Lisa R. Young

A real eye-opener.

I've been reading a number of books on food and nutrition during my weight loss journey and this one struck me because it wasn't proscribing a particular diet but rather encouraging education. I've seen any number of people back on WW for the 3rd, 4th, etc. times and I don't want that to be me. I want to learn from this WLJ and not regain it. In that respect, I like that weight loss is hard. It reminds me of why I don't want to have to do this again.

Young was a student of show more Marian Nestle, whose tome on food I'm currently muddling through. I find Young more accessible and she presents common sense knowledge in an educational way along the same way as the [Wall Street Diet] did. It's less about what you eat as how much you eat - refreshing in the current era of "Eat only this. OMG! Never eat *that*"

From the beginning, Young shocks the reader, at least this one, with the extent to which portions have grown over the years. I did not know Hershey bars were originally the same size as the current fun bars. Wow. Or even the degree to which Lean Cuisine and similar have upsized. Seems contrary to what you'd expect from meals that are expected to teach portion control. One 14 oz slice of cheesecake? 1,560 calories. It really is no surprise that America is getting fatter. THe question is, how many people know this or even care?

Young's main theory throughout the book was serving size vs. portion size, an interesting lesson for the readers to learn. While some of it is inline with WW and what I've read elsewhere on the web, some differs. It just goes to show how much different information is out there about the right amounts of food to eat. I think her main point is true though - it's about learning how much you eat and recording it - whether it's a cup (baseball) or half cup of pasta. I found her visual cues to be good tips for when you're away from home and cannot measure.

"Nobody ever got fat from eating too many carrots". While she does encourage tracking she deals with the stress that some people get in counting and tracking. You should try to track everything but if you have one more carrot than is a serving size, that isn't going to be the end of your diet success.

"'Diet Food' may seem enticing, but it never helped us lose weight. There's more of it on the market than ever before, but we're fatter than ever." Sad, but true. Seems like everytime we turn around in the store there's low-cal, high-fiber, no-fat... but are people just eating more and more of it to make up? There's something fundamentally wrong with how people eat today and I don't think it's strictly limited to Americans.

While nothing that she presented was earth-shattering, some of it was very eye opening in terms of the number of servings a typical item is. I'm certainly going to use this information as I continue on my WLJ and incorporate it as I have the Wall Street Diet info. show less

The first little bit about how portion sizes have increased was interesting, but then it turns into a “eat this, don’t eat that” typical diet book. Also included is very basic information about nutrition and calories, things that will not be new to anyone that has ever read a healthy-eating book before.

recycled w/o reading