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Back to South Beach
Thursday, August 24, 2006

By Janie Blank

We are doing South Beach this week seems to be a familiar refrain at our house. And I don't mean vacation; I mean diet. We first tried the South Beach Diet about three years ago when it came out and were astounded at our success. It included everything we liked and although we hated giving up bread and alcohol for two weeks, it really worked!

I think the beauty of it is you know you are only going to do strict dieting for two weeks. I would say I could do anything for two weeks. While we were counting down the days we would also be counting the pounds that were rolling off. It takes a couple of days to control your cravings but then after that you really do get used to the routine. The cravings do stop.

My husband and I always seem to have ten pounds to lose. So, ideally, when you put on five pounds you will do South Beach for a week or so and, Voila! It is gone. However, in the real world we wait until we have added at least ten pounds to actually get around to it. It also seems the more you do it the more resistant your body is to dropping the weight.

The key is to avoid all starch and sugar for a couple of weeks then add it back slowly. The other thing we liked about South Beach is the philosophy of the author, Dr. Arthur Agatston, that insists upon only eating healthy fats. I was always opposed to the low carb regimen of Dr. Atkins because he did not care how fatty the food was long as it was low carb. I thought you might lose weight but you would die of a heart attack along the way.

With South Beach you always eat healthy. In the first two weeks you give up fruit so there is definitely some controversy about that but as soon as you get through this strict phase one you add it back. You eat almost any vegetables with a few exceptions like carrots, which are high in sugar. You can snack on thirty pistachio nuts a day. This is more satisfying than you might think. It takes time to open each nut and keeps you from just gulping down a handful. I would bag them up and send them to work with my husband each morning. When I would have a craving for something salty I would ration myself a few nuts to get past the urge to eat a bag of potato chips! It always worked.

I love the celery and peanut butter snack also. We also have become addicted to mozzarella sticks. I like mine at room temperature though. I always carry one in my purse so by the time I get to it, it is soft. Hopefully I won't get food poisoning, ha! Snacks seem to be the key for us in getting through the day without cheating.

Breakfast is great because you basically just eat eggs. I am not a cereal lover so this is perfect for me. I tried turkey bacon but there is just something too weird about it for me. I sometimes buy the little turkey sausages. I really prefer the pre-cooked bacon you just microwave for a few seconds, and often cheat in this area. It is not going to violate the diet except from a fat standpoint. You will lose weight but it is a fatty food so Dr. Agatston frowns on this because he wants us to be both thin AND healthy. Someone has to look out for me! My husband tires of eggs though and is always anxious to get back to his beloved cereal with fresh fruit. I usually just hard boil eggs even when not on the diet and can grab one in a hurry. About a half an egg will satisfy me all morning, but if I eat cereal I am hungry two hours later.

Lunch is pretty boring for me. I am a soup eater and this pretty much out for the first two weeks. Ditto for sandwich eaters. That leaves salad. I got very tired of getting up every morning and making my husband a salad to take to work. I would lovingly chop up vegetables and add some fresh turkey and send him on his way. He kept a bottle of dressing in the office. South Beach pretty much has you keep the sugar content on prepared foods like dressing and peanut butter to three grams of sugar or less. He was more than satisfied. His normal lunch is a Slim-Fast so this was better!

However, then in the evening he would be tired of salad. Okay, now we can't have any potatoes, pasta or rice and we can't have bread so now we are down to just meat and vegetables. I really prefer to do South Beach in nice weather when we can grill out. I might chop up a variety of fresh vegetables and wrap them in foil. Maybe zucchini and summer squash, mushrooms, a sweet Vidalia onion and some yellow or orange peppers and spray with Olive oil Pam and sprinkle herbs over them and throw them on the grill. In twenty minutes or less you have a really delicious side dish to go with the chicken or fish or flank steak you are grilling.

I love summer and grilling because I get the food ready in advance then my husband and I sit outside and sip a glass of red wine and talk while he does the grilling. Whoops! That is the other thing we really don't like about South Beach Phase One. No wine. Somehow having a nice dinner with lemonade is just not the same for us. I envy people who don't care about wine. Or maybe not. But it surely would make dieting easier. Heck, maybe we would not even need to diet if we did not drink! In Phase two you can add back red wine. It is preferred over white because it has a lower sugar content.

