Tonight at dinner with my good friend Eddie, I sized up my salmon and said, “This is probably two servings’ worth.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“Well one serving is about the size of a deck of cards, so this is about two decks of cards and it’s two servings.”

Because Eddie is naturally skinny, overactive, and physically unable to gain weight, he has no idea how to eyeball how much food he’s eating and measure it visibly. Unlike me, he can just decide he’s full and stop eating.  As a frequent passenger aboard the diet wagon, I know all the little tricks by heart to “eye measure” what I’m eating, so I’ll share them here.

one cup = about the size of your fist or a tennis ball

1/4 cup = about the size of an egg

one ounce = about the size of your thumb or a golf ball or enough to fill a shot glass

one tablespoon = about the size of a postage stamp

the size of the human stomach = one quart of milk

You can use the above sizes, found from this site, to guesstimate how much you’re eating (like my 6oz piece of salmon tonight) and then bring the information home and plug it into a calorie counter like the free ones available at SparkPeople.com.  If for some reason I’m not thinking about the estimated sizes above, it helps me to picture the measuring spoons and cups I have at home and compare what I’m eating to the various sizes.

My thin friend Eddie may never need to know that he’s eating two cups of hummus, but I still do.