Portion Distortion

I have really been trying to watch the portion sizes on things.  I find that to be much harder than I realized.  I am undersizing some stuff and oversizing others.  Tonight I made Taco Soup.  I knew with my working out etc I could have 3 c at about 200 calories each with 1/6 c shredded cheese and still be well under my calorie count.  I used a soup ladle and estimated it at about 1/2 c.  Wrong!  It's 6 oz or 3/4 c.  That added an extra 1.5 c over what I intended to eat.  That's an extra 300 calories!  Thank goodness I had some to spare.  I am finding that things that are countable (ie 2 precut slices, 5 crackers, etc) are my favorite.  I don't mind single serving packs either.  Some things I can do with single session multiple servings (ie a bag of popcorn is 2 servings but I can have the whole bag at once for a reasonable number of calories.)  It's the big containers that make it hard.  Things like block cheese, jelly (reduced sugar of course), and salad dressing are much harder.  I have to figure out estimating though because I don't have the time to measure everything and I certainly don't plan on carrying a scale and measuring cup around when we go out.  This is not a short term quick loss I am looking for, it's a forever change in lifestyle.  Because of that I have to get better at this measuring.  Tonight was a real eye opener.  I'll be watching even closer in the future and I'm sure it will get easier with time.