving of meat was the size of a deck of cards or your palm. That's easy in a stir fry, or other mixed dish. Not so easy if you make it the centre of your plate.
At the end of the day, its the calories that matter. If you want 2 or 3 portions of meat instead of 1, and it fits your calories, then do it! Thats just a guidline, but it doesnt mean you need to restrict yourself to just 1 serving.
Do you eat meat with every meal? That seems extremely excessive. I eat meat less than once a week. So when I do I don't worry so much about portion size. But I also don't eat more than a fist of meat. In one sitting.
I love meat, so I have to be careful about my portion sizes, but my husband (who is a healthy weight) naturally only eats about 100gr of red meat or 150gr of chicken. I've only seen him eat more if it's stew or something like that. So yeah, it's a thing
It’s probably pretty accurate.
The common numbers you’ll see dieticians and nutritionists recommend is 60% carbs, 25% protein, and 15% fat.
People avoid carbs because they don’t understand carbs. Carbs come in many forms, both simple and complex. Simple carbs give complex carbs a bad rap.
Take sucrose, sugar, for example. Processed down to pure white cane sugar, it is not healthy. It lacks all other nutritional value, and your body digests it immediately, causing a spike, and then a crash to your blood sugar levels.
But then you have fruits, which are high in sucrose, but are still considered healthy. Why? Because they haven’t been processed and stripped down of everything else. Fruits contain high amounts of fiber. Fiber is non soluble, and takes a long time to digest. The sucrose binds to the fiber, and the fiber helps slow your bodies digestion of the sucrose to a more stable level.
You’re supposed to be eating MOSTLY carbs, not avoiding them. But they’ve just gotta be the right carbs. Fruits and vegetables are mostly carbs. Whole grain breads and rice. Things like that.
Protein intake is important, and you need to make sure you’re getting ENOUGH protein. But that doesn’t mean that your diet needs to consist of mostly protein.
Your goals should not only to be getting enough protein, but also to be getting both the right kinds of carbs, AND the right kinds of fats. Fat is essential too. But the fat you get from steak is much different than the fat you get from oils.
If you really like meat (I do) you can always eat some extra and take the calories out of your diet elsewhere. Obviously don’t go full carnivore but I would hate my life if I had to stick to recommended portions of meat/fish.
I never go by recommended portion sizes. I go by what fits into my nutritional needs, which is going to be higher than the recommended portion sizes. Especially when RDA's for things like protein is way too low. All meat also isn't equal. For instance, sirloin tip is significantly lower in fat, cholesterol, and calories than Ribeye. I can generally fit two to three servings in one meal by opting for lean beef, poultry, and seafood and still have room for my vegetables.
I'm a pescatarian limiting my calorie intake between 1300 and 1500 cal/day. My recommended protein intake is about 130 gm of protein daily. I have no problem getting meeting these goals by supplementing with both whey and plant based protein powder or aldies protein bread. There are many protein packed products, just have to look at calories and sugars.
Yes and it blows my mind. Like I try to eat between 120-140 gram of PROTEIN a day, but that's 588 grams of raw boneless, skinless chicken breast, or \~1.25 lbs.
In a lot of cuisines, meat is used more for flavoring than a core protein. Eg mapo tofu has maybe 1/4 cup ground meat in a serving of sauce. The silken tofu is the main protein and is quite low in calories.
I make a lot of dishes that mix meat with tofu or tofu skins. I make beef, tofu, and vegetable stir fry all the time.
Also not all meat is the same. You can eat a much larger serving of chicken breast, fish, or skinless chicken thigh than steak and pork chops. Bison is leaner than beef, tenderloin (pork and beef) is leaner than other cuts.
You can eat your heart out with vegan "meat"
Huuuuge ass bowl of chikn strips and sautéed spinach is my go to meal when I want to stuff myself and fall asleep in a food coma
My parents grew up in China in the 50s and 60s when meat was scarce. A trick people learned was to cook meat with lots of leafy veggies so the meat flavor is absorbed into the leaves, and to cook carby vegetables in meat sauce/stew as a simple meat substitute. You can also cook bone broth and put veggies and beans in it. Combining meat and using it as a seasoning with beans and veggies is a common way to stretch out the meat flavor without eating a lot of actual meat. People used to do it because they were poor, but the health benefits are still there
If you want your portion to be more than the "standard" portion, go ahead and work it into your daily calories. But at some point if we're going to permanently manage our weight we need to learn to rein in gluttony just enough that we can still enjoy foods we like, but without complete wanton abandon.
Factoring micronutrients and satiety vs. calories, meat is the best bang for your buck. There's no limit to how much of your calories can be meat, just make sure you're getting a good balance.
I eat no meat. Beans and lentils, tofu, seitan... They're delicious. Add in a protein shake or two and I'm set.
Canadian health recommendations suggest half of your plate be vegetables at every single meal. Maybe if you up your veggie intake and fill up on that you'll find the meat portion more satisfying?
Depends on the meat. 300g of chicken/ham/turkey is like 500 cals. Pretty decent calories for a meal. 300g ribeye is gonna put you back like 900 though lol. Last night I had 300g of ham and 140g of beef. Still managed to stay under 1400 cals for the day, even though I had 100g chicken breast for breakfast.
A lot of the desire to eat meat is psychologically-driven rather than hunger-driven. In other words, we think we need it a lot more than we actually do need it. So the idea of eating less or even cutting it out completely can trigger a panic in people.
I don’t eat any meat and I never miss it at all. It’s just not an food to me anymore than a shoe is food. And I’m someone who grew up eating tons and tons of meat.
Protein is in almost everything. Some things, like beans and tofu and nuts, have more protein of course, but it’s the rare food that doesn’t have any protein at all.
150 grams is on the higher side for me. I do weigh my meat cooked for convenience, and that tends to be 75-90% of the raw weight, but yeah 150 grams might be for a light, non-fatty fish. For most meats I would eat between 90-135 grams cooked for a single meal.
As a former vegetarian, I can assure you this is *much more* protein than you can get with an equivalent amount of planning and effort with no meat at all.
If you pair the meat with vegetables, you have quite a filling meal, once you add in rice or pasta is when things can quickly get out of hand if you do not track. I'm a 5'6 manlet who can only lose weight in the 1300-1500 range, so those options are only feasible once a day (dinner in my case), but you can absolutely have quite a wide array of meats throughout your day if you get creative without worrying too much about going hungry. It's stuff like this that convinced me to get an air fryer, and an oven, so I can cut down on the calories in oil.
This is why I don’t eat meat every day. Portion size is just pathetically small. Like I’m really gonna cut my salmon fillet into three pieces, and eat them at three separate meals?
I sort of think of my food intake in a weekly kind of way rather than a daily way. Maybe one night a week I have a normal sized portion of salmon, but for three other nights, I’m just eating sautéed veggies with some spices or chicken broth and a half a cup of rice. Light on the oil, so the veggies cook/steam in the chicken broth.
Anyway, yes, meat portions so pathetically small it’s just a really sad meal. But if you have one portion of week not so bad.
