The definitive guide to how big your portion sizes should be

When it comes to keeping off weight, health experts say your portion sizes can make all the difference.

Over the past fifty years or so, we have gradually increased our daily food portions to be a lot bigger than they actually should be for healthy and balanced diet- and it’s having dangerous affects on our health.

Plate sizes have increased by four times since the 1950s, while the average size of ready-made meals as more than doubled in 20 years.

The British Heart Foundation says that the size of a supermarket pizza as gone from 200g in 1993 to 460g today, while individual chicken pies increased from 160g to 240g.

Even the plates we serve our meals on have grown, with the average plate size increasing from roughly 9in (23cm) across to 12in (30.5cm) in diameter, meaning there is more room to load up with food without even realising just how much extra we are consuming.

With Australia’s obesity rate growing at an alarming rate, doctors are encouraging people to rethink that extra serve of mashed potatoes and downsize the amount of spag bol they spoon onto their plates come dinner time.

To make things a little easier they provided a simple guide to keeping track of what you’re eating and just how much you should really be consuming.

Servings of potatoes should be the size of a computer mouse.

Your butter should be the size of a dice.

Keep your cheese portions to the size of a 9 volt battery.

A slice of bread should be the same as a five dollar note.

A serve of pasta should be no bigger than a tennis ball.

You steak should be around the size of a deck of cards.

Keep oily fish to size of a mobile phone.

A piece of chicken breast should be the size of a bar of soap.

One serve of chocolate should be the size of a lipstick.

Do you watch your portion sizes? How do you manage your weight?