This is part one of several upcoming posts reviewing Lisa R. Young’s, The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss.
Everyone who’s ever been on a diet and gained all their weight back plus some knows that diets don’t work.The problem with all diets, from Atkins to South Beach to the pink grapefruit diet is that they’re only temporary solutions to a long term problem–people who are heavy have a calorie surplus. As soon as you kick the diet plan, the calorie surplus returns and the pounds come back. I’ve been there before, never again.
At the end of the introduction, Dr. Young provides her readers with some very powerful words, “Welcome to diet liberation.” Before reading this book, I’d already come to the realization that my dieting life was over. Now, I’ve begun to look at food as fuel for my body instead of comfort for my soul. But I still need some help in determining when, what, and how much food to eat. This book answered a lot of those questions for me.
The most powerful part of this book wasn’t in found in the nuts and bolts of how to implement a lifestyle of eating properly. Instead, I was most affected by the knowledge of how food portions, especially in America have changed in the second half of the 20th century.
While doing her doctoral research, Dr. Young was investigating why the average American gained only 1 pound in the 1960′s and 1970′s, but gained almost 8 pounds in the 1980′s. While most researchers were concentrating on the problem from the side of what Americans ate, she decided to look at the problem from the side of how much Americans ate. Quickly she realized that there wasn’t much research on the subject of portion sizes and so she decided to do her own study. Here are just a few of the staggering statistics:
- Pizzas were 10″ in diameter in the 1970′s, today they’re sometimes 18″ in diameter.
- When the Hershey bar was introduced, it weight 0.6 oz, today it weighs 1.6 oz.
- A pasta entree in 1960 was 1.5 cups, today it’s approximately 3 cups.
- Between 1984 and 1987, the chocolate chip cookie recipe on the Nestle chocolate chip bag changed the number of cookies made per batch from 100 to 60, but didn’t actually change the recipe.
- In 2004, Carl’s Junior made the “Double $6 Burger” which is a 1 lb. hamburger and contains 1,400 calories.
- Starbucks doesn’t sell the 8 oz. drink any more, only 12, 16, and 20 oz sizes.
- Even Weight Watchers and Lean Cuisine, companies that specifically target people trying to cut calories, have increased their portion sizes in their frozen entrees by about 100 calories.
The mantra found throughout The Portion Teller is “Smartsize instead of Supersize.” Basically, be aware of how much your body needs to eat to maintain a healthy weight and be aware of the portion sizes of what you’re eating. You can eat whatever you want, nothing is forbidden, but everything should be eaten in moderation. In the next post, I plan on reviewing The Portion Teller Weight Loss Pyramid, where we’re told how many servings of each of the different food groups we need in order to arrive at our healthy weight. It’s pretty good stuff.
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Tip:
You CAN still get the 8oz size on a lot of drinks at Starbucks. They don’t advertise it, but if you ask for a “short” in the US (or a “piccolo” in parts of Canada), out from under the counter comes a cup that looks adorable and teeny in comparison to the coffees of today, but holds a cup of liquid, and is quite a satisfying size to drink, despite its diminutive appearance. It’s a SECRET SIZE. They usually have to get a special chart out of a drawer to figure out how to price it, but it CAN BE DONE! Using this method, I have enjoyed short soy lattes in Toronto, Montreal, New York & San Francisco.
Bonus tip: Some of their tumblers (on the shelf, they look like they might be child-sized) are also the size of a “short.” I carry one with me so wherever I get my hot beverages, they are never too big, and I’m not wasting paper cups.
Smaller portions really are the key. I might take a look at this book. Thanks for mentioning it!
The Hershey bar information is probably incorrect, certainly incomplete. See Gould SJ, “Phyletic Size Decrease in Hershey Bars,” 1979 (rpt in Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes, 1983). Or see Chaplin’s “Modern Times” (I think), where the large Hershey bar, like the large newspaper, was a straightforward prop, not a comic exaggeration.
