Hand portion control is one of the best ways to eat a range of food in an amount relative to your body.
It helps you know exactly how much food to eat, what a meal should look like and which foods to eat for body composition, muscle building and fat loss.
Hand portions take out the guesswork, means you can forget about the perfect macros and rely on your own hunger and fullness with no limitations on the amount or type of food you eat with repeatable consistency.
The best thing…you always have it with you!
It’s great to use when travelling or at the buffet table, ordering food out and eating meals with friends. It is a fail-safe approach to building meals that align with your body composition goal. Here’s how it works.
The hand portions
We obtain calories from three primary sources within our diets. Commonly these are known as macronutrients.
Depending on the source of the calorie, it may also provide us with an array of critical nutrients such as dietary fibre, amino acids, antioxidants and dietary vitamins and minerals. Each of which contains a given amount of energy per gram.
- A portion of protein is 1 palm
- A portion of fat is 1 thumb (N.b. if you use a fatty cut such as skin on chicken, Kiev’s, steaks or oily fish, remove the fat addition from the meal and include the thumb in the portion size.)
- A portion of vegetables is one fist
- A portion of carbohydrate is one cupped handful
- A snack portion, if needed, would be the complete size of 1 palm
For those of you that wish to consume alcohol. Alcohol contains 7 k/cals per gram. There’s also a hand portion method for that.
- A portion of alcohol is 1 medium glass of wine, 1/2 pint, 1 bottle of beer, 1 single shot of spirits or 1 pre-mixed can or bottle of mixers drinks. (N.b. Remove the cupped handful of carbohydrate or thumb of fat with a meal for 1 alcoholic drink.)
Build a plate using hand portions
For a highly nutritious delicious meal you can build a meal by doing the following:
- Start by adding a cooked palm of protein to a normal plate.
- Add a fist sized amount of cooked vegetables including dark, thin skinned berries and fruits.
- Add a thumb sized amount of essential healthy fats. Add a cupped handful of cooked carbohydrates.
A meal like this is designed to balance the energy intake across the three macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates and fat whilst providing adequate fibre and ensuring the intake of vitamins and minerals.
For most people this is perfectly enough but if you are exercising or have a specific goal then you may wish to increase your protein intake, especially on days you exercise.
Choosing the right food to eat
Energy Density
This is the amount of energy, as represented by the number of calories, in a specific weight of food. Energy-dense foods have a large number of calories per serving and tend to include foods that have a high sugar content, are high in fat and have a low water content. These should play a smaller part in your diet.
An example of a food with high energy density could be a doughnut. Doughnuts have lots of calories from sugar and fat that fit into a small serving size but also bundles of taste as it has a very low amount of hydration and fibre and high levels of flavour enhancers such as salts, sweeteners and sugar additives.
In comparison, asparagus has low energy density, there are only a few calories in a whole plateful of asparagus, but not a great deal to satisfy the taste buds.
Nutrient Density
This is the amount of dietary fibre, complex carbohydrates, amino acids, antioxidants and dietary vitamins and minerals again represented by the number of calories, in that food.
To use the same example, asparagus is packed full of nutrients, yet a doughnut has very little.
Packing a diet with a higher proportion of nutrient dense food with a lower ratio of energy ultimately gives you a diet that can satisfy both hunger and taste whilst sustaining an intake of calories relative to your goals.
Food list
Here are lists of foods and their macronutrient families, you are able to eat any foods you like and these are all intended as examples.
Protein
Examples of foods that are proteins include: Eggs, chicken, turkey, beef, salmon, tofu, seitan, edamame, kidney beans, chickpeas, bacon, pork, lamb, Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, quark, cheese, duck, game, pollock, cod, basa, haddock, sardines, mackerel.
Eat often: whole cuts of lean animal meats, fish fillets, eggs, organic dairy, legumes and lentils
Eat sometimes: protein powders, bacon, chicken sausages, vegetarian meat substitutes, biltong and jerky
Eat rarely: fried chicken and nuggets, brined sausages, battered fish, processed deli meats
Fats
Examples of foods that are fats include: Sesame oil, olive oil, fish oil, ghee, butter, coconut oil, coconut, avocado, nuts and seeds, nut butters, dark chocolate, cheese, eggs, bacon and fatty meats, cream and full fat diary, pestos and tapenade.
Eat often: extra virgin olive oil, avocados, fresh white cheeses, nuts and nut butters, egg yolks and fish oils
Eat sometimes: rapeseed oil, dark chocolate, aged cheeses, coconut oil, butter, cream
Eat rarely: vegetable oils, margarine, high fat sausages, thick heavy sauces
Carbohydrates
There are two main types of carbs – simple (bad carbs) and complex (good carbs).
Eat often: Complex carbs – basmati rice, brown rice, fresh fruits, oats, potato, sweet potato, wholewheat bread, wholewheat pasta
Eat rarely: Simple carbs – processed foods such as fruit juices, fizzy drinks, cakes, chocolates, etc
How many meals per day?
When using hand portion control, we also rely on your hunger and fullness. Most people do really well eating 3-4 meals per day with some allowance for a snack and a post workout shake if it works for their goal.
Intuitive eating and hand portions makes things flexible and adaptable and relies on eating more and less when you’d like to. For a consistent approach you may find it useful to find an amount of food for your every day diet and scale up and down as appropriate.
If you found this information useful, let me know as I have a full hand portion control book that I will be happy to send over to you. Simply send an email to [email protected] to get your free copy.
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