Back to Basics: Portion Sizes

The other day I learnt an interesting fact:

A baby's portion size should be no more than they can hold in their hand.

Oh

My

Goodness!!

No wonder Baby Bean doesn't eat half of what we give her! A serving of meat stir-fry, for example, should be as much rice as she could hold in a cupped hand, a piece of meat the size of her palm, and then a generous hand-sized serving of veg.

Now perhaps this is a fact I should have known; after all, it apparently is true for adults too (oops, I appear to overeat on a thrice-daily basis!!), but it's come as something of a revelation. Bean eats about 4-5 pieces of pasta, for example, which is apparently the correct portion size. I give her 8-10 pieces. One tablespoon of mashed potato she can probably manage - I give her about three, just in case she was in the mood for it and so ate loads! The outcome? She's completely over-faced by the amount of food in front of her, eats very little, starts chucking the excess onto the floor and the whole meal becomes a battle.

The fact of the matter is that I have forgotten the first, most important, rule of Baby Led Weaning - babies can self-regulate their intake.

Look, at 14 months old this was what I put in her bowl (not a healthy meal, but a desperate what-have-we-got-in-the-fridge meal)

And this was what was left:

Sensible girl ate probably the most healthy part of it too! :-)

In my defence, there are the occasional days when she will eat almost everything in the first bowl, but I HAVE to stop serving a portion that size just on the off-chance! So what do I do? I buy new crockery (any excuse). We now have these, Tesco Loves Baby segmented plates.





It's working really well - I put a serving of veg in each triangle and then the carbs/meat/dairy share the larger section. As long as I don't stuff the sections full, the amount of food seems manageable. And hey presto, Bean tucks in!

So it's back to the beginning for us. I'm re-reading my Baby Led Weaning principles and trying to get to grips with those we've let slide. Turns out Rule Number One isn't the only one, but that's another post...