By Rebecca Rose of ChoiceEating.com

Fast food restaurants aren’t the only culprits when it comes to supersizing meals. Many people do it themselves when the pile portions of food on their plates.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the difference between portions and servings is that portions are the amounts of food on a plate, and servings are specific amounts defined by measurements like cups and grams. Often, the servings are less than the portions people typically take.

Here are some suggestions from the Mayo Clinic and WebMD.com to help you keep your portions under control:

• Set a daily calorie level: Depending on your BMI, your weight loss or maintenance goals, and your long-term health, you will want to select a calorie level defined by servings of food groups. These include fruits and vegetables, carbohydrates, protein and dairy, and fats.
• Use visual cues: Remember that a serving of meat equates to the size of a hockey puck, a medium sweet pepper is about the size of a baseball and represents one full serving of vegetables, and an orange is about the size of a tennis ball. Some servings will seem small, but for most foods, you will have more than one serving a day.
•  Plan ahead: As you prepare food for yourself and your family, prepare meals according to the number of people and the portions they should eat. If you happen to cook too much, save it as a leftover meal or snack for another day.
• Cut restaurant meals in half: Many restaurants serve far larger portions than most people should have. You can resolve before you sit down that you will request a take-home container. And go easy on the bread.

Rebecca Rose is an award-winning writer based in Oak Park, IL, who routinely covers health and fitness, financial and women’s issues regionally and nationally.