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"As a lifelong dieter, I&amp;amp;#8217;ve spent some time secretly studying thin people. The ones I know don&amp;amp;#8217;t count calories; they simply push away their plates once they&amp;amp;#8217;ve had enough. There&amp;amp;#8217;s just one problem: How much is &amp;amp;#8220;enough&amp;amp;#8221;? What&amp;amp;#8217;s the right amount of pasta or fries? My stomach can&amp;amp;#8217;t be trusted, so I decided to look into what constitutes a &amp;amp;#8220;reasonable&amp;amp;#8221; portion size (also called a serving size). That&amp;amp;#8217;s the amount of food that nutritionists suggest a person eat to get enough good-for-you stuff and keep calories in check. Confusingly, there are other serving sizes out there, namely the ones you see on food labels (which are baffling; more on that later), and the gigantic ones you&amp;amp;#8217;re ladled in restaurants. I set out on a mission: I&amp;amp;#8217;d eat only the serving sizes suggested by nutritionists (and only one serving of each food I wanted per meal) for a week to see if I could reset my appetite and eat less. I knew it wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t be easy&amp;amp;#8212;I mean, look at the pictures on these pages and tell me you&amp;amp;#8217;d be satisfied! But could I survive? Would I lose weight? I was about to find out. This Is How Much Wine You&amp;amp;#8217;re Served. Common restaurant pour: 8 to 10 oz. This Is What You Should Be Drinking: 5 oz. (or up to 116 calories less). Day 1: Hating life I usually skip breakfast, but for this experiment I decide to eat up. I have an egg (one portion of protein) and a slice of toast (one serving of grains). All fine. I reach for coffee, thinking that I use only a couple of tablespoons of milk, and mindlessly pour in a full half cup. Common goof: Like me, many people think they eat less than they really do. According to several recent studies, Americans often underestimate their portion sizes by 20 percent or more. &amp;amp;#8220;Portions have gotten up to five times larger than they were in the 1950s,&amp;amp;#8221; says Lisa R. Young, Ph.D., R.D., author of The Portion Teller Plan. &amp;amp;#8220;It started with restaurants but expanded to our homes. When everything around you is big, your concept of a normal portion gets out of whack.&amp;amp;#8221; My portions have always seemed pretty reasonable for 5&amp;#x27;7&amp;quot;, 190-pound me, but on the advice of The Biggest Loser&amp;amp;#8217;s nutritionist, Rachel Beller, R.D., I purchase a food scale. &amp;amp;#8220;It sounds old-school, but I tell clients to use one for two weeks when they&amp;amp;#8217;re trying to lose weight,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;If you know what servings of foods should look like, you&amp;amp;#8217;re going to eat healthier.&amp;amp;#8221; I count the minutes to lunch: a turkey sandwich. I weigh out three ounces of meat with my scale and reach for the bread. Insanely, one serving&amp;amp;#8212;a single slice&amp;amp;#8212;is only enough to make half a sandwich. I feel deprived nibbling on these minuscule-seeming meals. Who are these nutritional sadists anyway? I&amp;amp;#8217;ll find out later it would be fine to go to town on vegetables. &amp;amp;#8220;With fresh produce, the rule should be the more, the merrier,&amp;amp;#8221; says Beller. &amp;amp;#8220;You&amp;amp;#8217;ll get more protective nutrients, called antioxidants, and you&amp;amp;#8217;ll feel fuller.&amp;amp;#8221; But having skimped on veggies, I&amp;amp;#8217;m starving again by dinner. I order Chinese&amp;amp;#8212;chicken fried rice, and sweet-and-sour chicken&amp;amp;#8212;and measure out servings: a half cup of rice and a cup of chicken. If this paltry amount showed up at my door, I&amp;amp;#8217;d never order from the place again! Most people feel this way, says Cathy Nonas, R.D., director of physical activity and nutrition programs at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. &amp;amp;#8220;We tend to associate value with larger sizes, and that can overpower hunger cues,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. She cites recent research that found that three times as many people bought a Subway foot-long sandwich when it was on sale than when it wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t. As for me, I would cave and eat more, but my husband, Claude, comes home, senses Chinese, and quickly polishes off the rest. What I learned today: I have been trained to eat like a grizzly bear. The new discipline is eye-opening. But painful! Day 2: Brunch letdown Claude and I go out for Sunday bagels. Harsh reality: One bagel amounts to four servings of grains&amp;amp;#8212;more than half a day&amp;amp;#8217;s worth, say nutritionists. My quarter bagel is just the right size to accommodate the two tablespoons of cream cheese I&amp;amp;#8217;ve been allotted. It&amp;amp;#8217;s a sad little schmear. Later, I snack on baby carrots and hummus, and get