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Anyone counting, for a month

The portion reset

A fortnight of meals built around fixed compartments instead of a scale, for people who want portions to stop being a daily decision.

10

meals from one session

75 min

in the kitchen

5

containers in play

Portion control done with a scale works and almost nobody keeps it up, because it asks for a decision at every meal, on the days you are tired as much as the days you are not. Portion control done with a fixed container asks for the decision once, on a Sunday, and then stops asking.

That is the entire argument for divided dishes. A three compartment dish of 34 ounces holds roughly a cup of grain, a palm of protein and two handfuls of vegetables, because that is what fits. The dish does the arguing.

Step by step

The session, in order

  1. 1 Week one, Sunday

    Weigh once, then never again

    Spend one session with a kitchen scale filling each bay and noting what it took. A cup of cooked rice, six ounces of chicken, whatever your numbers are. Write it on a card and put the card on the inside of a cupboard door.

    After that the scale goes away. You are not weighing food, you are filling a bay to the line you already established. That takes four seconds instead of forty.

  2. 2 Every session

    Fill the big bay last

    Start with the protein bay, then the starch, then fill whatever is left with vegetables. Done in that order, vegetables expand to fill the space, which is the direction you want the error to run.

    Done the other way round, the starch expands instead, and a plan built on a cup of rice quietly becomes a plan built on a cup and a half.

  3. 3 Midweek

    Keep the dressing out of the dish

    Sauce is where the counting usually goes wrong, because it is poured rather than measured and it goes in at the last second. A small separate box, filled once for the whole week, makes the amount visible.

    This is also what keeps a salad from wilting into the bottom of a container by Wednesday, so it earns its place twice.

  4. 4 Week two

    Change the food, keep the geometry

    The bays do not care whether the protein is chicken or lentils. Swapping the contents week to week is what stops the plan feeling like a diet, and it costs nothing, because the portion decision has already been made and locked into the shape of the dish.

    If a week goes badly, the recovery is one Sunday, not a restart. That is the real advantage of a system that lives in a cupboard rather than in willpower.

Worth knowing. None of this is nutritional advice, and a container is not a diet. It is a way of making the same decision once instead of fourteen times a week.
What this week takes

The containers this plan is built on

Three sets, and the reason each one is here. If your household is a different size, the kit builder will scale the numbers.

Three bays: starch, protein, vegetables, in fixed proportions.

Smaller and two bays, for lighter days or a second meal.

The same geometry in plastic, for meals that leave the house.

Other plans

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A household of two

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