So, there you go, Hershey scholarship.
great site btw
Yes, one of the real problems is drink sizes. I always ask for the smallest possible size but it is true that a lot of places no longer have small cups, so even if you’re getting an iced tea you’ll get more that you want/need. At least if it is self-serve, you can fill a glass with ice rather or just fill it part way…
I bought a cook book that promised to show how to bake for just two, but the contortions needed turned me off; instead I bake a full batch of cupcakes or cookies and then freeze in separate servings. This doesn’t work for pies as well, though I have had some success in making a small quiche and freezing half after it is baked.
@Jill
I was about to post the same thing, I always order a short cappuccino as cappuccinos aren’t meant to be 12 oz. and bigger anyways.
I thought the comparisons of serving sizes was one of the many eye-opening parts of Supersize Me.
When I visited France several years ago, we ate at regular French restaurants and tourist French restaurants. The portions at the tourist restaurants were HUGE compared to the regular restaurants. It was both embarrassing and disgusting. Dude, they think we’re pigs.
I look forward to hearing more about this miraculous technique called Smartsizing.
One of my many favorite scenes in SuperSize Me — a must-see movie for anyone overweight — is when he polishes off a supersized MacDonald’s portion and then pukes out the window of his car.
Mac, a few notes on your opening paragraph. (1) Diets DO work, it’s dieters who don’t: they don’t stay on the plan, increase their calorie intake, and stop losing weight. I agree that diets are silly, but maintaining a calorie deficit is at the heart of losing weight. In your attempt to lose weight, you’re maintaining a 1000 calorie deficit — I guess you’re not “on a diet” because you’re not following someone else’s plan, but I’m not sure what the difference is from a practical standpoint.
(2) For what it’s worth, the Atkins diet has been shown pretty conclusively to be the most effective diet out there, meaning that more people are able to keep excess weight off over the “long-term” (usually about 1 year in studies) following Atkins than any other diet plan. I think the Atkins plan is as much a blind alley as any other diet plan, but credit where credit is due.
(3) It’s not actually the case that “people who are heavy have a calorie surplus.” Heavy people who maintain their weight don’t have a calorie surplus, only people who are gaining weight have a calorie surplus. The more you weigh, the more calories you have to eat simply to maintain your weight.
I also note that the examples given here of the increase in “portion size” are all either restaurant meals or processed foods. In other comments I’ve talked about the insurmountable problems dieters face when eating in restaurants, and also the importance of not eating processed foods but instead eating whole foods (the famous “perimeter of the grocery store” technique). Imagine: if you rarely eat in restaurants and only eat whole foods that you prepare yourself, the changes in “portion size” faced by the rest of the culture will have absolutely no effect on you: you never have to worry about this trend again for the rest of your life. I think Dave Ramsey calls this “living like no one else.”
Greenman: To say that “diets work” and “people don’t” puts the failure on each individual person, rather than the approach. When an approach has 90% failure rate over the long term with a large population (1 year of maintenance is NOT long term), then I think it’s fair to say that the approach doesn’t work. As long as we keep blaming people for failing the diets, instead of the other way around, the diet industry will continue to be the massive money-maker it is.
Dieting doesn’t work. Figuring out how to habitually eat less and move more does. How that happens for each person is as individual as a fingerprint, and until we culturally allow that to be true, the diet industry will keep duping people with the promise of the holy grail.
TosaJen: I agree with you, one year is not long term, but, incredibly, that’s how medical studies define “long term” when it comes to weight loss.
I agree that it’s counterproductive to blame people for falling off their diets, but it’s the plain fact and can’t be gotten around.
I have many, many problems with diet books, and as I’ve said before, I don’t read them (I read cookbooks instead), but every diet book has a tiny discussion of the importance of “lifestyle changes that support healthy eating,” usually one paragraph in the introduction. Everyone skips over that part to get to the eating plan, but it is the key.
