Measure for measure, a way to cut calories

[Guest guest]

Washington Post

By LaRue Huget

Thursday, November 26, 2009

The holiday season brings with it an overabundance of advice on how to avoid

gaining weight in the face of all those festive meals, cocktail parties and

plates of cookies brought in by co-workers. Depending on whose advice you're

inclined to heed, you can cut back on carbs, mind the glycemic index of the

foods before you, fill up on fat or count every calorie.

That's the premise of " The 9-Inch 'Diet' " (PowerHouse), a book published

last November by a pair of advertising executives that makes a strong visual

and verbal argument that much of America's weight problem stems not from

eating the wrong foods but from eating too much.

Bogusky, who wrote the book with Chuck Porter, is best known for his

work on the " Truth " anti-tobacco ad campaign. He starts the book with a

simple tale. Having just bought a lakeside cottage built in the 1940s, he

and his wife went out to stock up on dinnerware. But the plates they bought

(regular ones from somewhere like Target) didn't fit, no matter which way he

tried to jam them in the cupboards. Slowly it dawned on him that those

cupboards had been built with much smaller plates in mind. Further research

revealed that while most dinner plates today measure 12 inches, in the

middle of the past century the standard was nine inches.

And so a " diet " was born. (Bogusky notes that it's not a diet at all -- and

thank goodness, as most diets don't work in the long run, he observes.)

Bogusky replaced his plates with vintage nine-inchers, and he and his family

adjusted their serving sizes accordingly. " Research has proven, " Bogusky

told me in an e-mail, " the mind is a much bigger trigger for how and when we

feel satisfied and full than anybody had formerly realized. More so than the

stomach. " As a result, he says, he's eating considerably less food at every

meal.

And you can, too.

" The 9-Inch 'Diet' " is a fun read, chock-full of images that show how the

continual super-sizing of American food-serving vessels has led to our

consuming ever-increasing portions. Obviously, the diet is just a way of

exercising portion control. But it's an elegant and adaptable way.

People have trouble looking at a portion and knowing whether it's too large

or too small, Bogusky says. " If I show you two portions, you can tell me

which is bigger, but you won't be able to discern which one is the right

size. And today with the size of everything ballooning out of control, there

is nothing for us to make a legitimate comparison to. The nine-inch plate is

an absolute size reference that we used for a hundred years, and it worked.

It can work again. "

The beauty of this " diet " is that it doesn't rule out any kind of food. It

just gives us a way to gauge how much we should put in our mouths. In fact,

several pages of the book are dedicated to color photos showing how meals

for various diet plans, from Pritikin and Weight Watchers to Atkins and

South Beach, look on a nine-inch plate.

Of course, going nine-inch isn't just a matter of digging Grandma's china

out of the attic. First, this approach works only if you commit to it and

allow yourself time to get used to using a smaller plate at every meal. The

payoff: Once you're in the groove, Bogusky promises, " you won't even have to

keep an eye on your portions anymore; your plate will do it for you. "

That commitment requires getting rid of your big plates. Bogusky reluctantly

suggests that, in a pinch, you can resort to paper plates, whose size is

marked right on the package. Bogusky notes that it's not just our plates

that have grown larger but also our drinking glasses and flatware;

downsizing all of these should, he says, be part of your new campaign.

To make this really work, though, you have to shop for food that will fit on

your plate. You may have to ask the butcher to cut a steak into two

servings, for instance, or rethink your notion of how big a piece of chicken

should be. And, he warns, " don't abuse your nine-inch plate " by filling it

to the rim and stacking food high. " Just use common sense, " he urges.

That common sense should of course extend to decisions about getting seconds

and thirds. Otherwise you might find yourself eating off the equivalent of

an 18-inch plate or bigger! And his illustrations imply that your whole

meal, no matter how many courses it involves, should fit on your plate. As

for dessert, well, Bogusky doesn't offer much guidance, other than to

suggest that when you eat out and order dessert, you should split it with

someone.

" The 9-Inch 'Diet' " has been around for a year. Why am I writing about it

now? Having seen a lot of diet books this year, this one -- written by

someone who is neither a doctor nor a dietitian -- makes more sense to me

than a lot of the others. It sets the responsibility squarely on our

shoulders to pay attention to how much we're putting on our plates and in

our mouths.

And then there's this: I know it works, and I knew so even before reading

the book. Last Thanksgiving, feeling sentimental, I dug out of my attic my

Grandma LaRue's 1950s-era dinnerware, including her nine-inch plates, in a

pattern my husband and I have long referred to as " Hideousware. " They looked

kind of Thanksgiving-y, so we used them at our celebration. The plates were

indeed tiny. And we all ate less than usual -- without really noticing.