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The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss
 
 
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The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss [Hardcover]

Lisa R. Young (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)


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Book Description

May 31, 2005
Would you ever consider going to the kitchen in the morning and grabbing five slices of bread for breakfast? No? Just one bagel or perhaps a bran muffin is more like it, right? Well, think again. Your morning bagel or muffin is probably equivalent to eating five slices of bread, maybe more. That’s most of your grain servings for the day.

And, that steak you ate last night? For all the calories and protein you consumed, you might as well have eaten 18 eggs. More than double the amount of protein you need in a day.

Surprised at just how much you are eating? Dr. Lisa Young isn’t. She has been studying how Americans eat for more than a decade, and what she found is astonishing. Portion sizes have subtly and steadily increased over the past thirty years and are now two to five times larger than they were in the past. Even the average dinner plate has grown several inches to accommodate more food. The portions we’re served are getting bigger and we keep eating. The end result? That’s right. Americans are getting fatter.

So what should you do about it? You may think that counting calories, fat grams, or even eliminating entire food groups such as grains is the way to keep this trend toward colossal cuisine from making you fat. The problem is, you don’t know how many calories, fat, and carbs are in your favorite foods. No one does, not even the experts. When nutritionists were shown several restaurant meals in a survey, not one person was able to accurately guess the calorie or fat content of the meals.

In The Portion Teller, you’ll develop portion-size awareness and learn how to lose weight without weighing food or counting calories. Using simple visuals such as a deck of cards, a yo-yo, a baseball, and even your own hand, you’ll find out what a serving size is supposed to look like and how many servings you can eat per day from each food group. The visuals are easy to use: If your piece of salmon at dinner is about the size of three decks of cards, you’ve eaten all your meat and fish servings for the day.

The plan is easy. You’ll keep a food diary for a short time to get you started. Once you learn how to size-up your favorite foods with the visuals, Lisa’s Portion Personalities show you how stumbling blocks can be easily overcome. Are you a See Food Eater who can’t stop yourself at the sight of food or a Special Occasion Victim who can’t resist that cake at an office party or a Volume Eater who always wants her plate to be full? As a long-time nutrition counselor, Young gives real-world solutions for tackling your bad habits. There’s a cheater’s guide, for those who must satisfy that late-night chocolate craving, as well as a survival guide for eating out and daily meal plans.

No forbidden foods, no calorie counting, no food weighing. The Portion Teller isn’t a diet—it’s a sensible eating plan and the end of diet deprivation. Welcome to diet liberation.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nutrition consultant Young says it's not so much what we eat but how much we eat that has caused the collective ballooning of Americans. While conducting research on portion sizes, the NYU faculty member (who appeared in the film Super Size Me) discovered that many of the packaged foods we buy today may be as much as five times larger than they were when originally introduced into the marketplace. She presents a simple plan to help readers "smartsize"; it involves portion size awareness and knowledge of the difference between portions and serving sizes. (A bagel, for instance, may be one portion, but delivers five grain servings and the caloric equivalent of five slices of bread.) With an innovative chart that links foods and portions visually (e.g., three ounces of meat—a sensible portion—is represented by a deck of cards or the palm of a hand), Young helps readers estimate reasonable portion sizes; she also provides tips for scaling down the jumbo sizes often offered in restaurants. Young offers a practical, long-term solution for losing weight while eating healthfully, likely to appeal to readers fed up with diet crazes. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“The Portion Teller gives you a fresh approach to managing weight—one that makes perfect sense. Lisa Young’s The Portion Teller is an invaluable resource.
—Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH
Paulette Goddard Professor, New York University

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Crown Archetype; 1 edition (May 31, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0767920686
  • ISBN-13: 978-0767920681
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #346,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lisa R. Young, Ph.D., R.D. is a nationally recognized nutrition consultant in New York City and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University (NYU). Widely considered an expert on portion sizes, Dr. Young is regularly featured in national publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Self, Fitness, Redbook, and Glamour. She has also been featured on national television including ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, and CNN, and was in the film Super Size Me.

Dr. Young is a nutritionist in private practice and has been counseling adults and children for nearly 20 years. Young offers individual counseling sessions on a wide variety of nutrition related issues including obesity and weight control, disease prevention, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, pregnancy, lactation, and gastrointestinal disorders. She also lectures around the country and conducts group classes on nutrition, weight control, and behavior modification. She has also served as the nutrition expert for Allure, Fitness, Prevention, Marie Claire, and Redbook magazines and has contributed articles for various health magazines and newsletters. She is an advisory board member for The Bottom Line Women's Health Newsletter and Fitness magazine, is a contributor for The Bottom Line Health Newsletter, and has contributed to MSNBC.

Dr. Young received her doctorate and master's degrees in Nutrition from NYU, and her bachelor's degree in Economics and Health Care Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a registered dietitian.

 

Customer Reviews

28 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (28 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars You can have your cake and eat it too!, July 11, 2005
By 
Gina Galang (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss (Hardcover)
This is a terrific book. Dr. Young offers a realistic lifelong plan for permanent weight loss, as opposed to some passing fad. In her book, she presents user-friendly visuals to help estimate serving sizes, and activities to get readers engaged. Her success stories about real-life clients she has counseled are touching and very motivational to me as a dieter constantly searching for the perfect and easy diet. This book is practical and does not restrict any foods at all. In fact, I am encouraged to eat my favorite foods!

And, what I liked the most about The Portion Teller is that Young provides readers with the tools to personalize the plan to fit individual needs. "One size does not fit all," and in order for a diet plan to be successful, it needs to be realistic and individualized. Young's program does just that!! She has lots of experience to present her case, and the timelines and portion shockers displaying how portions have grown are mind blowing. This book is a must read for anyone concerned about food and weight.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent job Explaining Portion Sizes, March 7, 2006
By 
Dr Adam Weiss (Buffalo Grove,IL.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   
This review is from: The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss (Hardcover)
The book does an excellent job of explaining portion sizes and what is a normal size meal. Will help anyone trying to drop a few pounds, or maintain her or his body weight they are at now. Good rules to follow for feeding childern-teach them at an early age what is normal proportions and they will have less problems later in life and prevent them from " super sizing" everything in site. Highly recommended.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazon Review, August 30, 2005
This review is from: The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss (Hardcover)
WOW!! I love this book.



Now here is a book based on real research as well as common sense. The Portion Teller doesn't eliminate any food groups or bombard you with silly and unrealistic rules. Instead, it's about portion-control! And, you don't have to eliminate your favorite foods. You should just eat your favorite decadent treats in moderation, while eating more fruits, veggies, and other healthy choices. It makes perfect sense is very easy to follow. Here is a program for life.



I love the visual icons, the meal plans, and the food diary. And those food equations are shocking--who would have ever thought that a big steak was equivalent in protein to 18 eggs! The sidebars, charts, and portion shockers are also quite an eye opener as well as lots of fun to read. Kudos!


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