Portion Sizes When Going Out to Eat

If you’re not a bodybuilder who’s getting ready for a show and on a strict diet, you probably go out to eat once and a while. Going out is great! You don’t have to cook, there’s no cleanup, and you can just sit back and relax with maybe a drink or two. When you go out, however, you no longer have complete control over the food or portion sizes. In this post, I want to touch a little on said portion sizes. 

I’m sure you’ve noticed that when you go to a restaurant, all the portion sizes of the menu items are the same. Yes, some places offer small, medium, and large options but for a considerable amount of establishments they are relatively the same. People, however, are not all the same. This is especially true between men and women, in terms of body size and lean muscle mass. 

It’s not uncommon for a couple to have a 50 to 100-pound weight difference between them. The guy, for explanation’s sake, could weigh 200-220 pounds and the girl 100-120. I’m a little weird, so when I go out to eat I take a look around and notice portion sizes and the types of oils and stuff that are being put in the food. If you’re at a dining establishment that serves large portion sizes and you’re a guy, that’s great, but if you’re a girl who’s not trying to put on any pounds then this isn’t the best scenario. It’s especially tough sometimes to stop eating halfway through a meal when your mind is programmed to finish what’s in front of you. Think back to when your parents told you to finish what was on your plate when you were a kid. It’s literally been programed into our minds since we were little children to finish the food in front of us. Going back to the explanation above of the nice couple on their date; do you think that the girl who is half the size of the guy needs the same amount of food as he does? No, probably not. Considering the amount of lean muscle mass, she could probably get away with eating half of the plate of food, and have leftovers for the next day. Lucky her, unlucky him. He’ll have to cook for himself the next day.

These large portion sizes make it difficult, especially for women, because there is not an established portion size for either gender. It would be interesting to see a restaurant menu that had distinct portion sizes for men and women. I’m sure the women’s rights activists might be up in arms about that, but objectively speaking, it may be suitable to have varying portion sizes to account for differences between people. Customers might also gain a better understanding of the importance of portion control. 

So next time you are out for dinner, or lunch, or brunch, take a look around and see if you notice this. Sometimes it’s too easy to just set your mind on autopilot when you are out to eat and not pay much attention to what’s actually on the plate in front of you, because after all you went out in the first place to not have to worry about making your meal. That’s one of the nice perks to cooking at home; you know what exactly goes into your food and control how much of it gets served. This is just a thought to consider the next time you go out. 

Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments below. 

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

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Do You Have Good Recovery Practices?

How well you can recover is just as important as how hard you can train. Finding a balance between the two is extremely crucial to performing at your peek potential. I will go as far as saying that this is not just a training concept but a universal concept that can apply to all other practices upon which you want to improve. The universal principle I am talking about here is that you can only train as hard you can recover.

That means that if you cannot fully recover from a workout, all that extra hard work you’ve done is going to waste. Ideally when we train, we expose our bodies to a stimulus that causes us to adapt. Training places stress on our tissues, like muscles and bones, creating a small breakdown of those structures. Our bodies’ response to this is to rebuild these tissues, making them stronger than before. The catch to this is that our bodies need to be ready to adapt and recover from what we’ve exposed them to. Two of the biggest factors in that contribute to how well you are going to recover are your sleep and your nutrition.

Sleep is sooooooooooo important. I cannot stress that enough when it comes to recovery. While we’re sleeping is when the body does the majority of its work towards recovery. It literally has nothing else to do during that time, so its only effort is to recover from the day, repair itself, grow, and become more resilient to the stressors we expose ourselves to. Ideally, we want to be getting between 7-9 hours a night. 

Your nutrition is another huge component of recovery. The phrase “you are what you eat” is so cliché but oh-so-true. If you eat garbage food, your body will perform and recover like garbage. Think about it this way: you don’t put $1 food into a $1,000,000 athlete. This reminds me of when I was playing baseball in college, and we would stop at fast food chains while traveling to and from games. When a whole team feels and plays like garbage, because they’re lethargic from all the crap they ate, some people wonder why their athletes aren’t performing as well as they should. I won’t get into this any further, but something is better than nothing in terms of energy needed to recover, so don’t starve yourself! I’ll stop now before I go off on a huge rant… Just try and do your best when it comes to getting the best nutrition you can.

Before you even consider taking supplements, make sure you’re addressing both of the aforementioned factors. Realistically, supplements are a small piece of the puzzle, and you need to do the big things right before worrying about other things. Work on getting enough quality sleep and eating real food that your body will use to its fullest potential to repair itself and grow. Adopting just these two habits will put you on the right track to performing your best.

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

If you enjoyed this and would like to help me out please share this article! 

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Short Term/”Lose Weight Fast” Diet and Why It Destroys Your Metabolism

Let me tell you a story. This is a story about Suzy. Suzy likes to partake in juice cleanses and diets that consist of consuming 500 calories a day. Every year Suzy goes on a diet because she’s gained back the weight she lost the previous year, and then some. She waits until she thinks she is getting “too fat” and needs to go on another diet. Every year she gains the weight back faster, and it becomes harder and harder to lose again. Over time her weight gradually trends upward, and she doesn’t understand why her diets either don’t work like they did before or fail completely (figure 1). Suzy doesn’t like to exercise frequently, and when she does, she only does cardio (because burning calories, right?). Her cardio exercises consist of 20-90 minutes on the elliptical, biking, and long distance runs. Suzy’s efforts become futile and, eventually, she can’t get the number on the scale to go down.

But why can’t Suzy lose the weight and what is going on? 

 

Suzy, over the course of the years, has slowly destroyed her metabolism. Her body has made adaptations to her low calorie diet and her cardio queen workouts that have lowered her basal metabolic rate (BMR) to a point where they are ineffective. Her body has essentially gone into survival mode and lowered her metabolism to compensate for her low calorie diet. Part of this adaptation process involves the body decreasing its muscle mass to conserve energy.

As she’s done extreme diets over the years, has not trained with weights, and Suzy’s muscle mass has almost diminished to nothing and her fat mass has gone up. This has created a discrepancy in her body composition. Your muscle mass plays a large role in regulating your BMR because muscle has high metabolic activity, even when at rest. Over the years, Suzy’s muscle mass has gone down, along with her BMR, and she has dug herself a hole that becomes increasingly harder to get out off, hence her weight rising steadily.

There are many other negative outcomes of this trend, for example, insulin resistance, lower bone density, and a lack of essential nutrients that you need in your diet, just to name a few. What are the odds your body is getting all the nutrients it needs to function well, and at its full capacity, on such a low calorie diet? 

How do you get out of this cycle? 

Simply put, you need to have a well-rounded training regimen that includes both strength training and aerobic exercise (pick your favorites), in combination with a good diet. The strength training helps maintain or increase your muscle mass, therefore increasing your BMR. The aerobic portion keeps your cardiovascular system healthy, in addition to contributing to weight control.  Finally, a good diet, consisting of whole foods, that helps you recover from training sessions and gives you the energy and nutrients that your body needs to be healthy. These three simple things go a long way. It doesn’t need to be complicated, it just needs to be consistent and sustainable. 

If planning and scheduling is a problem check out my article Making Time, Being Consistant, and Having a Plan.

I hope that this has been informative and has brought to light why short term diet solutions are not a good idea, and that you need to think longer term.

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

New posts every Sunday! 

If you are interested in other content from Weights and Stuff and want to help me out you can find it at:

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