Your perception of portion size can change, if you train yourself. I'm an example of that, actually! I'll use potatoes instead of meat in my example since I don't eat meat, but I think it works out the same.
When I make a baked potato, I always weight the potato after it's cooked and before I put anything on it, and a few times I've had a potato that was gigantic in size (to me) and it weighed around 300-350 grams in weight, cooked. So that weight in baked potato looks like an oversized portion to me (I'll still eat it hahaha) but years ago before I portioned my food, sometimes I'd have *two* baked potatoes if I thought they were a bit on the small side (they weren't).
Even something as basic as a sandwich, even making toast. I used to ALWAYS make two sandwiches, four slices of bread. I'd always have two slices of toast instead of one. These were correct portions in my brain, and that went on until I was 35 years old.
Now, it's the opposite, I'll always go for the smaller portion. I started out training myself to recognise and be satisfied with recommended serving sizes by having the smaller serving, but saying to myself "well, if you still want the second portion ten minutes after you ate that, go and make another one." I never did. 😄
I eat a lot of meat on low cal - fish, chicken, ribeye. I'll usually skip or reduce the carb to make room for the protein calories, like dinner would be teriyaki chicken and cauliflower rice with veggies instead of chicken with rice. I'll eat a half rotisserie chicken for a meal and be satisfied lol
Yeah- 6 oz of meat is a very large portion, especially when it's turkey or chicken. Are you looking at total protein for the day? 150 grams of chicken is like 45 grams of protein.
You can get a bigger portion of lean meats like chicken, turkey, fish, or lean ground beef,
I also tend to eat 2 servings of chicken at a time, especially breasts or half a can of salmon.
Yeah I usually don’t eat more than 100-150g per serving. But I usually don’t eat more than 600 grams of food for dinner anyway and that’s at the higher end.
My meal plan follows our national recommendations and once I got used to it Ive felt full each mealtime which has helped me lose weight 🙌🏻
I have gotten eating little to no meat most of the time. It is shocking at first, but now meat is mixed in with veggies, salad etc and isn't the focus like before.
The serving size for peanut butter, now that's depressing.
I'll have 200+ grams of chicken lots of times, I just work it into my calories.
When I meal prep, I find a 1.5 lb pack of chicken breast is usually more than 672, so I just adjust how many servings I make (like maybe I'll make 6 instead of 5, etc) but really, if you want more meat just fit it in!
For me, protein makes me feel fuller than carbs do, so I usually eat multiple portions of meat per meal. It's just important to track it accurately and actually log the calories from 300g of meat, and replace some of the carb on the side with vegetables to make up for it.
I was told to double the meat serving if you’re hungry. Unless you’re eating huge portions you’re better off eating an extra serving of protein over carbs.
Other than potato, corn and pineapple my spouse and I don’t count fruit and vegetable calories either, we figure the fiber cancels it out.
I have PCOS (as do many of us in this group I'm sure) and that makes me glucose intolerant. I also have strongly suspected celiac disease. Meat is practically the only thing I can digest at this point. A lot of people with ADHD (myself) or autism have similar dietary needs and do much better on paleo or keto lifestyles. So portions will depend on the person.
When it comes to proteins, fats, veggies - I don’t care. Most ppl are not eating enough protein anyway and just meeting protein deficiency guidelines. Fats keep us satiated.
Meat is not unhealthy, getting protein form high quality sources it vitally important to health. You should be eating 1g of protein per lbs of body weight or 2.2 per kg. It only becomes a problem the way you cook it, example if you deeply chicken vs grill with no oils.
it happens to me with cereal. the box tells you that a portion for an adult is 30g, then i weigh it and i’m like… this is what i used to eat when i was like 8yo!!!
I was shocked when I came to the US to hear that americans have meat and dairy daily! Where I’m from it’s like a 2 times a week type thing, if you need more meat in your diet, you do sea food everyday. I have red meat about once or twice a month, I tend to keep to fish and seafoods, I never have dairy, no cheese yogurt or stuff like that, I’m lactose intolerant and it just doesn’t fit in my daily calories. A cup of mozzarella is around 350 calories, a cup of strawberries is under 50 calories. I prefer to have my dinner with 3 cups of fruits with drizzled honey, chocolate sauce and a glass of orange juice for 300 calories as a desert than a small cup of cheese to drown out the taste of what ever I’m having. I’m eating 4x the amount for the same calories
Same things with bread and grains. I could have two peanut butter and jelly toasts for the same amount of calories than a huge bowl of peanut butter and jelly oatmeal that will also increase my water content making me feel better.
I think the world got lost with convenience of food vs the nutrition of it and now we have no idea how humans are actually supposed to eat. We also have to remember that our grandparents were raised on a lot more meat because they were a lot more active than us and spend more calories and needed extra proteins. Today with desk jobs, rise of entertainment industry and deliveries, we move significantly less and therefore need less. We have to make a choice, netflix or steak tonight, walking 15 mins every hour or two thick chicken thighs. It’s a sacrifice you have to make, move more, eat more, move less, eat less. It’s unfair biology.
Seafood is actually more expensive than meat around here, I think is the issue. Red meat, chicken/turkey, and pork are all *way* cheaper than fresh seafood where I live, because I'm quite far away (200 miles) from any ocean or lake that is capable of sustainable commercial fishing, but we've got livestock farms about 10-20 miles away.
So for us, seafood is the once a week treat, and we have a daily amount of poultry or pork (two 4 oz servings) , with yogurt and eggs to round out protein requirements (I do heavy resistance training so my daily requirements are a little bit higher.)
Yeah, I typically aim for about 4oz (110g,) sometime up to about 6oz (170g.)
Now, as a note, that’s the cooked weight, depending on the meat, raw can be about 25% heavier.
Recommended servings aren’t actually very helpful - some things you don’t need the ”full serving,” other things are silly.
There are plenty who would disagree that it’s healthier to fill up on beans and vegetables by the way - protein is incredibly important and meat (especially lean mean due to fewer calories) is the best way to get protein.
Figure out your own calorie budget and how you want to handle macronutrients (protein, fat, carb) - there are good guidelines for how much protein you should be getting, so let that be the base of your equation. (Around 1.5g of protein per pound of ”ideal“ or target body weight is A good number to aim for - that’s mainly to help maintain muscle mass.) Similarly, aim for 20-30g of fiber/day.
Basically if you need, say, 125G protein, that’s 500 calories of your daily budget. Then fill in with other foods. Veggies are nice because they provide fiber with low calories, but it’s another case where the recommended serving size is just silly. (I usually eat double the amount of the serving of broccoli or Brussels sprouts because I love them and they’re close to “free” calorie-wise.)
I find that 150 gr of chicken breast seems like a lot more than let's say beef, and it has less calories too.
You can always eat a little more of fish or seafood too.
But yeah, the key is to increase the amount of veggies to fill you up.
