The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss by Lisa Young, PhD has a simple yet powerful message: Larger portions have more calories.
The more calories you eat, the more weight you gain. To lose weight, take control of your portion sizes.
I'm a huge fan of practical, simple weight loss solutions. The Portion Teller delivers.
I love that author and nutritionist, Lisa Young, is promoting lifestyle changes, not "diet," just like Weight Watchers. The Portion Teller offers a realistic lifelong plan for permanent weight loss that focuses on learning what your body needs and how much it should be eating, in terms of "servings" of various foods.
You don't have to eliminate your favorite foods. You don't have to count or calculate anything.
What is required? Portion awareness, nutrition awareness and self awareness. Yes, it's about moderation!
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My Review of The Portion Teller by Lisa Young
In the first part of the book, Young tracks how food portions have grown through the years in a fun-to-read and shocking timeline. Foods are enormous compared to what the government defines as a serving size. And they are enormous compared to what Americans ate 30 years ago. So, is it any shock that we have grown at the same alarming rate?
After reading this book, you'll never look at a humongous muffin or platter of pasta the same way again!
The Portion Teller includes everything you need to get started 'smartsizing' your way to permanent weight loss:
- Lots of user-friendly visuals to help you estimate serving sizes
- Sample meal plans
- Blank "diary" pages
- Explanations of common 'pitfalls' and how to deal with them
- Home survival tips
- Restaurant survival tips
- Client example and success stories
- A fun portion quiz
- Suggestions for different 'portion personality' types
- User-friendly tips to smartsize every eating situation imaginable
The Portion Teller reminds me a lot of what I learned when I first joined Weight Watchers back in the early 1990s. Back then Weight Watchers was a selection program, that guided you in proper servings and portions, just like The Portion Teller.
In some ways, I think that was a better program for me because I learned more about food and nutrition and the number of servings of various foods my body needed a day. I still track my intake of starches this way. My body is happier when I limit my servings of starch to about 5 a day. I'm not sure I would have had that same awareness had I started Weight Watchers later, after the switch to points.
What Readers Have to Say About The Portion Teller
"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." ~Amazon Reviewer
"This is a great book on food portions, besides French Women Don't Get Fat. We have to stop stuffing our faces. Even if it is organic, raw, primal, vegan, keto, gluten free of whatever the latest craze is, portions matter." ~Amazon Reviewer
"I stumbled upon The Portion Teller after seeing it written up in the Wall Street Journal (Nov 29) as one of the six best health books of 2005. I agree with the Wall Street Journal: it really is one of the best books of 2005!! There are hundreds of books out there on weight loss and diets. But most of them do not provide time-tested tools that work over the long haul. Rather, they preach certain miracle foods, special combinations, diet food, or some other trendy gospel. The Portion Teller, on the other hand, provides a practical approach to eating healthfully and becoming aware of your portion sizes (the ultimate way to lose weight and keep it off) without having to count calories (which is what I love most), add up points, or eliminate entire food groups.
The Portion Teller is the first and only comprehensive book on portion sizes and Dr. Young is certainly the right person to author such a book. As a nutritionist and expert on portion sizes, Young tracked how growing food portions parallel the obesity epidemic plaguing America. She demonstrates this trend in a unique and fun to read WOW timeline. But Dr. Young doesn't just stop there. She shares common "portion" pitfalls faced by many of her clients, provides readers with visuals to help estimate portion sizes, offers a full program with meal plans, and gives lots of user-friendly tips to smartsize every eating experience you can think of. This book is also one of the few books that manages to makes portion-control lively, fun, and interesting. A MUST read for anyone who is trying to lose weight while living in America!" ~Amazon Reader
You can visit Amazon, to learn more and read reviews of The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss
Related Content:
Managing Portions and Servings for Weight Loss Success
The Key to Proper Serving Sizes is Right in Your Hand
Martha is the founder and main content writer for Simple-Nourished-Living.
A longtime lifetime WW at goal, she is committed to balancing her love of food and desire to stay slim while savoring life and helping others do the same.
She is the author of the Smart Start 28-Day Weight Loss Challenge.
A huge fan of the slow cooker and confessed cookbook addict, when she's not experimenting in the kitchen, you're likely to find Martha on her yoga mat.
This post contains affiliate links to products I like. When you buy something through one of my Amazon links or other (affiliate links), I receive a small commission that helps support this site. Thank you for your purchase!
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Lisa Young
Thank you Martha for reviewing my book! You may also enjoy my newest book Finally Full, Finally Slim. This book elaborates on portion control while also addressing your mindset, habits, food environment and your life. Hope you enjoy!
Warmly Dr. Lisa Young