annoyed when my two tablespoons of hummus run out four carrots in. My dinner consists of a three-ounce hamburger, which looks scrawny on the bottom half of a bun, and a cup of broccoli. I keep dreaming of the french fries that would make this meal seem complete, but I&amp;amp;#8217;m actually feeling full by the time I&amp;amp;#8217;m done. It&amp;amp;#8217;s the first time in two days that I&amp;amp;#8217;m not hungry after a meal. I&amp;amp;#8217;m shocked. What I learned today: As much as I hate to admit it, the sadists just might be right. This Is How Much Pasta You&amp;amp;#8217;re Served. Typical restaurant portion of spaghetti with tomato sauce: 3 cups. This Is What You&amp;amp;#8217;re Supposed to Eat. Just one sixth of that amount&amp;amp;#8212;a mere 1&amp;amp;#8260;2 cup! Day 3: Serving trickery Things are getting easier until I decide to fly too close to the sun and eat some peanut M&amp;amp;#38;M&amp;amp;#8217;s. I haven&amp;amp;#8217;t gotten the nutritionists&amp;amp;#8217; advice on this one, so I check the label: It tells me my 22-candy bag is one serving. But the &amp;amp;#8220;fun size&amp;amp;#8221; bags (which, with a meager seven M&amp;amp;#38;M&amp;amp;#8217;s, are actually not so fun) also claim to be one serving. How can that be? &amp;amp;#8220;Products packaged and sold individually are considered single servings if they reasonably can be consumed at a single eating,&amp;amp;#8221; explains Food and Drug Administration spokesperson Tamara Ward. (Never mind that once, when I was pregnant, I ate two supersize Big Mac meals in one sitting, which seemed reasonable at the time.) So within certain limits, companies can make a serving be whatever the hell size they want. This becomes clearer when I have one cup (a serving, according to the label) of chicken noodle soup, which is not unlike eating no soup at all. &amp;amp;#8220;Companies make their servings small so they can make calorie counts smaller too,&amp;amp;#8221; says Susan B. Dopart, R.D., author of A Recipe for Life by the Doctor&amp;amp;#8217;s Dietitian. &amp;amp;#8220;A Naked juice can be more than 30 grams of carbs per serving, or the same as two slices of bread. But look closely and there&amp;amp;#8217;s two servings in a bottle, so you&amp;amp;#8217;ve just had four slices of bread.&amp;amp;#8221; What I learned today: Companies will try to fool you, so look at everything on the label, not just the serving size. Day 4: So many fries As imperfect as this new way of eating is, something&amp;amp;#8217;s working: I&amp;amp;#8217;m down three pounds without any change in my exercise habits. The nutritionist-endorsed smaller portions are starting to feel more right; what I used to call full would now be uncomfortable. &amp;amp;#8220;Your body is learning how much food you truly need to be satisfied,&amp;amp;#8221; says Beller. For lunch, I meet my friend Ken at a burger restaurant. Food scale in tow, I order a hamburger, french fries, and a salad. I have half the bun and the full burger, which is actually only 3.2 ounces, according to my scale&amp;amp;#8212;fine by Young&amp;amp;#8217;s standards. But the hard part? The french fries. A serving (0.75 ounces, according to Young) is just 10 or 11 skinny fries. I separate 10 of the little guys from their tantalizing cone, which houses at least 55 more of their friends. I&amp;amp;#8217;m not hungry, but they&amp;amp;#8217;re there, so I want them, which is normal, say food scientists. &amp;amp;#8220;It&amp;amp;#8217;s an issue of perception,&amp;amp;#8221; says Young. &amp;amp;#8220;We don&amp;amp;#8217;t just eat food because we&amp;amp;#8217;re hungry; we eat it because we&amp;amp;#8217;re served it, so we think it&amp;amp;#8217;s how much we deserve to eat.&amp;amp;#8221; I vow to send back the extra fries next time. What I learned today: Weight-loss experts say losing weight is about making choices. I&amp;amp;#8217;m learning those choices have to happen at the start of the meal, not the middle or end. Days 5 to 7: I weigh in Guess what: By the end of the week, without having counted a single calorie, I&amp;amp;#8217;ve lost four pounds. Turns out I don&amp;amp;#8217;t need as much food as I&amp;amp;#8217;d thought. Some experts are moving away from one-size-fits-all serving sizes altogether: &amp;amp;#8220;How much you eat should relate to how many calories you need,&amp;amp;#8221; says Young, and that number depends on your weight goals and other factors. But for me, gaining new awareness of just-right portions in a world of mountains of food was invaluable; it helped remind me what&amp;amp;#8217;s normal and what&amp;amp;#8217;s crazy. (Go to clevelandclinic.org for guidelines.) Most important, it put me in touch with the perfectly working mechanism I was born with: my appetite. Taffy Brodesser-Akner has written for The New York Times and Salon. After finishing this story, she continued to lose weight."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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