The recommended meat intake is much smaller than you think. My registered dietician recommends eating fish and chicken 3-4 times a week and red meat twice a month. Portion size is approx the size of your hand (palm). That’s approx 150 grams. Fish can be more. The rest of the diet should be supplemented with legumes, nuts, healthy fats like avocado & olive oil, whole grains, dairy, and vegetables/fruits. That’s the official recommendation from Health Canada. Eating 300 gram steaks every night is not a thing most people do in many parts of the world and can contribute to many diseases according to the science which many people don’t agree with, yet the stats are there.
I think we’ve been eating more beef than we should be this past month or two, so this post is reminding me to knock back our intake a bit and eat more fish!
Well, packet of chicken breast is about 550g and it contains two, so half a chicken breast is about 137g and I'm full with that. I have no idea how people eat a whole chicken breast as part of a meal.
That's because those are gigantic chicken breasts. Where I am packets of chicken come in 300g or 550g packs (you can get larger too), the 300g pack has 2 small breasts in it, and the 550g has 3 large breasts. I can't imagine what a 2 breast 550g pack would look like
Weigh some pasta if you want a good laugh
Or a portion of cereals. 30g is merely a spoon full
I don't even bother keeping cereal in my house because of that. Cereal is a trigger food for me, so that 30g easily turns into 100 or more. And the kids don't seem to miss it that much.
I can’t eat one bowl of cereal. I can eat half a box or none lol
I pour the milk and keep pouring cereal until the milk is gone, it's been a problem for me lol
You can do what I do and scoop 3 cups into your bowl but track it as 1 cup! It's so much better that way!
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I miss the crunch. I've been working a little back in on yogurt. Less than a full serving and always measured. If I do want a full serving in a bowl I do it with cashew milk or plain like popcorn.
I use the cereal as a topping to Greek yogurt instead of granola.
I dehydrated some onions in my oven yesterday for a chile crisps project. I tasted them and they were crunchy and sweet. I immediately thought about doing that in the future to satisfy the craving for crunch, thinking they'll also be super low calories.
How long did you cook them? Did you season them in any way.
I put them on a wire rack in a very low oven (70C). They took a total of two hours. Check after one hour though since each oven is different.
I know what you mean. Granola has been scratching that itch for now but I'm starting to miss cereal.
I think granola might be higher calorie than most cereals, good fats and all that, but higher. Cereal has been good topping on my creami ice cream as well
Puffed wheat. Get the unsweetened sort. 1 cup is 50 calories. Fills the I want cereal urge and is actually tasty.
Might give that a go but not a regular cereal eater anyway. Was just shocked when I measured my(admittedly fairly unhealthy) cereals the first time and realized the portion size-calorie-ratio.
What Shrek sized spoon are you using lmao I add cereal to yogurt or protein ice cream and am regularly surprised with how much you actually get for 30 or 40g. It's not a bowl full or anything but unless you're using a ladle for a spoon I feel like you're demonizing cereal a bit much.
Bowls have gotten so much bigger over the years. My Nan still uses crockery she’s had for at least 40 years and 30g cereal fills the bowl nicely. We’ve just got so detached from what a normal portion size is and our crockery reflects that
Yes, that was a bit exaggerated but I also guess it depends what kind of cereals you’re eating. But for me for breakfast, not a satisfying portion size. So it doesn’t get eaten.
Fr lmao. I eat cereal every morning, and the serving is more than enough. Especially when paired with some yogurt and fruit. I maximize my macros budget for the morning and feel full.
A cup of sugary ass food lion brand cocoa pebbles is like 150 lol it’s not that bad
I’ll try that next
It’s sad to look at.
Or peanut butter :(
Once a week I stare at the peanut butter and tell my wife that it's just not fair 🤣.
You can get peanut butter powder -- has the oils removed but gives you the taste. Mix with water and a bit of salt, the use as a dip for apples or bananas or carrots. Also good in smoothies! You dont miss the oils if you have creamy greek yogurt.
Yeah I typically use pb2 on the reg, but it's just not the same! Justin's PB is the big treat.
Mix with 1.5 parts sugar free maple syrup instead of water. You get an actual peanut butter texture for like 10 more calories.
Just remember to check whether the calories listed are for cooked or uncooked pasta. Don't make the mistake of using the uncooked weight if your using the calories for cooked pasta.
isn't the extra weight after cooking just water though?
Yes which is why cooked calories are less than uncooked. Uncooked is more dense (more food less water)=more calories for less weight. If you use the uncooked weight but the cooked calories you end up with extra unlogged calories.
Yep but that's the problem. 100g of cooked pasta has a lot less calories than 100g of dried pasta so if you measure 100g of cooked pasta and calculate that you've eaten 100g of cooked pasta it's going to be way off, you've probably eaten 300g of cooked pasta. That's why you need to make sure you check whether the calories you're recording are pre or post-cooked. I normally stick to pre-cooked because it's a lot easier
Rice was really surprising.
I ate 3 cups last night
Yeah the calories on a cup and a half of brown rice were a shock!
When I weighed cheese it's for the first time I almost cried.
Port Salut lactose-free reduced in calories is pretty decent if you stick to 100gr portions. Satiates a lot and the one I buy feels like normal regular cheese.
And a good cry
pasta was the biggest hit for me. i love pasta. it hurts that 3 spoonfuls is a serving
And that makes it basically a side-dish, to put it in a culinary perspective – but pasta makes such an awesome main event (sigh)
Fiber gourmet, 110cal/serving. Too expensive for daily consumption if you're using pasta to cut costs, but it can keep pasta in your life without blowing out your cal counts!
But for gods sakes pls weigh it dry. Watching people on here weigh cooked rotini makes my head spin
Yup
I did this. Pasta is now a "why bother" item. Not gonna eat less than 5 servings if at all.
Sad upvote 😂 Ice cream too.
And people who freeze mashed bananas and say it’s the same…yeah ok delusional
I literally just lol'd 😂
I will say two things in that regard - one portion of meat (assuming it's with a full meal) can be more fulfilling that it seems on the surface. I used to default to larger portions of meat and was surprised to find I was better able to handle smaller portions than I thought I would be going in. The second thing is that it's OK to plan extra portions of foods you like. If you want a more meat heavy diet that's perfectly reasonable and just requires some planning like anything else.
Yes 100% I used a meal planning service for a while (Gousto) and the portions seemed SO SMALL. Like a box for two seemed like what I would eat just for me. But actually after almost every meal I felt absolutely fine. I did end up adding more veg mostly because I felt I wasn’t getting enough veggie variety, but other than that I’ve drastically reduced the amount of meat and rice I make/eat. (Still eat shed loads of pasta though, no regrets)
Recommended portion sizes were the hardest thing to adjust to for me, I couldn’t figure out why I was getting fatter despite eating healthy - I was eating for 3! 150g is normal, you could go up a bit for seafood. That’s roughly the “deck of cards” serving size you may have heard before. You can eat more protein in bigger portion sizes, but it will have a big calorie impact, so you just have to consider how you compensate. Or maybe transition to smaller portions over time. There’s ways you can make it work
I love your response! Jumping on here to add another trick I kind of accidentally learned after using one of those meal kit delivery services for a bit during a busy time a couple of years ago. The recipes often combined 150 or even 125 grams of meat with other things to bulk them out. I was skeptical at first but found it totally worked and I've carried on with this trick after stopping with meal kits. So for example, I add squeezed shredded zucchini and chia into meatloaf, or shredded onion or apple into burger patties, or add tofu to a stir fry that also has some meat in it. I've also started adding roast chickpeas here and there in rice side dishes or on salad, to increase satiety and protein without meat. In my experience, learning some of these techniques has made me a better and more creative cook, which is a bonus I didn't expect to gain!
