The 9 inch Diet

[tgp157]

Has any one read this new book or anything about it? I don't plan to buy it because NoS is all I need. Base on what I have read about this new book, I find the premise to be similiar to NoS in regard to portion control. Please note: I have not read the book. I've copied & pasted what I have read below:

How did author Alex Bogusky lose three inches from his waist? Bu taking three inches off his dish. But what does The 9-Inch Diet has to do with it? Here is the story.

When Alex Bogusky moved into a 1940s house six years ago, he was dismayed to discover his new dishes did not fit in the cupboards. “I was thinking, ‘What kind of idiot makes cabinets that do not fit a normal plate?’†he recalls.

That’s when it hit him: Today’s “normal†plate is abnormally huge – about 30 percent bigger than it was 40 years ago – a point Bogusky, 45, drives home with powerful imagery in his new book, The 9-Inch Diet.

Now Bogusky – who has whittled 3 inches from his waist since switching to 9-inch plates five years ago – is leading the revolution to downsize dinnerware. “The plate,†he says, “is a really practical portion-ontrol tool.â€

[apomerantz]

lol . . .I haven't seen this book, but I'm thinking that when my physical size becomes such that No S is no longer working for me (which I think is inevitable since ultimately it is about caloric intake over time)), I'm not going to change a thing except to downsize my plates!! I'm pretty sure I'm working with the 12 inch variety right now, and I'm staying with that as long as I possibly can . . .

[Too solid flesh]

I think Brian Wansink started the small plate movement:

http://www.smallplatemovement.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Plate_Movement

[reinhard]

It would certainly be VERY compatible with no-s (even down to the historical underpinnings).

Just three issues that I can see to watch out for:

1. it's obviously not tremendously portable (are you really going to carry around a 9 inch plate with you everywhere you go?). But even if you used it just at home it could make a big difference.

2. It could get expensive to replace all your plates (though you could just start with one and see how it goes).

3. It could be an excuse for seconds. I'd recommend waiting till you've been able to stick with the habit of three BIG single plate meals a day for a few weeks before considering systematic downsizing. Many people have trouble even with this.

On the whole, I think these potential cons are easily avoided, but one should be aware of them.

Reinhard

[tgp157]

You're probably right Reinhard. It is so hard to let go of the diet mentality & stop looking for more answers when NoS really sums it all up. Thanks

[gratefuldeb67]

That restriction seems too annoying to me to find it livable..
Some days I do the 10 inch plate others a 6 inch plate... etc.. as long as it's on a human sized plate, that's good enough for me.

[wrigleyj]

I don't really make this a rule, but I try to use a smaller plate than normal now that I'm doing NoS because our normal dinner plates are pretty huge and I know full well that when heaped up it's way more food than I need.

I actually use an old kind of blue and white chinoiserie plate from a pair that my sister rescued from a china smashing stall at a fair. I think it shows quite nicely the difference in size between the old and the new.

[connorcream]

\
I think it shows quite nicely the difference in size between the old and the new.

We have my DH grandmother's wedding china- 100yrs old. Some of the plates are smaller and I love using the smaller size for me. They are not uniform so there are larger plates that the men like. All are happy.

[TexArk]

I tried to use the 9 inch plate idea, but it just didn't work for me because of most of the reasons mentioned in other posts. If I want a smaller plate, I just use a salad plate or I just don't put as much on my regular plate. With this plan, we can see all the food we are going to eat because it is right in front of us. (Think of the BBC show, "You Are What You Eat" where they show the folks what they ate the previous week laid out on tables in front of them--SCARY)

This topic has made me think about past generations. I am fully aware that they ate less sugar and refined foods than we do and that portion sizes were smaller and each recipe might be lower in calories; however, I think their total calorie intake must have been pretty high. Just think of the Amish today. They are eating and working about like our ancestors were. There is just no way we need that many calories--they aren't pretending to do tasks a la Shovelglove for 14 minutes each day--they are actually working manually many hours a day. My relatives were never heavy, but they had sweets daily. If there was not pie or cake, they would pour molasses on other foods!

I have the sets of china from my grandmother, great aunts, etc. These were Victorian, proper Southern ladies (not wealthy, just spinster, proper, school marms). I haven't seen so many different dishes in today's sets of china. There are luncheon plates, salad plates, dinner plates, dessert plates, large bowls, small bowls, etc. All the food for a meal did not fit on one 9 inch plate. Keep in mind that they served many courses. A proper dinner menu would use a soup bowl, a bread and butter dish, a dinner plate or two, and a dessert plate. I also have their Fannie Farmer cookbooks from 1906 (and my mothers from 1946). You should read the menu for the Full Course Dinner from the 1906 book--TWELVE COURSES. I realize this would be a special meal, but nevertheless...

So my point is that we have to decide what works for us and our lifestyles and I think that is exactly what NoS has done for me. It has given me the structure that I need without undue restriction. I don't need a 9 inch plate rule but I do need just one plate with food that is satisfying, healthy, and tasty. I cannot live as people did 100 years ago, but I also do not have to live by the manmade rules imposed on us today by the food police.

I have often thought how silly we would look to someone who could come from the past for a visit--What would they think of us running on treadmills, counting and weighing food, not eating butter and milk and bread. But I am rambling......

