Come on chubby folks, you know what to do. Cut out all that white garbage-- the white sugar, white flour, white potatoes. Dr. Agatston's relatively gentle method, the South Beach diet, helps you wean yourself off of those blood-sugar spiking, diabetes-causing, heart disease making carbohydrates and train yourself to rely on lean proteins, plants, and whole grains. Agatston is a cardiologist first, diet-creator second, so this diet, according to the authors, promotes heart health, with better results than the low fat, high carbohydrate American Heart Association recommended diet. And the tone of the book is very moderate, reasonable, and useful. This approach is a path to overall health, with weight loss as just one benefit. But I feel there is a bit of disconnect between the wholesomeness of the diet as laid out in the book and the way that it appears to be interpreted and applied on south beach internet forums. The book: vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains, nuts. The internet: mindless low carbiness!!! On one South Beach site I read, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." Which sort of misses the point: eat healthy, your weight will adjust accordingly.So if you want to lose a big chunk of weight quickly and (relatively) painlessly, here's the plan. For two weeks, no sugar, no fruit, no dairy, no alcohol, no grains. Tons of green veggies, eggs, nuts, lean meats, fish, beans. After that, add back in whole grains, some fruits, and dairy. That's it. That's the whole diet. Enjoy!P.S. I completely ignored the recipes. Completely. Also, I refuse to go anywhere near fake sugar or low-fat dairy. I'd rather go without than choke down a skim-milk mozzarella stick, gyech.
I actually lost a pile of weight on this diet in 2005, & what I like about it to this day is the 'vegetarian' recipes are so delicious I continue to make them now being a vegetarian. Admittedly, there were way too many eggs & way too much cheese after a while, & too many bell peppers (which are very expensive around these parts); ultimately I found that the diet was too expensive & too labour intensive to continue on. But for the first time in my life I felt so much better - eliminating wheat products made all the difference. If I could venture to propose that Agatston create a vegetarian version of this diet, I would trouble myself greatly to figure out a way to use fewer eggs & hop right on this again, weight loss or not.Now that I've given too many of my opinions & said nothing about the book, I had better say that the meal plans were the biggest help. Working with this book long enough really gave me the ability to make my own meal plans (I bought all the other SBD cookbooks as they were published) with confidence. The best part of it (aside from the weight loss) was the total end to cravings for sugary foods within about three days. That in itself, for me, was enough to celebrate. The South Beach Diet Supercharged is the version you want if you wish to include an exercise program.
What do You think about The South Beach Diet (2003)?
Technically, this is a reread, but the first time I read this book it was waaaaayy before Goodreads.So, here's the deal. I think this is a fairly solid plan. It mirrors very closely what the trainers at my gym suggested. I do try to avoid too many sugar-free things, and I simply can't eat that much fish, but so far so good. The biggest problem is not going on a spree once you finish those first 14 days because, in my case at least, you will still want to eat all the bad things. Just not as much.I decided to try this again because I'm apparently allergic to counting calories. If I'm counting calories, I'll find a way to slide in there foods that I ought not eat. At least with this plan I can eat whenever I'm hungry even if it's not my favorite thing in the world.Let's see how this book in combination with The Shift goes. I have another couple of diet/exercise books, too.
—Sally Kilpatrick
I'm finding this doctor makes a lot of sense, and his recommendations are not difficult for me to follow. I've felt so hopeless about losing weight and have tried dieticians and Weight Watchers repeatedly. This diet has got me enthused. It is a life change, but all for the good, I really think he's right about refined and processed sugars--the bane of American food. I started this instead of Matzoh two weeks ago--and I'm down seven pounds. I'm starting Phase !! tomorrow. Can a piece of fruit be in my future?!
—Marcy Heller
I picked this up because it was the one fad diet that seems to actually make sense, and it sounded easy to follow. The basic idea is eating low-glycemic foods so that your blood sugar doesn't spike and so you don't get cravings to eat more food that your body need. I think if you want to lose weight and are tired of counting calories and you know you eat too many bad carbs, then this is worth trying. It is not good if you exercise a lot though. I followed the diet pretty closely for a week but it left me feeling exhausted. Supposedly your body gets used to this, but I was training for a long bike ride and barely had the energy to ride my bike to work each day, so I gave up. I decided I didn't care that much about losing 10 pounds. I would try this again if I wanted to diet and was injured or otherwise unable to exercise. The main ideas though are useful and can be applied in any level (super strict to pretty relaxed) and still be somewhat effective.
—Kendra
