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 Plan, 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 Plan isn’t a diet—it’s a sensible eating plan and the end of diet deprivation. Welcome to diet liberation.

Synopsis
Nutritionist Dr. Lisa Young, the nationally-known expert on portion sizes seen by millions in the film Super Size Me, offers the ultimate guide to losing weight: It’s all about portion size. The problem with diets, says Lisa Young, is that most tell us either to count calories or to eliminate entire food groups. Neither method works. Nobody, including the experts, can accurately discern calorie counts by eyeballing a serving, and it’s nearly impossible to avoid carbs or fats indefinitely. The problem lies in how much we eat—it’s simply too much. At last, Young provides what we’ve been looking for: a system of convenient, recognizable visuals (a CD case, a deck of cards, a baseball, two fingers) that clearly shows how much to eat of any given food group.

Young provides formulas for different portion personalities—the mindless muncher, the breakfast hater, the volume eater, the special occasion victim—to help readers figure out the right balance of their daily food servings. There are food equations (one bagel = five slices of bread = ten rice cakes), a restaurant guide, and a cheater’s guide (so you can have that piece of chocolate at 4 p.m. and still stay on the plan). Line drawings, charts, The Portion Teller Plan pyramid, and portion diaries all help readers track and chart their own diet courses. With no forbidden foods, no phases to switch in and out of, and no carb or calorie counting, The Portion Teller Plan is a system dieters can really live with.