ONE-TWO PUNCH allows you to get serious about portion control.71 Sometimes, when you follow a diet, you’re focusing on what you eat, by cutting out food groups and not how much you eat. It’s important that you view foods a little more equally and lose the judgment. With this shift you are less likely to demonize some foods as bad and overeat foods you view as good.
OTP can be viewed as a method of portion control, sure. But portion control sounds boring and can be viewed as stressful. When I think of portion control I think of measuring, which is what you are trying to avoid. There are many factors that affect how much you eat – how it looks, smells, tastes, but also the portion you’re served and the protion in relation to the plate, bowl or the size of the container.12
There’s a tendency to think that the amount of food you’re served is the amount you should eat. None of these factors take into account your body size, your metabolic needs or how hungry you are!!! Sure, weighing and measuring food portions is an accurate reflection of what is in a food. But measuring is not always practical or fun and it can be stressful.
ONE-TWO PUNCH is trying to eliminate the need to worry about body size, metabolic needs, nutrient balance, number of calories and blah, blah, blah. Your fist and fist in OTP simplifies things for you.
Plus, by using your fists as your guide, you will be immune to the ever increasing portion sizes with the accompanying plate or container sizes. And your fists are portable. You can portion control anywhere!
Another way to think of your portions is to visualize a plate in fractions. This should be done at each meal AND snack.
Permission is a very important part of ONE-TWO PUNCH. The fist of protein can be ANY protein and the fist of carb can be ANY carbohydrate. ANY. Let’s pretend this book began by telling you that in order to be healthy, all you have to do is stop having any form of sugar — cut it out entirely.
As you are trying to read this book, cutting out sugar would be invading every sentence you read. You might be reading about hydration, but all you can think about is the sugar you have to cut out to be healthy.
Or think about the last time you went on a defined, regimented diet. There’s some excitement about trying something bright, shiny and new with all its promise, but also some nagging dread about all the things you cannot have. Eventually, the dread sets in and takes over anything that was exciting. Before long the dread is all you can think about; everything that’s not allowed on a diet. It represents an all-or-nothing mentality, which is oozing with opportunities to fail and feel deprived.
REFERENCES
71. Gibson A, Hsu M, Rangan A et al. Accuracy of haands v. household measures as portion size estimation aids. J Nutr Sci. 2016;5.
12. Herbert B, Blechert J, Hautzinger M, Matthias E, Herbert C. Intuitive eating is associated with interoceptive sensitivity. Effects on body mass index. Appetite. 2013;70:22-30.
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