What do you think?
Rate this book
The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss
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 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.
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 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.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published May 31, 2005
25 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
March 14, 2019
Excellent, practical advice that a real live human can reasonably be expected to follow. Easy to understand and lots of supporting evidence. Highly recommend for those of us looking to change our eating patterns.
January 11, 2018
Nice
Basic idea but very helpful for binge eaters and chronic dieters. Also interesting statistics regarding the change in portion size over the last decades
Basic idea but very helpful for binge eaters and chronic dieters. Also interesting statistics regarding the change in portion size over the last decades
July 6, 2019
Most free apps have this information now, but it was very helpful and started my 50 pound weight loss journey.
December 3, 2007
I usually shy away from diet-type books. After all, how great can any ONE be when there are thousands coming out every year??? But I loved the idea of being able to eat whatever I want, just by looking at the sizes of my portions. This book is a great primer to the idea that it's not WHAT you eat as much as it is how MUCH you eat.
Young offers terrific real-world equivalents to help you get your chops around how many servings are in that Extra Value Meal. I am still a bit confused, though -- wish she had some additional info on how to really determine how much you need to eat, and some more translations of real menus into portion sizes. I would also love to see more success stories (love those before-and-afters!). All in all, I highly recommend this book. I checked it out from the library, but ended up marking so many pages to take notes from that I finally broke down and bought my own copy.
Young offers terrific real-world equivalents to help you get your chops around how many servings are in that Extra Value Meal. I am still a bit confused, though -- wish she had some additional info on how to really determine how much you need to eat, and some more translations of real menus into portion sizes. I would also love to see more success stories (love those before-and-afters!). All in all, I highly recommend this book. I checked it out from the library, but ended up marking so many pages to take notes from that I finally broke down and bought my own copy.
June 30, 2010
While reading Marion Nestle's website, she mentioned that one of her former students was publishing a book on reprogramming appropriate food servings without dieting. I think diets and dieting are foolish ways to eek out a person's life. I refuse to participate in them no matter what my size. I firmly believe that if I move more and eat less my overall health will improve.
The trick is figuring out how to eat less without becoming one of those people who count everything, carry around a scale, give overly complicated instructions at restaurants... you get the picture. This book uses philosophy, tips, visual aids, instructions, recipes, meal guides, worksheets, anything to help you go from theory to practice. Even without participating actively I found myself shifting my eating habits. I am not gonna sell it as a miracle cure nor tell of dramatic 35 lbs weight loss. But if you are trying to make a real life change, this is a great step in the healthy direction.
The trick is figuring out how to eat less without becoming one of those people who count everything, carry around a scale, give overly complicated instructions at restaurants... you get the picture. This book uses philosophy, tips, visual aids, instructions, recipes, meal guides, worksheets, anything to help you go from theory to practice. Even without participating actively I found myself shifting my eating habits. I am not gonna sell it as a miracle cure nor tell of dramatic 35 lbs weight loss. But if you are trying to make a real life change, this is a great step in the healthy direction.
February 10, 2009
This is a good read for anyone who would like to learn about sensible portion control and not have to count calories, carbs or points. Lisa Young has provided a fantastic in-depth time line about how the portions of food in America has exploded over the past 40 years and how our guts and butts have expanded because of it.
It's a fast, easy read with some repetitive information but many useful nuggets. I really like the "eyeball" method she details because I don't like to measure or count anything. I also like her approach that no foods should be off limits (other than poison like HFCS and the like) so that you never feel deprived. This is a key to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.
Her statements like "Diets don't work" and "No one ever got fat from eating too many carrots" echo my own thoughts about sensible eating and weight loss. Definitely worth a read!
It's a fast, easy read with some repetitive information but many useful nuggets. I really like the "eyeball" method she details because I don't like to measure or count anything. I also like her approach that no foods should be off limits (other than poison like HFCS and the like) so that you never feel deprived. This is a key to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.
Her statements like "Diets don't work" and "No one ever got fat from eating too many carrots" echo my own thoughts about sensible eating and weight loss. Definitely worth a read!
February 11, 2009
The bloating of North American portion sizes over the past few decades is stunning. Young was one of the first researchers to study this phenomenon, and her first chapter is a stomach-turning eye-opener, complete with a timeline. Her actual program for portion control seems eminently sensible, though I wish she'd put more emphasis on consumer culture's investment in bigger=better in *everything*. In addition, some of her advice -- buy single-serving packages, skip econo-sizes -- is pretty irresponsible in terms of environmental considerations.
This book is a great companion to Wansink's Mindless Eating, especially because it offers practical approaches to downsizing our consumption habits.
