The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss

How much are you reallyeating? More than you think, especially if you think these servings seem small.

The Portion Tellerwill teach you how to understand portion sizes so that you can lose weight and stop dieting, no matter what your portion personality might be. Are you a mindless muncher who snacks all day, a dinner lover who enjoys one big meal a day, or maybe a volume eater who always wants to sit down with a huge plate of food at every meal? No matter what your eating habits, The Portion Telleroffers a personalized eating plan that is right for you. Instead of giving up the foods you love, learn to smartsizethem with the help of one of the country's leading nutritionists.

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.