A Plateful Of Proportions - The Diet Plate helps measure food portions - www.thedietplate.com

Kay Illingworth of Manchester, England, may not win a Nobel Prize for her invention, but in her own right, she's a genius. While on a diet, Illingworth, who could not visually gauge 3 to 4 ounces of cooked pasta, was having difficulty getting the proper portions on her plate. "I think the defining moment came when I was weighing my portions for dinner one day and discovered, to my horror, that I had a pound of pasta on my plate--more than five times what I was allowed under my diet regime!," she explains.

Then the "proverbial cartoon light bulb went off," says Illingworth. "I took an indelible pen and drew around the food." She proceeded to create a template from greaseproof paper and stuck it to her plate. Using her diet plate, she lost 42 pounds.

This method is cheat-proof because if you pile the food too high, it starts to cascade over the tape measure on the plate and you know you're cheating. "It's one thing [to cheat] with extra servings, but if you're using The Diet Plate, it's almost a premeditated cheat," says Illingworth, whose invention is now available to the public.

The Diet Plate can be purchased at www.thedietplate.com for $32.75 plus $13.40 postage or by sending a check to: The Diet Plate Ltd, Unit 44 Houldsworth Mill Bus Centre, Houldsworth St, Reddish, Stockport, Cheshire, England, UK. SK5 6DA.