The other fact about diets is that they’re simply Phase I of a transition to an entirely different way of living. Phase II is what diet books call “Maintenance,” (usually another paragraph, sometimes a chapter) and this is what people are most unable to follow through on. People say, “I need to go on a diet.” They don’t say, “I need to throw out my TV, blog less, walk 4 miles every day, cook my meals from scratch, and stop eating out.” But you need to change your life in these ways to lose weight, keep it off, and maintain a “healthy lifestyle.” Diet books are too narrow in their focus to be effective, but they’re not wrong. I think that people who look to them as a panacea are buying into a consumer culture belief that change comes easy: buy something, take a pill, listen to an “expert opinion,” watch a TV program. You can say the culture is toxic, but we’re all making choices to buy into that culture, and that’s what has to change.
I doubt we’re disagreeing with each other about fundamental truths here.
I’d like the emphasis in fitness blogs to be on how you sustain change in the face of adversity. I love posts like J.D.Â’s about eating when heÂ’s anxious, or MacÂ’s about feeling discouraged that his weight loss has stalled, because these are the key decision points at which mortals “fall off their diets.” These guys are working out other strategies. ThatÂ’s inspiring. You wonÂ’t find that in a diet book.
Greenman — I like most of what you say, but I disagree strongly with the idea that diets work. If you think that the purpose of diets is to lose weight quickly and dramatically, then fine. My assumption was that people go on diets to become healthy and maintain a healthy weight. Diets don’t work for that at all.
We agree that diet books almost uniformly require people to “hold their breath” until they lose the weight, then they drop them off a cliff. They don’t encourage people to develop a custom and sustainable plan and lifestyle for losing weight that will support them in maintaining the weight loss. How do successful maintainers do that? I have three suggestions for information about making long-term sustainable changes:
One of my favorite books about weight control is “Thin for Life”, by Anne M Fletcher, which goes through a bunch of strategies based on talking to 160 people who successfully lost at least 20 pounds and maintained the healthier weight for 3 years.
Another source of inspiration and information about maintaining a healthy weight long-term is the National Weight Control Registry (http://www.nwcr.ws/), and the research derived from studying these success stories.
Several years ago, I was very active on a weight control board. I had about 30 pounds to lose, but went wherever things were interesting. I found that I learned a lot on the 100+ to lose board, because they thought in terms of years when they made lifestyle changes, not months. Diet books and their promises were dead and buried. No fantasies about quick fixes, there.
Hmm, this raises a question I never really thought about. I’ve always assumed that you are dieting as long as you maintain a calorie deficit — quickly and dramatically, or slowly and boringly, either way. Once you equalize calories in and calories out, I’ve assumed you’re not on a diet any more, and that a diet is of no real use when it comes to “becomming healthy” or “maintaining a healthy weight.” (I’m particularly annoyed by diets that claim you can lose weight eating “as much as you want of a certain group of foods,” while, presumably, maintaining your weight by following exactly the same strategy. It’s one or the other, isn’t it?) Mac is living with a 1000 calorie a day deficit and maintains that he’s not on a diet. This may just be a semantic disagreement.
I really enjoy reading GRS and GFS. I thought I would give you a Simple Life Hack that I’ve been using with my wife for the past 5-10 years – and it really works.
The majority of time (%80-%90) we go out to eat (with or without the kids), we order 1 meal that we share. We’ve noticed that the portion sizes in most every restaurant are ridiculous. Now, it helps that my wife is not a big eater, but this really works for us. We usually each get a small dinner salad and share the main dish. I also always order water for my drink and we are good about not filling up with bread before the meal.
If we’re out with the kids, it seems like they always have food left over on their plates that we can nibble on if we are still hungry. I’m actually surprised that we tend to leave with leftovers after almost every meal.
The bottom line is that we end up getting a nice meal, don’t overeat, and spend way less money. Our bills are %30 less now that we use this simple solution to large portion sizes.
Of course for special occasions, or unique dining experiences, we throw out this rule and have some fun.
Now, whenever I order a whole meal for myself I notice that I’m much smarter about how much I eat – and I tend to bring leftovers home more often. Again, leftovers make great lunches the next day – more money savings tips that are good for your health.
Another tip to survive restaurant eating when out with a crowd bent on sampling every course, is to order an appetizer as your main course. I have managed for go a good number of calories. First courses are generally smaller in portions and are frequently very appealing and creative.
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