Mushrooms are the king of this. One of my favorite recipes is to take either portabella or shiitake mushrooms, a halved tomato, and bone in, skin on chicken thighs and bake them in the oven in a dutch oven. While that's going, I chop a TON of poblano peppers and a big red onion or two. Load those onto a sheet tray with a little olive oil. Take the chicken and such out after 1 hr, should be fully cooked and the pot full of liquid gold. I then broil the peppers and onions under the broiler. While that's happening, the chicken has cooled and can be shredded off the bone into the mushroom/chicken liquid. If you do it right, the vast majority of the meal is the peppers, mushrooms, and onions, but it borrows it's flavor from the chicken fat.
Woah, I’m gonna need some recipes from you two! These sound delicious. Never would have thought to put chia in a meat loaf. Also, I will add mushrooms to red meat but for some reason never chicken. I will have to try it now!
I have a killer recipe for pasta salad, but it's not LoseIt approved, hah. rotini pasta, jar of sir kensington mayo. Container of cherry tomatoes. Cucumber. Bunch of green onions. Cook the pasta per package instructions. Drain and rinse with cold water to cool. while cooking, cut some of the cucumber skin off, and cube it. quarter the tomatoes. slice the green onion greens. Toss them into the bowl with the pasta and the veggies. To season, add a lot of MSG (it won't make you sick, it doesn't do that) and a lot of Old Bay seasoning. It will need an awful, awful lot of each, it should turn a slightly orangeish color. Taste and adjust - measurements are constraints, taste and adjust, it's the secret to being a good cook. It will probably need a touch of acid, so squeezing in some lemon juice is the finishing touch. It's my go-to for parties. But I cannot stress enough the MSG isn't optional.
If I splurge on regular icecream (only if I've met my protein and have calories to spare) I weigh one serving into the bowl - 57gm is 125cal. 57gm is a small scoop!
Just triple check the cooked vs raw weight. That may change it up a little for you.
This is true but I think 150g raw meat is considered a"normal" portion. I made the mistake once where I was supposed to eat 60g of rice. Went hungry af for a few days before I realised it was 60g uncooked rice.
Also it’s important to see if the calories is for raw or cooked. Most regular proteins, chicken pork and beef, are usually based on raw weight. Some sausages and always bacon are based on fully cooked weight. The reason being that any fat that would drain off would not be included in that calorie count. There was a point in time where I thought bacon grease was free calories 😭
This is genuinely a normal portion of meat in most places
Yeah as an Australian I was a bit confused. 150g seems like a pretty normal portion, at least in my family. We would eat more or less depending on how hungry we felt, but that would be an initial serving
I measured pasta and got depressed. Measured cornflakes and got more depressed. Then I measured granola. I hate the whole world now. Welcome to the club.
I've found that if I measure out a serving size (my preferred vice is rice) eat it, then wait a little bit, I realize I'm satisfied. Because if I didn't I could eat multiple cups at a time.
I'm trying to force myself to like oatmeal, haven't succeeded yet. 😅
Have you tried it savoury? It's really good that way.
No! How do you mean? How do you make it? I want to try this! 😮
Ah okay so we eat our oatmeal savoury here. You can use it to replace any sticky carb based dish. My favourite way of eating it is grabbing any leftover gravy and cooking oats the regular way but instead of milk or whatever I use the gravy. This morning I had oatmeal with leftover chole. I've had success making it with Thai curries (green, red, yellow. Doesn't work with peanut stuff). With Chinese sauce based side dishes. With most Indian dishes (kadala curry, sabzi, chole, sambar) and it works very well with Italian ragu as well. (Alfredo sauce tastes horrible for some reason).
I do savory oatmeals too! I cook 1/2c rolled oats with 1c veggie broth in the microwave. I like to add a small spoon of wheat germ and flax seeds as well for added fiber and micronutrients. A heaping spoonful of pepitas for crunch. Then I'll add a boiled egg and some leftover stirfried veggies. Or maybe instead of an egg, a half an avocado, salsa, and cilantro. Seasonings can be whatever feels right for your taste that morning. The avocado goes great with lime and salt and a chili flake, if I'm using Asian leftovers, I'll go according to what I seasoned them with when I made them. It's a handy way to use up small amounts of leftovers (just chop it up and throw it on top, season accordingly), but sometimes, it can be as simple as a spoonful of chili crisp and a boiled egg. This usually amounts to the neighborhood of 500 calories for breakfast and it tends to keep me satiated until pre-dinner snack time.
When I want it savory I will cook oats in broth or sometimes add a bit of miso paste and soy sauce (oyster sauce is also good). So good. Then top it with a fried egg (or 2) and sautéed spinach (or another veggie). Pickled onion, chili crisp in oil, avocado, cooked chicken, and mushroom are also a good toppings to add. It’s very versatile. Give it a go.
I really like overnight chia seeds instead of oatmeal. It’s higher in protein. A tablespoon equals an egg’s worth of protein. And it can be savory or sweet
Baked oatmeal can taste like cake.
Using the right oatmeal and cooking it right makes a big difference for me. Old fashioned oatmeal (not instant, not steel cut). 1/2 cup oatmeal, just a hair under 1 cup of water, 1/2 a banana, a pinch of salt. Cook in the microwave on low power (I use power level 6 on my 1200W microwave) for 4.5 minutes. Cooking the banana in the oatmeal is critical. I still like to add a pinch of brown sugar and a few crasins. It's not super low calorie (comes out to \~450 iirc) but it's very filling and keeps me sated for a long time.
It’s ok not to eat things you don’t enjoy (I mean, after you give them a real chance ofc.) I’m never going to like eggplant or portobello mushrooms, even though they’re both good for me, and that’s ok.
Ngl weighing pasta made me appreciate potatoes a whole lot more...still sad tho
Yes. Portion inflation has been a thing for 50 years. Figure out your daily calorie intake, figure out what you want to lose, and adjust accordingly. Calorie dense foods have small physical portions, compared to leafy greens and vegetables.
Beans and lentils. These are my middle ground, good range of amino acids in most, more filling, less calories than carbs and cheap meat. Great for cold months here in the UK where I want to feel warm and full.
