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Private practice, Arthur S. Agatston, M.D.,P.A.
Has authored 100+ scientific publications
Assoc. Prof. of medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine
Married to Sari, two children
Free Recipes!
The
Taste of Success – Recipes from
The South Beach Diet Cookbook contains
these other tasty South Beach recipes: Smoked Chicken
Salad with Raspberry Balsamic Vinaigrette AND Strawberries
with Velvety Chocolate Dip
Free Recipes from The South Beach Diet Cookbook includes recipes for Meatballs with Tomato and Zuchini Medley, Vegetable Frittata with Parmesan, and Apple Walnut Muffins
The
South Beach Diet
(Rodale, 2003)
8,680,000 copies sold!
The
South Beach Diet Cookbook: More than 200 Delicious
Recipes That Fit the Nation's Top Diet
(Rodale, 2004)
CBN.com – The Right Carbs
Some astounding numbers surround the sales of Dr. Agatston’s diet book. First of all, 8,680,000 copies have been sold. The book stayed 38 weeks at No.1 on the New York Times Bestseller list, with 90 consecutive weeks on that list; 39 weeks at No.1 on the Publishers Weekly Bestseller List, with 85 conservative weeks on that list; 40 weeks at No.1 on the Wall Street Journal Bestseller List; and 14 weeks at No.1 on the USA Today Bestseller list.
Dr. Agatston says he’s not a diet doctor. His career has been largely devoted to the development of technology that produces sophisticated pictures of the heart and coronary blood vessels that allows doctors to identify problems early and treat them before they cause heart attack and stroke. He is the inventor of the Agatston Score, which in CT (computerized tomography) is the measure of coronary calcium. The protocol for calcium screening is often referred to as the Agatston Method.
Back in the mid-'90s, he, along with many other cardiologists, had grown disillusioned with the low-fat, high-carb diet that the American Heart Association recommended. None of the low-fat regimens of that era seemed to work reliably over the long haul. “My concern was not with my patients’ appearance,” Dr. Agatston says. “I wanted to find a diet that would help prevent or reverse the myriad of heart and vascular problems that stem from obesity.” Since he could not find one, he developed one himself. And in image-conscious Miami, the success of his patients’ weight loss became so widely known that many people started asking about it.
The South Beach Diet
Dr. Agatston’s eating plan’s first principle is to permit good carbohydrates (fruits, vegetables, and whole grains) and curtail the intake of bad carbohydrates (the highly processed ones), for the most part, where all the fiber has been stripped away during manufacturing. “We would thereby eliminate a prime cause of obesity,” Dr. Agatston says.
In the fat vs. carbs debate, Americans have gotten fatter. In addition, adult-onset diabetes, a sure sign of unhealthy blood chemistry, has become widespread. Contrasted to the Atkins diet, which bans virtually all carbs and lets the dieter exist mainly on protein, Agatston's diet permits whole grain breads and cereals and whole wheat pasta. He also prescribes lots of vegetables and fruits, for the practical reason that not everyone wants to give up vegetables, fruit, bread, and pasta forever.
To make up for the overall cut in carbohydrates, the South Beach diet permits ample fats and animal proteins, a decision that contrasts with famous diets like Pritikin and Ornish, which had been developed specifically for people with heart problems. For a cardiologist, this was skating on thin ice. “But my experience with patients showed that those so-called heart-healthy diets were nearly impossible to stick to,” Dr. Agatston says. The South Beach Diet permits lean beef, pork, veal, and lamb. The latest studies had shown that lean meat did not have a harmful effect on blood chemistry. Even egg yokes are good for you, contrary to what we once believed. They’re a source of natural vitamin E and have a neutral-to-favorable effect on the balance between good and bad cholesterol. Chicken, turkey, and fish (especially the oily ones such as salmon, tuna, and mackerel) are recommended on his diet, along with nuts and low-fat cheeses and yogurt. Low-fat dairy products such as cheese, milk, and yogurt are exceptions to the rule – they are nutritious and not fattening.
This diet also allows plenty of healthy mono-and polyunsaturated fats, like the Mediterranean ones: olive oil, canola oil, and peanut oil. These are the good fats that can actually reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. In addition to being beneficial, they make food more palatable.
Needing a guinea pig to try out his diet, Dr. Agatston was a suitable one. He gave up bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes. He didn’t even eat fruit in the beginning. He lost almost eight pounds in the first seven days, and it was easy. He suffered no hunger pangs, no terrible cravings, nor noticeable deprivation.
Phase 1, the strictest phase of the diet, is meant to last for two weeks. This is just long enough to resolve the insulin resistance that is brought about by eating too many bad (mostly processed) carbohydrates. This phase doesn’t have to be low carb if you eat the right carbs. By the time this phase ends, your unhealthy cravings, especially for sweets, baked goods, and starches, will essentially vanish.
In Phase 2, you switch to a more liberal version of the diet. Here you gradually reintroduce certain healthy carbs – fruit, whole grain bread, whole grain rice, whole grain pasta, and sweet potatoes. The weight loss slows a little, which is why some dieters stay on Phase One longer than the two-week period, but the limited choices of foods make it a bad choice for a long-term diet. When you fall off the diet wagon, go back to Phase One until you lose what you’ve gained and get back on track.
By Phase 3 you should be at your ideal weight. If you’ve stuck with the diet, your blood chemistry should also be improved. This is the most liberal stage of the diet. By now it is simply one important aspect of a healthy lifestyle, rather than a weight-loss program. By now you should be knowledgeable enough about how the diet works and how it interacts with your own body to enjoy the flexibility of the plan. That’s why there’s no food list for Phase Three. When you overindulge, you can go back to Phase One for a week or two.
Common Sense Nutrition
Dr. Agatston says flexibility and common sense, guided by real science, were the guiding principles of the South Beach diet. His team acknowledged that most diets they tried with patients failed because there were too complicated and too rigid. If a diet doesn’t take into account how the whole person operates, then it is a failure. This diet is flexible and simple, with as few rules as possible. It allows people to eat the way they actually like to eat, while improving their blood chemistry and helping them to lose weight and maintain the loss over the long run. This means a lifetime, not three months or a year. The plan would allow dieters to bend or break the rules, so long as they understand exactly what damage they’ve done and how to undo it. People are practical beings. Diets that require menus or foods eaten in precise combinations are just too burdensome to sustain for long.
They decided that the diet would have to be effective regardless of the dieter’s exercise habits. Exercise does increase the body’s metabolism, thereby making the diet more efficient. However, the South Beach diet does not depend on exercise in order to work. You’ll lose more weight, faster, if you are active on a regular basis. But you’ll lose weight even if you’re not.
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