Portion control

The plate method is the simplest place to start. Half the plate is vegetables — fibrous and colourful, raw or cooked depending on the day. A quarter is protein — animal or plant, sized to the cook and the household. The final quarter is a slow carbohydrate — whole grains, legumes, root vegetables, oats, or the slower-cooking rices. A small thumb of fat rides alongside (olive oil, avocado, nuts). The plate is the geometry; the hand sizes it.

The hand-cup framework sits on top of the plate method and sizes each portion to the body that is eating. A palm of proteinat each cooked meal, including its depth — the thickness of the palm, not just the footprint. A fist of vegetables, with two fists on the larger meal of the day if the day is heavy. A cupped hand of slow carbohydrate — the hand scooped, not flattened — smaller on the evening meal. A thumb of fat for oil and spreads. A household that lifts more, walks more, runs after children, or trains eats more; a household recovering from a heavy week eats less. The pattern matches the body, not the chart.

Per-meal and bridge adjustments sit on top. A heavier-training day sees a second cupped hand of slow carbohydrate alongside the midday meal, an extra palm of protein, and an extra fruit at the mid-afternoon bridge. A lower-sensitivity day flattens the cooked vegetables, holds the carbohydrates on the slower side (rice, oats), and skips the raw salads. Both patterns are described in more detail in the meal-structure section of the food plan guide.

Half the plate, every cooked meal, is the rule of thumb. Within that half, fibrous and colourful vegetables — leafy greens, cruciferous, allium, fruiting vegetables, the rainbow roots — dominate. A fist is the smallest serving; two fists ride the larger meal of the day on a heavier-training week. Soups and stews count: a fist of vegetables cooked down is still a fist of vegetables once the water is gone.

Cooked versus raw matter for volume. A fist of cooked leafy greens is about three fists raw. A fist of cooked cruciferous is about two fists raw. On a lower-sensitivity day (gut, autoimmune or general inflammation), the cooked volume is what the household reads, not the raw salad that would feel the same in the hand. The same read lives in the gut-health notes for households flagging that pattern — raw salads get ordered later in the meal, and the cooked side sits at the front of the plate.

The conditions library carries the per-condition fibre ordering the day asks for. The broader conditions read sits alongside, and the private plan encodes it once the household flags something.

Fat portions are small and easy to overshoot. A thumb-sized pour of oil at each cooked meal — around a tablespoon — is the default. The same thumb for a spread of nut butter. A small cupped hand of nuts and seeds as a bridge. Half an avocado as the “fat of the meal” if the meal is otherwise lean. A palm of oily fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring) instead of a palm of white fish once or twice a week. Yolks ride the meal when the household eats the whole egg.

Olive oil and the nut oils (walnut, hazelnut, pistachio) ride cold applications — dressings, drizzles, the finishing pour — rather than the high-heat cook. The high-heat cook belongs to the more stable oils (olive, avocado). Both kinds still count toward the thumb measurement for the meal.

Fat portions matter because fat-soluble vitamins — A, D, E, K — absorb alongside the fat on the plate. A meal that is fat-light misses that absorption; a meal that is fat-heavy overshoots the calorie range the body already keeps. The space between is small and the eye reads it well. For households keeping caffeine in its morning window (which the hydration section of the food plan names), the fat-cooked meal sits well outside the caffeine window — not because they conflict, but because both ride the morning and one will quietly crowd the other.

Label reading. Three numbers carry most of the work. Serving sizesits at the top of the panel and is what the rest of the label is sized to; the household reads the portion in serving-size units, not in “the bag.” Percent daily value is a population read against a 2,000-kcal adult day, useful for comparing foods against each other than against a target. Ingredient listis front-loaded in order of predominance; the first three ingredients are most of the food. Sugar has a long list of aliases (sucrose, fructose, glucose, maltose, syrup, nectar, concentrate, juice); “natural” does not mean “low”; and added fats ride in the ingredient list even when the nutrition panel reads lower than expected. Fibre and protein at a glance matter most once they are on the panel — both belong at the top of the read.

Mindful eating. Pace is the second lever. A short pause before the meal — ten seconds, the plate on the table, the food in front of the household — sets the satiety rhythm up. The meal without screens reads better than a meal with them. The first forkful arrives slowly. A mid-meal satiety check — a half-second pause around the middle of the meal, the question “how full am I, really” — closes the day’s overshoot before it lands. None of this is a meditation; it is a small fix the body already knows.

Common mistakes. A short list of the ones a household most often skips: estimating serving size by eye rather than measuring once and learning the cup; eating from the bag (the bag does not stop when the household’s portion has stopped); drinking calories in juice, sweetened coffee, alcohol, or soda; stacking fat-heavy portions (oil plus nuts plus cheese plus avocado at one meal); skipping the bridge and overeating at the next cooked meal; overcompensating when a label reads “low-fat” by adding more elsewhere; fruit juice read as a fruit equivalent (it is not); and “natural” read as “more is better” (it usually means the same calories the household already eats). For the broader question set, the common questions page carries the household-side answers.

Personalised serving sizes — the ones tuned to the household’s flagged conditions, body makeup, weekly intake, and stage of training — live inside the private plan at Member Nutrition once the household has signed in.