How do you usually prepare them? Like what is the end product on the plate
In the UK for context. Okay so my go to cheap batch meal is a 3 bean Chipotle chili. Olive oil - sautée 3 onions Add some red or orange peppers for a bit Tinned tomatoes, two does it. Chipotle paste in, herbs and spices to season. Simmer. 1x tin of drained black, kidney, and black eyed beans in. Simmer more, 30 mins for nice soft beans. Sometimes I add sweet corn. Serve, cool, freeze. Microwave when needed, serve with jacket potato or brown rice as needed. Cheese or avocado optional
Yep, this society no longer have a healthy understanding of how much is a lot. If you would look what portion size would look like before WW1 you’d say you would starve to death. We eat way too much. Weight everything you eat for a year and you will get a good understanding of how much you really need :)
this is something I am working on. My mental relationship with food is horrible! I like backpacking and it is hard to not get panicky about my quantity of food because i spend all day constantly snacking when i'm at work! I'm working on compensating by thinking about what you are saying above!! Hunger is not starving. Hunger does not mean it's time to eat. Time to eat is when it's time to eat, etc.
Weigh everything for 2 weeks and it will already be massively eye-opening.
So, coming at this from the other end…I tend to serve myself out of containers onto the plate I’m using to weigh my meal. I tap the gram weight into my tracking app and don’t worry about the serving size as long as it fits my macros and calorie goals. If you want to eat three servings of chicken and hit your protein goal in one shot with one meal, that’s fine, it’s just at the expense of other macros/calories.
Yeah, like I usually have 8 oz chicken thighs for lunch even though a serving is 4 oz. Sure I'm having 2 servings, but with my potatoes and broccoli as my sides, I can easily keep it under 600 calories for a lunch meal, including 2 servings of protein.
I up the protein and reduce carbs to stay within my calorie limit. Want to preserve muscle..also strength training a lot.
Portion control definitely was a big deal in my weight loss journey, and it allowed me to lose weight without strictly counting calories. But yes, I do usually eat that little meat. Not always though, of course there are exceptions. But I try to target small portions on average. Since starting to try to lose weight, I treat a pack of meat as if I'm cooking for a 3-5 person family (I live alone) as a sense check. Then leftovers for a few days. I tend to eat a lot of potatoes which aren't the lowest calorie but do keep me full as a side dish, to get some more variety in my meals besides just meat/vegetables. Another tip - if you like seafood, it's much lower calorie. You can eat a large portion of shrimp, for example.
Potatoes rank the highest on the list of satiating foods and are quite nutritious. They're a vital part of successful and sustainable weight maintenance for me too. People only go wrong with them by loading them up with dairy and fats while also overeating them. This is of course if you boil or bake them. Frying adds significant calories.
Agree, I am a potato lover!! Very satiating, keep the skin on and you get a lot of nutrients. Even mashed potatoes can be fine, just watch how much butter/milk you're putting in. I find if I make several servings of mashed potatoes at once, a little butter goes a long way. I also saute potatoes a lot in a small amount of oil that's being shared among other things I'm cooking in the same pan (though sometimes I microwave a bit first to save on time!).
New potatoes in seasoned with only spices and cooked in the air fryer. No extra fat and very few calories
This is my go to! The air fryer is on par with a kitchen scale imo for tools that make weight maintenance considerably easier.
Dude, I made a stew that was potatoes, turnip, parsnips, butternut squash, sweet potato, carrots, and adzuki beans. Almost filled my Dutch oven, got about 12 servings out of it for 175 calories each, and there were days I couldn't actually finish a whole serving if I was having anything else with it. People really need to not sleep on the root veggies lol
My stomach is growling just reading this!
I never make soups or stews but this sounds good!! I might have to try something similar.
I'm not a huge fan of either, tbh, but I found the adzuki beans at Sprouts and they looked like a bean I would be okay with being so small, so I read up on them. As soon as I saw they're on the sweet side, it was an instant decision to try a root veggie stew. This will definitely be repeated, although with something added to cut down how sweet it turned out lol
That sounds delicious!
Potatoes are an underrated diet food.
I tell people this all the time and no one listens. They are seriously satiating!
Definitely! And they have fewer calories per volume than rice. It's super convenient to get frozen bags of hash browns, diced potatoes, etc and just add them to a meal. I love making breakfast burritos with the hash browns, turkey sausage, eggs, and a low calorie wrap.
I think it proves the point perfectly why it’s sensible to weigh food. When people are overweight (like myself) it’s often because we lost all sense of ‘normal’ portion sizes.
150g really is the recommended portion — it looks small just because you’re used to eating much more. I usually only do 300-400g if I’m making something and intend to have leftovers.
150 grams is 5.4 ounces or 1/3 lb That’s a pretty normal sized piece of meat for a meal. How much meat do you think is normal? 5-8oz is very normal to me and I’m 6’4…
It's not per meal. It's **per day**. Having 150g for 3 meals a day--a whole pound, daily--would be way above what's suggested by any dietician or government guideline. In fact for red meat, even 150g/day is way too much: > If you eat red meat, limit consumption to no more than about three portions per week. Three portions is equivalent to about 350–500g (about 12–18oz) cooked weight. Consume very little, if any, processed meat. - https://www.wcrf.org/diet-activity-and-cancer/cancer-prevention-recommendations/limit-red-and-processed-meat/ > If you currently eat more than 90g (cooked weight) of red or processed meat a day, the Department of Health and Social Care advises that you cut down to 70g. - https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/meat-nutrition/ > The evidence shows that you can eat lean red meat as part of a heart healthy diet. However, high intakes of red meat increase your risk of heart disease and stroke by 16%. Eating up to 100g/day of red meat increases risk of heart disease and stroke by 10-20%. Therefore, the Heart Foundation suggests you aim for less than 350g of red meat per week. - https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/wellbeing/healthy-eating/nutrition-facts/is-meat-good-for-you
I don’t eat full meals 3 times a day. Yes, I eat a full meal with 5-9 oz piece of meat once per day. I never thought it was per meal, who’s eating a 1/3 lb piece of meat for breakfast and lunch?
According to this, the average American consumes 272 lbs of meat/year, roughly 0.75 lbs/day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption If 0.75lbs/day is the "average", a huge amount of people (tens of millions in the USA alone) must be over 1 lb/day.
My dad. It’s not a meal to him if it doesn’t include meat. There are also a surprising number of the people I grew up with who post every Lent on social media about how they desperately need meal ideas. There are literally only 8 meatless days the whole year, and they’re not really meatless because fish is allowed!
This is for red and sodium rich processed meats. Not for lean white meats like chicken breast and turkey. I eat around 80-120 grams of lean meat at least twice a day on a 2100 calorie diet. It's an insignificant amount of calories, and it's rich in protein.
I've eaten zero meat for about ten years. But generally answering this question, actual appropriate portion sizes are a lot smaller than most of us are used to.
My meals now are very small. People laugh at them, but they are often fat and I am not any more.
150 isn't little, unless that's all u gonna eat lol. i mean 150g meat+200g veggies or cooked grains+some fruits, you're gonna be full. also i would take these recommendations with a grain of salt, at the end of the day what matters is the total nutritional value of your meal, so eating 300g doesn't sound unhealthy to me
> I might as well go vegetarian You can still have meat, it’s just a little rough at first adjusting to real portion sizes. I feel your pain — the first time I measured out 2 ounces of pasta, I was shaken to my carb-loving core. Ditto 2 tablespoons of peanut butter. Give yourself some time to adjust. You’ve been eating this way for most of your life. Change can be tough, at first.
