The South Beach Diet
by Arthur Agatston, M.D.
Overview
From the Publisher
For years, cardiologist Arthur Agaston, M.D. urged his patients to lose weight for the sake of their hearts, but every diet was too hard to follow or its restrictions were too harsh. Some were downright dangerous. Nobody seemed to be able to stick with low-fat regimens for any length of time. And a diet is useless if you can't stick with it.
So Dr. Agaston developed his own. The South Beach Diet isn't complicated, and it doesn't require that you go hungry. You'll enjoy normal-size helpings of meat, poultry, and fish. You'll also eat eggs, cheese, nuts, and vegetables. Snacks are required. You'll learn to avoid the bad carbs, like white flour, white sugar, and baked potatoes. Best of all, you'll lose that stubborn belly fat first!
Dr. Agaston's diet has produced consistently dramatic results (8 to 13 pounds lost in the first 2 weeks!) and has become a media sensation in South Florida. Now you, too, can join the ranks of the fit and fabulous with The South Beach Diet.
My thoughts
Yes, I have finally succumbed to The South Beach Diet. I can't say that I've read the book cover to cover, nor will I ever, but the parts I've read are all very logical and easily understood, and the recipes are interesting.
I'm writing this review on Day 3 of my diet so I can't exactly tell you if it works, but I've had success with low carb diets in the past. They are great for losing weight but you just can't live without bread and pasta and potatoes forever! The nifty thing about this diet is that after a regimented two weeks, you get to start introducing more variety into the diet. The principal of controlling your sugar levels so that you don't have spikes and plummets, thus controlling your body's insulin production is an argument I can easily buy into. Time will tell!
The book, you ask? Very well-written, interesting, informative, easy to understand. It gets my thumbs up.
Favorite Passage
How bad is white bread? Worse than ice cream. If you're about to sit down to dinner and need to decide whether to have white bread with it or ice cream after, go for the ice cream - it's less fattening.
But of course, not all bread is white bread. A good rule of thumb is that the coarser and heavier the bread is, the better it is for you.
These principles apply across the board: Whole and intact is better than chopped or sliced, which is better than diced, which is better than mashed or pureed -- all of which is better than juiced. An apple, for instance, has got a fair amount of pectin, a soluble fiber, in its skin. So if you eat an apple your stomach has got to contend with the fiber before it can get to the fructose. Similarly, an orange has its fiber in the pulp and in the white pithy stuff that clings to the flesh.
But take that apple and peel it, and then juice it, and you've got something quite a bit different. The micronutrients and the fiber are in the skin. With the skin intact, it make take you 5 minutes to eat that apple. But it requires just a few seconds to drink the equivalent in juice. And keep in mind that the glycemic index number is in part determined by the speed with which you eat and digest your food or drink.