So what happens is we usually kind of do Phase Two rather than Phase One or what we call strict South Beach. Of course then the weight comes off much slower. Phase One is just a better kick-start to the diet. We might get horrified by how much we have gained over the weekend and get serious for a few days but then there is usually some social event and we basically blow it. I will say that if you really stick to it and get where you want to be, you are so in the habit of eating healthy and following the South Beach principles, that the weight usually come back slowly and over time, not all at once. You have learned to make better choices. Multi grain bread rather than white. Sweet potatoes rather than white. Actually white is usually bad!

Dr. Agatston is a Cardiologist. He developed this diet for his patients that were overweight and at risk for Diabetes. So naturally he counsels you in the book on what foods are most likely to turn to sugar and create cravings or an insulin rush. It is great advice and really educates you on making healthier choices. As a matter of fact, after you read it you are quite fired up and I think that makes sticking to the diet easier, at least in the beginning. Maybe I need to read it again! Seriously!

As with any diet, we have done this off and on for so long that boredom has set in. We always say this is not a diet it is just a better way of eating. And it definitely is the way you should eat for a better, healthier life. Once the weight is off and you are in Phase Three, or maintenance, then it truly is just a better way of eating. Who doesn't want to make healthier choices that will keep you thin and are good for you at the same time?

The problem of course is eating out and going to parties. Even eating out in a nice restaurant is not too bad. If you are not with another couple you can just tell them not to bring bread. If you are though, you can suffer or you can give in to temptation. My weakness is the crusty French baguette. There is the bread and that slab of fresh butter and I am miserable the whole evening. Actually I am miserable if I eat it or if I do not. Hard to win when watching your weight!

Dessert is much easier for me to pass up. Usually I am full when I finish my meal so I don't want dessert until later anyway. If we are home we have sugar free desserts like popsicles, fudgesicles and chocolate pudding. I also try and remember to keep sugar-free candies in my purse. The Sweet and Low International Coffee flavored hard candy is amazingly satisfying when you are out. However, that being said, if someone else orders dessert, my just a bite turns into several and I know I have gone overboard on the diet again.

My downfalls as far as food goes are what I refer to as BBCC: beer, bread, chips and chocolate. Chips being tortilla, potato, fritos, etc. Beer is never good on any phase of the diet. Beer has the worst type of sugar and it floods your system, making it scream for insulin. This not good for anyone but especially for diabetics or pre-diabetics. It also makes you starving for some chips to go with it! If my husband and I could just give up beer we would for sure lose the ten pounds and this whole diet thing would probably be a moot point!

We both retired this year and moved to the lake. Our boat is right outside the door and there are seven restaurants on the lake. Lots of new neighbors and lots of bar food. Lots of time on our hands to party. Eating healthy has never been such a challenge. Actually all the restaurants have salad. And their bread is not the kind that tempts me. I am happy to have a fish sandwich and eat it with a fork leaving the bread behind. Problem is the fish is deep-fried and come with hand cut French fries! You can see the predicament.

Another reason a light beer is appealing to me is I cannot drink caffeine. So when anyone else would order a nice diet coke, I am left with water unless I want a sugary Sprite that I don't like anyway. I actually love ice water during the day, but when I am out and having a meal and my husband is downing a diet coke I am feeling quite put upon. My latest scheme is these Crystal Light On the Go packs that you can carry in your purse and dump into twenty ounces of water. It makes a great glass of lemonade. I try to add it to the water somewhat surepticiously so the establishment does not think I am trying to cheat them out of a fee. But almost no one has lemonade without sugar. And a no-caffeine diet coke is rare in a restaurant. Usually Panera Bred has it but there are none of those around here. You can see why I am tempted by beer!

Lets face it, dieting is all in the head anyway. The key is finding a way to get motivated and when this happens South Beach is a winner. When you are in the zone, no pun intended, then you can easily pass up on the things that will thwart the diet. You will feel great about yourself and will look forward to your trip to the scale, knowing you will be losing weight and looking and feeling better. That is where the diet books are a big help I think. They are great motivators. At least for a while.

I had better go dig out my copy of The South Beach Diet and chew on few Pistachios nuts and see if I can get back into a dieting frame of mind!

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