[paulawylma]

[quote]How did author Alex Bogusky lose three inches from his waist? Bu taking three inches off his dish. But what does The 9-Inch Diet has to do with it? Here is the story.

When Alex Bogusky moved into a 1940s house six years ago, he was dismayed to discover his new dishes did not fit in the cupboards. “I was thinking, ‘What kind of idiot makes cabinets that do not fit a normal plate?’†he recalls.

[/quote]

I have two comments about the cabinets and one shocking agreement about plate size--with a caution.

When I first read this post, I thought something about it was odd because I have a set of large plates that barely fit into my cabinets, but they do fit. But still I know the plates I currently use are larger than the ones I grew up with--because I'm the one who ended up with the set.

Early this morning when I woke up I realized what was bothering me about the post--the cabinets. My parents had a free-standing cabinet/counter piece of furniture (with a built-in 50lb flour bin) because when they moved into their first apartment in the early fifties, it was in an older building that didn't have any cabinets. That's right, older pre-fifties (maybe pre WWII) houses didn't have built-in cabinets (or closets for that matter). Peope used to use free-standing cabinets and closets. So the house Alex Bogusky moved into probably had the cabinets added later--unless his house is post WWII, or the house was built by people on the cutting edge of fashion.

That said, remember that my plates barely fit into my cabinets. In fact, when I moved in four year ago, I had trouble finding a cabinet that they would fit into. I only have one cabinet I can keep then in because the door of the cabinet takes less space inside than on the other cabinets. The apartment I live in is a garage apartment--it was once a two-car garage that was converted to an apartment. I don't know when, but it wasn't recent, so maybe my cabinets are older, not 1950s but maybe 1980s.

The point of agreement with the plate size:
So anyway, I measured all of my plates: the large plates I brought in the early 1990s, the microwave plates I just brought in 2008 (which look a lot smaller), and I dug my parent's plates out of storage (purchased with Betty Crocker coupons during the mid to late 1960s).

One thing I quickly noticed is that my large plates and the 1960 plates both had wide rims while the microwave plates barely had any rims at all. So I made two measurements on each plate, the total width and the usable width (from the inside edges of the rim). The only thing that can be placed on the rims is rolls, bread and maybe the edge of something too big for the plate. So the total width of a plate doesn't really matter, what matters is the usable width. As you will see, this is an important point.

The measurements:
1990s plates total width: 10 3/4" inner width 9"
microwave plates total width: 9 3/4" inner width 9"
and the shocker. . .
1960s plates total width: 10" [b] inner width 7"[/b]
that's right. . it is not a misprint, I measured it 3 times. Even though the physical size of the 1960 plate is almost the same as the microwave plate, [b]the actual usable space of the plate itself is only 7" not 9". [/b]The rim of the 1960s plate is actually 1 1/2" wide. I haven't checked with my sister or brothers, but my memory is as stated in the eariler paragraph. The bulk of our dinners fit inside the rims of the plates, with only bread or rolls being placed on the rims. No wonder I was a skinny child!

So, my advice if you want to use smaller plates. . .measure the plate from the inner rims not the total plate width. As you see from the above measurments my large plates have the same usuable space as the microwave plates--though the total widths differ by a full inch (they have an 1/2 rim). BTW, the 1960 plates are also shallower than both the 1990 plates and the microwave plates, so you can't pile them up as high (maybe that's reason for the wide rims. . .)

In closing, you will note that I don't own any 12" plates and if I did (which I can't even imagine--do they really make them that big?) they wouldn't fit in my cabinets either. My cabinets are not from the 40s, at the oldest they may be from the 1980s--or whenever it was converted from a garage.

PS It occurs to me that a bigger problem than the plates is the size of the food. Just last year I was stunned by the size of the chicken thighs the store was selling. I actually stood in the store trying to fantom the size of the chicken they came from. These thighs were about the size of what I think of as a typical chicken breast--not the mega breasts they also sell. OK, the guess the huge thighs came from the same chicken as the huge breasts, but since I slice the breasts anyway their size didn't hit me as hard as the thighs. I mean, I think of a thigh as a single serving, but these thighs were at least one and half servings, maybe two. Then I got to thinking about the chickens I ate as a child, the thighs weren't a single serving then, they were about half a serving size. A thigh as I remember them was smaller than a computer mouse and a drumstick would be about the size of a computer mouse. A chicken breast was a little larger, the size a a regular deck of cards (not the poker size cards) or a I-phone/I-touch. Today these foods are much larger. The fruit is larger as well. Apples are supposed to be the size of the smaller ones you buy in a bag. The large apples that they sell individually are actually 2 servings of fruit. . .ditto for the large oranges and bananas. I guess we should be grateful that egg sizes were standardized by law a long time ago.

Bon Apetit!

[paulawylma]

Can anyone tell me why the quotes and the Bold in my previous post didn't work? The quote might have failed because I edited it, but the bold were placed by the buttons on the "post a rely" screen. The smileys worked, so why didn't the bold?

[connorcream]

pawly you are exactly right about portion size. One of the benfits of our large family is that fruit is shared. Apples, bananas, etc... Thanks for the detailed analysis.