This book is a great companion to Wansink's Mindless Eating, especially because it offers practical approaches to downsizing our consumption habits.
April 9, 2012
Pretty helpful. Not all the tips work for me b/c I live in France, where asking for a doggie bag gets disapproving looks. Also I am not sure where all these American nutritionists get these crazy ideas about smaller portions in France. It's true in some places, but the amount of fat on the plate is more than you'd need for a week, according to Young. Another problem I have is the low-fat dairy. It can be hard to find in France and I think it's fine to have a small portion of full fat dairy. I refuse to believe that eating a Greek yoghurt once a day will wreck any chances I have of losing weight. Also, this book does not really take into account people who can't have any dairy...the visual sizing methods are really handy, though.
August 23, 2012
Boring subject hence the three stars but very eye opening! Portions today are incredibly huge compared from years past. In her quiz at the back one of the questions is how many standard servings is in a typical restaurant plate of food. Well guess what the answer is 6! Seriously that's the size of my family. I don't know that a plate of food could satisfy my family if we shared but it's amazing how much food we think we need. I'm definitely more aware of my portions and what I will be eating. Her plan would work for some but definitely not all. People don't typically pay attention to their food pyramids servings each day but we should all be more aware of our portion sizes. Overall a good educational read.
September 30, 2012
Had some interesting information - for example, 1 bagel or 1 muffin are each equivalent to an entire day's worth of grains servings - wow! But - the book is otherwise a little too condescending and written for people who clearly not familiar with food or cooking. I don't need to be reminded that 1 cup = 1 baseball every single time a cup of anything is mentioned in the book. That being said, it certainly contains sound advice, and is very similar to the eating habits I've worked to adopt (awareness of portion sizes and balanced eating across the food groups).
July 5, 2014
I love eating, so I tend to overeat.
This book introduces how to control our cravings for foods.
The key is "portion" size. If you see bigger portion, you will eat more. Expanding portion sizes leads to obesity.
I have just started to stop drinking coffee. Because of that, I have had a headache since this morning. Now that I know that this symptom is caffeine-withdrawal and will resolve in four to five days, I will be able to deal with it.
I believe that it will be much easier to maintain the proper portion size without caffeine's effect on our body.
This book introduces how to control our cravings for foods.
The key is "portion" size. If you see bigger portion, you will eat more. Expanding portion sizes leads to obesity.
I have just started to stop drinking coffee. Because of that, I have had a headache since this morning. Now that I know that this symptom is caffeine-withdrawal and will resolve in four to five days, I will be able to deal with it.
I believe that it will be much easier to maintain the proper portion size without caffeine's effect on our body.
August 15, 2015
Eye-opening to read what one subconsciously knows. One bagel equals a day's worth of grains. Avocado should be considered a fat. Wine, a sweet. A lot of common sense but very helpful to have it all laid out. It also makes me wish for food labeling that actually includes useful information. But that's a topic for another time. Reading this easy to live by approach is helping me make smarter choices already.
February 6, 2008
This book shows just how big portions have gotten today. It's shocking when they compare things to the size they were originally. They also give you practical items to compare a real portion size to.
February 8, 2011
Portions have gotten bigger over the last 50 years. Duh. Portions are smaller in Europe. double-duh. I honestly didn't get much from this book. To sum it up, use smaller plates, bowls and cups and eat a lot of non-starchy vegetables.
January 27, 2013
The information on how portion sizes incrementally increased during the past few years was very helpful. Portion sizes exploded and so did the obesity rates. The tips and suggestions are practical and easy to incorporate.
January 28, 2015
Love this Book
This book has eye opening statistics about how the average portions of everyday food, have grown in size. It's great to find a plan you can use everyday and not feel discouraged.
This book has eye opening statistics about how the average portions of everyday food, have grown in size. It's great to find a plan you can use everyday and not feel discouraged.
April 8, 2015
Portion size can be so confusing when paying attention to what you are eating. The serving size on the label is often not realistic. Serving size is about having something close to 100 calories NOT how much you would actually eat. This is a very helpful guide.
March 10, 2008
Makes you think about what you eat.
July 11, 2008
library copy
Great book that gives you "visuals" so that you can judge how much food is a proper "portion" (example: palm of hand = 3 oz. of meat).
Great book that gives you "visuals" so that you can judge how much food is a proper "portion" (example: palm of hand = 3 oz. of meat).
January 29, 2010
great book by my NYU nutrition prof... really interesting facts and it makes you think about eating from the different food groups... loved it!
Read
July 21, 2010Not an entertaining book but interesting
Read
November 5, 2014recycled w/o reading
April 22, 2017
Very helpful information! Sources are generally American.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews