I used to grossly underestimate the amount of calories I consumed in a typical meal.
I remember hitting a weight loss plateau when I was 27.
Back then I was studying for my masters in Australia and where I lived in Melbourne
...the healthiest food choice in the food court was a teriyaki restaurant.
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I ordered a chicken teriyaki with white rice for lunch each day.
...without additional sauce poured on it.
I figured that it would be somewhat low-cal since it was a lunch of whole ingredients.
The problem was that I wanted to lose 5 pounds.
...and my weight wasn't budging.
Let's break down the calories in my lunch.
- 8 Ounces Skinless Chicken Breast: 350-400 calories
- Vegetables: 30-50 calories
- Teriyaki Sauce: 30-50 calories
- White Rice: ??????
White rice was the food that was messing me up.
I figured I was taking in about 200 calories in rice.
...that would make this lunch around 650 calories.
Perfectly acceptable.
Unfortunately I was greatly underestimating how large the serving of rice was.
My White Rice Experiment
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I ordered the Teriyaki Chicken meal and brought it home.
I put the meal onto a plate.
I cooked 3 cups of white rice in my rice steamer.
After the rice was finished cooking, I scooped out and tried to match the serving size of the Teriyaki Chicken meal.
My goal was to figure out calories of the serving size by looking at how much of the cooked rice I scooped out.
Here's how I figured out calories.
- 1 cup uncooked white rice has 650 calories.
- I cooked 3 cups...so 3 X 650 = 1950
- It took 1/2 of the amount cooked to equal the restaurant serving size...so 975 calories!
Instead of eating 200 calories, I was consuming close to 1,000 just in white rice.
My "healthy" chicken teriyaki meal was around 1,600 calories.
From that point forward I ordered that Chicken Teriyaki meal with double the vegetables and just a small scoop of rice.
...within 2 months I hit my target body fat percentage.
I highly recommend you master portion sizes when trying to hit a specific amount of calories.
You can measure or use a scale at first.
...but over time you will simply know what a specific serving size looks like.
Also...I use and recommend this free tool is My Fitness Pal.