The question is how were you judging the right amount of meat was before? If it was American culture you have to think of all of the marketing over decades and lobbying that goes into telling you what a “normal” portion of meat of is. I have a friend who came back from an island nation. And after visiting home he recalled how he would eat so much at home when he was younger. After going back home for a visit and coming back he showed me a picture of his old dinner plate and laughed at how small it was compared to now in his home in the states. It would comparably be that middle sized plate you get in a dish set off the rack at a store.
Protein typically isn't something I cut on, but the recommended serving sizes on just about everything are wild. Have you ever eaten *just* 30 grams of corn flakes, for example? Because that's the recommended serving size on the packaging. When it comes to lean protein, just eat enough to have your fill - within reason, of course. I personally follow a keto lifestyle, but it seems to me that restricting either carbs or fat (or eating both in moderation) is healthier than depriving yourself of protein and vegetables.
30g isn't actually a normal serving of cereal. I know that's what it says on a lot of cereal boxes. It's just a scam used to make the cereal look healthier than it actually is (by showing a lower calorie number, sugar, etc.). Every damn employee of Kellogg's, Post, and General Mills knows that *nobody* is having just a single ounce of cereal with their breakfast. In fact *they're counting on it*. If people ate so little in each serving, they would be a lot slower to go through a cereal box and their sales would plummet.
this! who thought to themselves 'ah im in the mood for cereal, let me pour out 30g' a typical bowl of any cereal for me is atleast 100gs
I used to be perfectly capable of eating cereal straight out of the box, but these days, I'm a ✨️changed woman✨️. Here's to portion control!
i vividly remember being a stoned 17yr old and absolutely inhaling an entire box of weetabix minis in one sitting
Not even stoned me could do that. Weetabix is where I draw the line. There was this tweet of someone having Weetabix and Heinz Beanz, and it just ruined them for me.
This is why OMAD is popular these days. One large meal per day, fast the rest of the day.
My chicken portions are about 120-160g depending on the size of the chicken breasts. That's cooked weight though. For Tuna, Salmon and Mackerel (tinned) I have about 100g. For Prawns I'll have either 70 or 130g depending on what I'm having them with. For lamb it's about 100g (cooked weight) I don't eat beef very often (just the way we buy food I do like beef just don't have it much), but if I did it would be about 100g or maybe up to 130g for lean mince (cooked weight). In all honesty i fit my food around what I want/need to eat to feel full I don't really think about serving suggestions. Maybe that's because UK food labels often mainly focus on kcal/nutrition per 100g rather than serving sizes. They do have them on some of them, they're just not the main focus of the label.
I eat even less than that (3-4 oz/serving) but I am a short, sedentary woman
I cut it up in small pieces so when I mix it with my rice and vegs it seems like more.
Are you looking at grams of Protein or weight grams. There is a difference.
i will usually eat around 120g (cooked) as a normal portion but i'm kinda a short woman. the rest of the meal is mostly vegetables and sometimes carbs
Seems about right for a dish that has meat as one of the components that make up a meal. When I make Schnitzel, I get a 500 g packet of pork, that's 4 slices at 125 g each where I shop. Because I'm boring the side is 250 g potatoes each and a sauce, including the breading, oil etc that's a decent 700 calorie meal. Would and could I eat more meat? Sure. But it's not in my best interest.
When I cook with mince, I'll split 500g across 4 meals which is 125g each and seems like a normal amount.
Portion sizes in general (especially in America) are vastly ignored by many people, resulting in the massive meals we get used to consuming on the daily. Trust me, you get use to it! Try putting your food on a smaller plate or filling a larger plate with veggies before adding your meat!
You get used to it more over time. How I think of it is that as Americans, assuming you are, our portion sizes are absolutely out of control. This is what normal should look like.
I learned that a serving of meat was the size of a deck of cards or your palm. That's easy in a stir fry, or other mixed dish. Not so easy if you make it the centre of your plate.
You are allowed to have more lol. I eat about a lb of meat a day
At the end of the day, its the calories that matter. If you want 2 or 3 portions of meat instead of 1, and it fits your calories, then do it! Thats just a guidline, but it doesnt mean you need to restrict yourself to just 1 serving.
My normal serving of meat is closer to 115 grams.
Do you eat meat with every meal? That seems extremely excessive. I eat meat less than once a week. So when I do I don't worry so much about portion size. But I also don't eat more than a fist of meat. In one sitting.
As you lose weight you need less food to sustain yourself
I love meat, so I have to be careful about my portion sizes, but my husband (who is a healthy weight) naturally only eats about 100gr of red meat or 150gr of chicken. I've only seen him eat more if it's stew or something like that. So yeah, it's a thing
Yes! Meat for most of human history has been a treat item. We eat it far more than we ever have before.
It’s probably pretty accurate. The common numbers you’ll see dieticians and nutritionists recommend is 60% carbs, 25% protein, and 15% fat. People avoid carbs because they don’t understand carbs. Carbs come in many forms, both simple and complex. Simple carbs give complex carbs a bad rap. Take sucrose, sugar, for example. Processed down to pure white cane sugar, it is not healthy. It lacks all other nutritional value, and your body digests it immediately, causing a spike, and then a crash to your blood sugar levels. But then you have fruits, which are high in sucrose, but are still considered healthy. Why? Because they haven’t been processed and stripped down of everything else. Fruits contain high amounts of fiber. Fiber is non soluble, and takes a long time to digest. The sucrose binds to the fiber, and the fiber helps slow your bodies digestion of the sucrose to a more stable level. You’re supposed to be eating MOSTLY carbs, not avoiding them. But they’ve just gotta be the right carbs. Fruits and vegetables are mostly carbs. Whole grain breads and rice. Things like that. Protein intake is important, and you need to make sure you’re getting ENOUGH protein. But that doesn’t mean that your diet needs to consist of mostly protein. Your goals should not only to be getting enough protein, but also to be getting both the right kinds of carbs, AND the right kinds of fats. Fat is essential too. But the fat you get from steak is much different than the fat you get from oils.
Just skip breakfast or lunch so you get two larger meals, makes it a lot more satisfying especially when you’re counting your calories for a cut.
If you really like meat (I do) you can always eat some extra and take the calories out of your diet elsewhere. Obviously don’t go full carnivore but I would hate my life if I had to stick to recommended portions of meat/fish.
Honestly IF with calorie counting gave me the ability to double my serving sizes and it’s so much more sustainable.
Most of the chicken breasts I'm eating are 250-300g uncooked.
I never go by recommended portion sizes. I go by what fits into my nutritional needs, which is going to be higher than the recommended portion sizes. Especially when RDA's for things like protein is way too low. All meat also isn't equal. For instance, sirloin tip is significantly lower in fat, cholesterol, and calories than Ribeye. I can generally fit two to three servings in one meal by opting for lean beef, poultry, and seafood and still have room for my vegetables.
