It’s Not Your Appetite. It’s The Size Of Your Recipe.
The hidden weight-loss trap in family-size recipes, plus a 415-calorie Egg Roll in a Bowl made just for one
Do you cook mostly for yourself? Have you ever noticed that almost every recipe seems to be written for a family of four? And have you ever wondered why your diet always seems to fall apart around the leftovers?
If so, you’re not alone.
Let’s say you find a delicious, healthy-looking chili recipe online. It serves six. You make the whole pot, because cutting the recipe down means fiddling with fractions of a can and a third of an onion.
You serve yourself a sensible bowl. It’s good. Really good. So you have a little more, just to taste it again. Then a little more, because there’s so much left.
The next night, there are still four servings in the fridge. And at 9 p.m., they start calling your name!
Here’s the thing. That isn’t a lack of discipline. It’s what happens to almost everyone when there’s extra food in front of them.
More Food In Front Of You Means More Food In You
Think about the last time you went to the movies. If you bought the large popcorn, you probably finished most of it. If you’d bought the small, you’d have finished that too, and walked out just as satisfied.
Or think about a big bag of chips versus a single-serve pack. Most of us eat the single pack and stop. With the big bag, “just a few more” can go on for a long time.
Likewise, a pot of food that serves six doesn’t just feed you tonight. It quietly invites you to keep eating.
This isn’t just a hunch. In 2002, nutrition researcher Barbara Rolls and her team at Penn State tested it.¹
They served 51 men and women lunch once a week for four weeks. Each time, the main dish was macaroni and cheese, but the portion changed, ranging from about two and a half cups to five cups. Participants could eat as much or as little as they liked.
The result? When they were given the largest portion, they ate 30% more calories than when they were given the smallest. Yet they didn’t report feeling any fuller. And fewer than half of them even noticed the portions had changed.
The effect held for men and women, for normal-weight and overweight people, and for people who described themselves as careful eaters.
In other words, we often don’t stop eating when we’re full. We stop when the food is gone.
Now, Let Me Be Honest
This study measured how much people ate from a single plate in a lab, not what happens with leftovers in your kitchen at home. The participants were also young adults, between 21 and 30.
So it doesn’t directly prove that cooking big batches makes you gain weight. But it’s a reasonable, well-supported inference: when there’s more food available, almost all of us eat more of it, often without realizing.
It’s also worth noting what Rolls herself emphasized. The real problem isn’t large portions on their own, it’s large portions of high-calorie foods. That’s exactly why the recipe at the end of this article is both portioned for one and low in calorie density.
Don’t Fight The Leftovers. Don’t Make Them Instead.
So how do you stop eating the extra food? Well, the answer is right there in the question. Don’t make extra food in the first place.
Most diet advice tells you to resist temptation. Put the leftovers away. Close the fridge. Use your willpower.
But every time you have to resist, your mind has to fight a battle. And as I’ve said before, most of the battle is in the mind, not the body. Win it enough times and you’ll be fine. Lose it once at 9 p.m., and the whole week can unravel.
Cooking a single serving removes the battle altogether. There’s no second helping in the pot, no container in the fridge, and no decision to make. You stay low and fly under the radar!
This is the Principle of Simplicity at work. The easier you make the right choice, the less your mind puts up a fight.
How To Make Cooking For One Worth It
The biggest objection to cooking for one is that it doesn’t feel worth the effort. Here’s how to make it quick and easy.
Choose recipes written for one serving. No dividing by four, no fractions of a can, and no guessing at portion sizes.
Let the grocery store do the prep. Bagged coleslaw mix, pre-cut vegetables, frozen cauliflower rice, and microwavable brown rice cups turn a 45-minute recipe into a 15-minute one.
Buy protein in bulk, then portion it. When chicken breast or lean ground meat goes on sale, divide it into 4- or 5-ounce portions and freeze them. Each one is a single meal, ready to thaw.
Get Dan Sud’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
If you do batch-cook, portion it immediately. Some people love cooking on Sundays, and that can work well too. The key is to divide everything into single-serving containers before you sit down to eat, so there’s no pot left on the stove inviting “just a little more.”
Egg Roll In A Bowl
This recipe from my cookbook is a perfect example. It has all the savory, gingery flavor of an egg roll filling, made in one pan in about 17 minutes. It’s written for one person, so there’s nothing left over. And thanks to three full cups of cabbage, it’s a big, satisfying bowl of 415 calories.
The bagged coleslaw mix does most of the chopping for you!
Prep: 5 min · Cook: 12 min · Total: 17 min · Servings: 1
Ingredients
- 4 oz raw 93% lean ground turkey
- 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1 tsp grated fresh ginger (or 1/4 tsp ground ginger)
- 3 cups bagged coleslaw mix (shredded cabbage and carrots)
- 2 tsp low-sodium soy sauce
- 1 tsp rice vinegar
- 1 tsp sriracha, or to taste
- 2 green onions, sliced
- 1/2 cup cooked brown rice
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
Instructions
- Heat the sesame oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.
- Add the ground turkey and cook for 5 to 6 minutes, breaking it into small crumbles, until browned with no pink remaining.
- Add the garlic and ginger and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant.
- Add the coleslaw mix and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, tossing often, until the cabbage is wilted but still a little crunchy.
- Stir in the soy sauce, rice vinegar, sriracha, and most of the green onions. Cook for 1 minute more.
- Warm the brown rice, spoon it into a bowl, and pile the turkey and cabbage on top. Sprinkle with the sesame seeds and remaining green onions.
Nutrition per serving: 415 calories · 28 g protein · 40 g carbs · 16 g fat · 8 g fiber
Easy swap: For a vegetarian version, replace the turkey with 5 oz extra-firm tofu, crumbled and browned the same way (about 40 fewer calories and 7 g less protein).
Cooking tip: A 1-pound pack of ground turkey makes four of these bowls. Divide it into 4-ounce portions and freeze three, and you’ve got three more quick dinners ready to go.
One Pan, One Serving, No Leftovers
If your diet keeps falling apart around second helpings and late-night leftovers, it doesn’t mean you lack willpower. It means you’ve been cooking for six when you’re eating for one.
That’s an easy problem to fix. Make tonight’s dinner a single serving, and enjoy every bite of it, knowing there’s nothing waiting in the fridge to tempt you later.
Every recipe in my cookbook is written for one person, just like this one. If you’d like to try a few more, I’ve put together a free sampler with this Egg Roll in a Bowl and six more quick, filling recipes, a complete sample day of eating, and a Smart Swaps Chart that can help you save 400 to 600 calories a day.
Download the free sampler here.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Please talk to your doctor before starting any weight loss plan.
¹ Rolls, B. J., Morris, E. L., & Roe, L. S. (2002). Portion size of food affects energy intake in normal-weight and overweight men and women. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 76(6), 1207–1213.
