Introduction
"I’ve been on a constant diet for the
last two decades. I’ve lost a total of 789
pounds. By all accounts, I should be hanging from
a charm bracelet."
-Erma Bombeck
When I started counseling people on how to lose
weight in the late 1980s, I heard many diet war
stories. The same complaints came up over and
over again: The food is boring. I feel hungry.
I feel deprived. There are too many rules. The
most common lament was: How can I possibly follow
all these rules for the rest of my life? I saw
firsthand that no matter how successful a
strict diet is in the short term, it rarely works
in the long run. At the same time as I was learning
these stories of dieting failures from my clients,
I started noticing something going on around me—the
size of food was growing. I noted the extra
mound of pasta at dinner, the increase in the
diameter of a pizza, the ballooning of bagels,
the upward creep of all fast-food and restaurant
portions. This change was pretty gradual, so most
people didn’t pay attention. It wasn’t
until recently, when the word “supersize”
became part of the vernacular, almost a cliché
to describe overgrown portions, that people
started to realize what was happening to their
food—and to their bodies. Along with the
supersize culture came a supersize America that
has collectively gained weight at an unprecedented
rate in the past few decades.
As I gathered more information about the growth
of portion sizes for my Ph.D. at New York University,
I knew that any weight-loss program had to take
into account two things: (1) a realistic, personalized
eating plan that works for life, and (2) an education
in exactly how large portions had become,
retraining perceptions. Instead of seeing just
another muffin, I wanted my clients to see a huge
muffin. And then… I wanted them to smartsize
it!
I developed this program because I didn’t
think that the diets out there were realistic.
Not only are they hard to follow, but they seem
to ignore how large our foods have become. Look
around you at the diet programs today— almost
all of them are based on the idea that you have
to cut certain foods, or even entire food groups,
from your diet. They claim that it’s the
carbs, the fat, or the sugars that are making
you fat. The entire diet industry seems to focus
on what we put in our mouths rather than how much
of it we consume. They focus on which foods are
good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, a “diet”
food or a restricted food. This approach is at
odds with how people really eat. It’s not
the carbs or the fats that are making us gain
weight. It’s not what we eat, it’s
how much we eat. It’s portion size that
is making us fat.
Did you know that a typical bagel today has almost
the same calories and nutrient value as five slices
of bread? You probably wouldn’t think twice
about having a bagel on the run, but you would
know you were overdoing it if you grabbed five
slices of bread on the way to the office. Once
you know what a bagel is “worth,”
you’ll see your breakfast in a new way.
You won’t need calorie charts, weights,
scales, or calculators to understand what a healthy
portion is. There’s no getting around it:
In order to lose weight, you have to limit calories.
But on this program, you won’t have to count
them! What you’ll do is develop portion-size
awareness. You’ll get a basic understanding
of what your body needs and how much of it you
should be eating. Armed with this awareness, you
can go anywhere—out to dinner, an all-you-can-eat
buffet, a cocktail party, or a home-cooked meal—and
know exactly how much you’re eating. All
you need to do is to smartsize instead of supersize.
With smartsizing, there are no rigid prescriptions,
no “first week on, second week off” foods—in fact, no restricted foods
whatsoever. It’s all about awareness: portion-size
awareness, nutrition awareness, and self-awareness.
You can eat what you want as long as it fits into
your own eating plan. The beauty of this program
is that you can take it as far as you want; you
can work the entire program, which includes detailed
instructions on how to keep The Portion Teller Plan
Diary, tips and activities for downsizing your
portions, and spe¬cific strategies for dining
out, shopping, and making your home more portion-friendly.
Or you can choose instead to focus on a basic
understanding of portion sizes and put portion
control into action in your daily life, leaving
a few bites on your plate at a restaurant, eating
only half a sandwich, or switching from a large
glass of orange juice to a fresh orange. If you
make these changes and no others, you can lose
between ten to twenty pounds in one year without
even feeling the pinch of deprivation. Small,
simple changes add up. I’ve watched it happen
with my clients countless times, and I know we
can make smartsizing work for you.
Smartsizing doesn’t promise a magic pill,
instant weight loss, or overly dramatic results
in the first few days. What it does offer is a
time-tested, personalized, and sane alternative
to unhealthy crash diets with short-term results.
Smartsizing works. I’ve seen client after
client—many who spent years on the up-and-down
yo-yo diet-go-round—lose weight by smartsizing
and keep it off for the long run, all the while
eating foods they love. Nothing makes me happier
than a client who says, “I never knew it
was so easy. I don’t stress out about food
anymore.” If you smartsize it, you won’t
have to change your life, just your relationship
to food. By the end of the book, I guarantee that
you will never look at an oversized restaurant
entrée, a humongous muffin, or a mound
of pasta the same way again. Instead, you will
see your food in terms of healthy portions. Again,
the choice of exactly how much and what you eat
will be up to you. The Portion Teller Plan program
gives you everything you need to make your
own choices, eat the foods that you love, and
still lose weight and keep it off. Welcome to
diet liberation.
________________________________________
Excerpted from The Portion Teller Plan by Lisa R. Young,
Ph.D., R.D. Copyright © 2005 by Lisa R. Young,
Ph.D., R.D.. Excerpted by permission of Morgan
Road Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All
rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be
reproduced or reprinted without permission in
writing from the publisher
|