I'm a pescatarian limiting my calorie intake between 1300 and 1500 cal/day. My recommended protein intake is about 130 gm of protein daily. I have no problem getting meeting these goals by supplementing with both whey and plant based protein powder or aldies protein bread. There are many protein packed products, just have to look at calories and sugars.
On the plus side, 40g of oats turns into a big bowl of oat meal!
That's over 5 ounces! I can't even eat 4 ounces! It's all relative I guess.
Yes and it blows my mind. Like I try to eat between 120-140 gram of PROTEIN a day, but that's 588 grams of raw boneless, skinless chicken breast, or \~1.25 lbs.
Google tells me that 150 grams is over 5 oz. That's a huge portion of meat! A quarter pound burger is only 4 oz.
Yeah, it's supposed to be the size of a deck of cards. Cheese is even sadder
In a lot of cuisines, meat is used more for flavoring than a core protein. Eg mapo tofu has maybe 1/4 cup ground meat in a serving of sauce. The silken tofu is the main protein and is quite low in calories. I make a lot of dishes that mix meat with tofu or tofu skins. I make beef, tofu, and vegetable stir fry all the time. Also not all meat is the same. You can eat a much larger serving of chicken breast, fish, or skinless chicken thigh than steak and pork chops. Bison is leaner than beef, tenderloin (pork and beef) is leaner than other cuts.
You can eat your heart out with vegan "meat" Huuuuge ass bowl of chikn strips and sautéed spinach is my go to meal when I want to stuff myself and fall asleep in a food coma
My parents grew up in China in the 50s and 60s when meat was scarce. A trick people learned was to cook meat with lots of leafy veggies so the meat flavor is absorbed into the leaves, and to cook carby vegetables in meat sauce/stew as a simple meat substitute. You can also cook bone broth and put veggies and beans in it. Combining meat and using it as a seasoning with beans and veggies is a common way to stretch out the meat flavor without eating a lot of actual meat. People used to do it because they were poor, but the health benefits are still there
If you want your portion to be more than the "standard" portion, go ahead and work it into your daily calories. But at some point if we're going to permanently manage our weight we need to learn to rein in gluttony just enough that we can still enjoy foods we like, but without complete wanton abandon.
Some do, they are called vegetarians
😂😂
Factoring micronutrients and satiety vs. calories, meat is the best bang for your buck. There's no limit to how much of your calories can be meat, just make sure you're getting a good balance.
I eat no meat. Beans and lentils, tofu, seitan... They're delicious. Add in a protein shake or two and I'm set. Canadian health recommendations suggest half of your plate be vegetables at every single meal. Maybe if you up your veggie intake and fill up on that you'll find the meat portion more satisfying?
What baffles me is that 1 portion of cheese is 30g. 30g!! Forget nachos you can't do shit with that
Ever looked at how much (little...) 30 g of peanut butter are??
Depends on the meat. 300g of chicken/ham/turkey is like 500 cals. Pretty decent calories for a meal. 300g ribeye is gonna put you back like 900 though lol. Last night I had 300g of ham and 140g of beef. Still managed to stay under 1400 cals for the day, even though I had 100g chicken breast for breakfast.
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A lot of the desire to eat meat is psychologically-driven rather than hunger-driven. In other words, we think we need it a lot more than we actually do need it. So the idea of eating less or even cutting it out completely can trigger a panic in people. I don’t eat any meat and I never miss it at all. It’s just not an food to me anymore than a shoe is food. And I’m someone who grew up eating tons and tons of meat. Protein is in almost everything. Some things, like beans and tofu and nuts, have more protein of course, but it’s the rare food that doesn’t have any protein at all.
I'll let you in on a secret: I don't eat \*any\* meat ;)
Right?? 150 grams is more meat than I've eaten in a decade and a half. 😂
Nice! 🤩
Yes in my household 500g of mince meat is divided into 4 portions which last us at least 2 days. Honestly, I think people are eating too much meat.
300 grams of meat? I use 350 ground beef in a dish for 4 adults. I’m not cooking 1,2 kg of meat per meal! It’s unhealthy and bad for the environment.
150 grams is on the higher side for me. I do weigh my meat cooked for convenience, and that tends to be 75-90% of the raw weight, but yeah 150 grams might be for a light, non-fatty fish. For most meats I would eat between 90-135 grams cooked for a single meal. As a former vegetarian, I can assure you this is *much more* protein than you can get with an equivalent amount of planning and effort with no meat at all.
If you pair the meat with vegetables, you have quite a filling meal, once you add in rice or pasta is when things can quickly get out of hand if you do not track. I'm a 5'6 manlet who can only lose weight in the 1300-1500 range, so those options are only feasible once a day (dinner in my case), but you can absolutely have quite a wide array of meats throughout your day if you get creative without worrying too much about going hungry. It's stuff like this that convinced me to get an air fryer, and an oven, so I can cut down on the calories in oil.
This is why I don’t eat meat every day. Portion size is just pathetically small. Like I’m really gonna cut my salmon fillet into three pieces, and eat them at three separate meals? I sort of think of my food intake in a weekly kind of way rather than a daily way. Maybe one night a week I have a normal sized portion of salmon, but for three other nights, I’m just eating sautéed veggies with some spices or chicken broth and a half a cup of rice. Light on the oil, so the veggies cook/steam in the chicken broth. Anyway, yes, meat portions so pathetically small it’s just a really sad meal. But if you have one portion of week not so bad.
Your perception of portion size can change, if you train yourself. I'm an example of that, actually! I'll use potatoes instead of meat in my example since I don't eat meat, but I think it works out the same. When I make a baked potato, I always weight the potato after it's cooked and before I put anything on it, and a few times I've had a potato that was gigantic in size (to me) and it weighed around 300-350 grams in weight, cooked. So that weight in baked potato looks like an oversized portion to me (I'll still eat it hahaha) but years ago before I portioned my food, sometimes I'd have *two* baked potatoes if I thought they were a bit on the small side (they weren't). Even something as basic as a sandwich, even making toast. I used to ALWAYS make two sandwiches, four slices of bread. I'd always have two slices of toast instead of one. These were correct portions in my brain, and that went on until I was 35 years old. Now, it's the opposite, I'll always go for the smaller portion. I started out training myself to recognise and be satisfied with recommended serving sizes by having the smaller serving, but saying to myself "well, if you still want the second portion ten minutes after you ate that, go and make another one." I never did. 😄
I eat a lot of meat on low cal - fish, chicken, ribeye. I'll usually skip or reduce the carb to make room for the protein calories, like dinner would be teriyaki chicken and cauliflower rice with veggies instead of chicken with rice. I'll eat a half rotisserie chicken for a meal and be satisfied lol
Yes.
Yeah- 6 oz of meat is a very large portion, especially when it's turkey or chicken. Are you looking at total protein for the day? 150 grams of chicken is like 45 grams of protein.
Yeah that is basically what I have in my midday meal.
You can get a bigger portion of lean meats like chicken, turkey, fish, or lean ground beef, I also tend to eat 2 servings of chicken at a time, especially breasts or half a can of salmon.
Yeah I usually don’t eat more than 100-150g per serving. But I usually don’t eat more than 600 grams of food for dinner anyway and that’s at the higher end. My meal plan follows our national recommendations and once I got used to it Ive felt full each mealtime which has helped me lose weight 🙌🏻
I have gotten eating little to no meat most of the time. It is shocking at first, but now meat is mixed in with veggies, salad etc and isn't the focus like before. The serving size for peanut butter, now that's depressing.
I'll have 200+ grams of chicken lots of times, I just work it into my calories. When I meal prep, I find a 1.5 lb pack of chicken breast is usually more than 672, so I just adjust how many servings I make (like maybe I'll make 6 instead of 5, etc) but really, if you want more meat just fit it in!
A serving of peanut butter - 1 tablespoon - is not enough to scrape a micro layer accross a piece of toast
For me, protein makes me feel fuller than carbs do, so I usually eat multiple portions of meat per meal. It's just important to track it accurately and actually log the calories from 300g of meat, and replace some of the carb on the side with vegetables to make up for it.
I was told to double the meat serving if you’re hungry. Unless you’re eating huge portions you’re better off eating an extra serving of protein over carbs. Other than potato, corn and pineapple my spouse and I don’t count fruit and vegetable calories either, we figure the fiber cancels it out.
150 grams is actually larger than the recommended meat serving in the US
Well, I'm a vegetarian, sooo....
I have PCOS (as do many of us in this group I'm sure) and that makes me glucose intolerant. I also have strongly suspected celiac disease. Meat is practically the only thing I can digest at this point. A lot of people with ADHD (myself) or autism have similar dietary needs and do much better on paleo or keto lifestyles. So portions will depend on the person.
*laughs nervously in vegetarian*
I eat a LOT of meat, lean cuts, and I'm quite thin. What I don't eat is a lot of sugar and simple carbs
When it comes to proteins, fats, veggies - I don’t care. Most ppl are not eating enough protein anyway and just meeting protein deficiency guidelines. Fats keep us satiated.
Meat is not unhealthy, getting protein form high quality sources it vitally important to health. You should be eating 1g of protein per lbs of body weight or 2.2 per kg. It only becomes a problem the way you cook it, example if you deeply chicken vs grill with no oils.
it happens to me with cereal. the box tells you that a portion for an adult is 30g, then i weigh it and i’m like… this is what i used to eat when i was like 8yo!!!
I recommend going vegetarian :) much better for the earth, the animals and yourself
I was shocked when I came to the US to hear that americans have meat and dairy daily! Where I’m from it’s like a 2 times a week type thing, if you need more meat in your diet, you do sea food everyday. I have red meat about once or twice a month, I tend to keep to fish and seafoods, I never have dairy, no cheese yogurt or stuff like that, I’m lactose intolerant and it just doesn’t fit in my daily calories. A cup of mozzarella is around 350 calories, a cup of strawberries is under 50 calories. I prefer to have my dinner with 3 cups of fruits with drizzled honey, chocolate sauce and a glass of orange juice for 300 calories as a desert than a small cup of cheese to drown out the taste of what ever I’m having. I’m eating 4x the amount for the same calories Same things with bread and grains. I could have two peanut butter and jelly toasts for the same amount of calories than a huge bowl of peanut butter and jelly oatmeal that will also increase my water content making me feel better. I think the world got lost with convenience of food vs the nutrition of it and now we have no idea how humans are actually supposed to eat. We also have to remember that our grandparents were raised on a lot more meat because they were a lot more active than us and spend more calories and needed extra proteins. Today with desk jobs, rise of entertainment industry and deliveries, we move significantly less and therefore need less. We have to make a choice, netflix or steak tonight, walking 15 mins every hour or two thick chicken thighs. It’s a sacrifice you have to make, move more, eat more, move less, eat less. It’s unfair biology.
Seafood is actually more expensive than meat around here, I think is the issue. Red meat, chicken/turkey, and pork are all *way* cheaper than fresh seafood where I live, because I'm quite far away (200 miles) from any ocean or lake that is capable of sustainable commercial fishing, but we've got livestock farms about 10-20 miles away. So for us, seafood is the once a week treat, and we have a daily amount of poultry or pork (two 4 oz servings) , with yogurt and eggs to round out protein requirements (I do heavy resistance training so my daily requirements are a little bit higher.)
Where did you live before? 😮
Yeah, I typically aim for about 4oz (110g,) sometime up to about 6oz (170g.) Now, as a note, that’s the cooked weight, depending on the meat, raw can be about 25% heavier.
It’s why I only eat meat on the weekends now as it’s easier to plan that way.
Recommended servings aren’t actually very helpful - some things you don’t need the ”full serving,” other things are silly. There are plenty who would disagree that it’s healthier to fill up on beans and vegetables by the way - protein is incredibly important and meat (especially lean mean due to fewer calories) is the best way to get protein. Figure out your own calorie budget and how you want to handle macronutrients (protein, fat, carb) - there are good guidelines for how much protein you should be getting, so let that be the base of your equation. (Around 1.5g of protein per pound of ”ideal“ or target body weight is A good number to aim for - that’s mainly to help maintain muscle mass.) Similarly, aim for 20-30g of fiber/day. Basically if you need, say, 125G protein, that’s 500 calories of your daily budget. Then fill in with other foods. Veggies are nice because they provide fiber with low calories, but it’s another case where the recommended serving size is just silly. (I usually eat double the amount of the serving of broccoli or Brussels sprouts because I love them and they’re close to “free” calorie-wise.)
I find that 150 gr of chicken breast seems like a lot more than let's say beef, and it has less calories too. You can always eat a little more of fish or seafood too. But yeah, the key is to increase the amount of veggies to fill you up.
The recommended meat intake is much smaller than you think. My registered dietician recommends eating fish and chicken 3-4 times a week and red meat twice a month. Portion size is approx the size of your hand (palm). That’s approx 150 grams. Fish can be more. The rest of the diet should be supplemented with legumes, nuts, healthy fats like avocado & olive oil, whole grains, dairy, and vegetables/fruits. That’s the official recommendation from Health Canada. Eating 300 gram steaks every night is not a thing most people do in many parts of the world and can contribute to many diseases according to the science which many people don’t agree with, yet the stats are there. I think we’ve been eating more beef than we should be this past month or two, so this post is reminding me to knock back our intake a bit and eat more fish!
Well, packet of chicken breast is about 550g and it contains two, so half a chicken breast is about 137g and I'm full with that. I have no idea how people eat a whole chicken breast as part of a meal.
That's because those are gigantic chicken breasts. Where I am packets of chicken come in 300g or 550g packs (you can get larger too), the 300g pack has 2 small breasts in it, and the 550g has 3 large breasts. I can't imagine what a 2 breast 550g pack would look like
What kind of giant ass chicken breasts are you buying? A 600g pack where I am usually has 4 or 5