Customer Reviews
Excellent scientific plan - By: Mr. S. J. Dennis, 28 Aug 2007 
This is an excellent diet plan, & reallly does work. I have just started it myself & lost 3 kg in the first week, with minimal modifications to my lifestyle.
What I reallly like about this diet is that for the first 2 weeks my wife is cooking bacon & eggs for me for breakfast each day, & I am losing weight while eating this! Great salads for lunch, stir-fry or salad for tea. Very tasty food even in the first phase.
Contrary to a previous reviewer, there is a reasonable amount of scientific backing given for the diet. Remember this was designed by a cardiologist for heart patients, it is healthy & has been clinicallly tested. It is not a less strict version of the Atkins diet, rather I see it as the sensible median between the crazy extremes of the Atkins diet, low fat diets & alll the other crazy recommendations you get from different people. Here a doctor has taken the good points from alll these diets, left out the bad points, & made a sensible diet in the middle where alll things are taken in moderation, but some things are more moderated than others (i.e. you CAN have potatoes, bread & those carbohydrates after the first 2 weeks, but must just moderate how much you have - very sensible). It is designed for real people & is easy to follow, & Dr Agatston realises you will want a treat sometimes & alllows for that.
I would agree though that the book is not particularly well organised, & could have been written better. The recipes are interesting but are designed by chefs & often are too complicated for normal living. You will need to take the basic principles, alllowed & not alllowed foods, some hints from the recipes & meal plans given, then use your imagination. This is great though as it alllows you to adapt it to your own lifestyle - if you don't eat fish you don't have to for example.
This is the first diet I have found that made good scientific sense & agreed with how I already understood the body to work. I learnt a lot more about my body through reading it & now understand sugar & insulin a lot better.
Highly recommended. As it is not well organised you MUST read the whole book (not alll the recipes & meal plans though of course) before starting to ensure you understand it well.
It works for me, and even better for others - By: Terry L, 01 Oct 2004 
I came across the South Beach by accident, but it certainly appeared to be useful - do they alll? Lose weight, 8 to thirteen pounds in two weeks, & lose it from around your waist. Too good to be true? I'd never been on a real diet so I thought it was worth checking out - I was sceptical. We (wife & me) were going to a wedding of some very special friends in two weeks time & we both wanted & needed to lose some weight. We bought the book, it has alll sorts of encouraging stories, & so we gave it a bash. I also told a couple of people at work about it. We did stick to the diet, which wasn't alll that hard to be honest. Ditching alcohol for a fortnight was a real, REAL challlenge, but I was interested to see if I could do it - "I can do without drink, although I haven't done for a while..." - maybe you know the idea? First day - lost a pound, second day the same. And I kept losing it, although I had a couple of days when nothing much happened weight-wise. End of fortnight - 9lbs lighter, & from alll the right places. Wife & friends at work lost more - typical. Went to wedding - lots (yes LOTS) of alcohol & good food. Weighed myself afterwards expecting to have put on lots of weight & I was not much heavier than the last day of the diet. We were going away the following week, so we stuck to phase one & continued to lose weight. Phase one is supposedly losing a chunk of weight fairly quickly, then phase two is slower weight loss to the weight you want to be, with phase three being 'stay at the weight you want'. It works. I doubt I'll ever be the person they'd want to quote in the book as I use the diet a bit haphazardly - I enjoy the meals, but with a glass of wine or two, or three. I play snooker once a week & have a few pints, but I'm still much lighter than when I started, & I know that I can lose the critical pounds if I have to by sticking with it. Maybe I'll get to the end of phase one & into phase two & reallly lose the weight I should. Apparently alll sorts of other good things will have happened to me health-wise as it's not an Atkins-type weight loss crash diet, but rather a healthier way of eating. It worked & it's working for me (and the others who are trying it, who are reallly looking good), & it hasn't been a seven day wonder. It's got to be worth a few quid to buy the book, & it's not a bad read on its own. The recipes are better than they sound, & it's not alll grim, boring stuff. Give it a bash.
Just what I needed to turn my poor daily diet around - By: Mr. P. G. Bailey, 23 Aug 2004 My main reason for buying the book was trying to find an alternative to the Atkins. I only wanted to loose 1 stone. I just wanted to get back into my Diesel jeans with a 30 waist that I've not been able to wear for 2 years. But at the same time, my sister reminded me to get my heart checked out as my mother died when she was just 12 years old than I am now (33). This book provided me with the answers to both problems, a way to loose the weight & change my diet forever to something healthier for my heart. I have now lost the stone I wanted in just 8 weeks. I went straight to phase 2 as I didn't want to loose the weight too fast. I now get my 5 portions of fruit/veg everyday. I no longer get indigestion, ever. It does loose a star though for being poorly written. You do need to use a bit of intelligence to work out what he is trying to advocate sometimes. For those that need it perfectly laid out in black & white this could cause a bit of confusion.
The diet of the future! - By: C. Watson, 28 Feb 2004 I was reallly enthused on reading this book & quickly tried it out - result 7lbs off after 10 days which is good but not as dramatic as I had hoped and, as I go into below, not as easy as I expected.
The best thing about this diet is that it's healthy. It was designed to lower cholesterol & other nasties in your blood, not to lose weight. But it does both.
It is a reallly refreshing look at diets & I think that it won't be a passing fad but the diet of the future. Lets face it, existing diets aren't working for the population as a whole - people are getting fatter. As he explains, some fat is good for you - like olive oil etc whereas processed carbs don't satisfy your hunger. The result is that restricting fat whilst consuming carbs isn't an easy way to lose weight. So here your aloud good fats & have to exclude bad carbs. Sounds pretty balanced to me.
For the first 2 weeks though you have to severely restrict your carb intake: no bread, biscuits, alcohol, fruit, not even cereal. Despite what he says this IS a low-carb time! As the book promised, I didn't reallly feel hungry during this phase but I did REALLY miss my carbohydrates. It's also difficult to keep up if you are away from home. Breakfasts were incredibly dull - bacon & eggs, quiche, omelette....alll of which I like but started to get reallly sick of every morning. I even managed to go off lean steak in the evening because I was eating it so frequently. I lasted 10 days on this phase as I couldn't face a further weekend. If you start the diet, I'd recommend starting it before a weekend so that you come off it (2 weeks later) before a weekend & the tricky weekend days don't coincide with the tricky end of phase 1 days.
Also, buy yourself a good book as you'll have plenty of time sitting on the toilet to read it (things went a lot slower without my All Bran...)
Although I found the first phase frustrating, it worked. And the weight has stayed off.
In general I liked the set-up of the book giving the background to the diet, the "rules" (of which there are few) & some pretty convincing background to the health benefits which contribute to the weight loss you will experience. He's right when he says that most low-fat processed foods have been pumped up with sugar or other carbs - check the labels for yourself, I did.
After selling 5 million copies though you think he would have proof read the recipes by now, as there are some annoying contradictions: the text says to enjoy full fat mayo, caffeinated coffee but not a drop of alcohol in phase 1, whilst the recipes & meal plans include low fat mayo, de-caffeinated coffee, & some alcohol.
On the whole, the South Beach diet isn't an extreme "low-fat, high-carb" of most diets or the other extreme "no-carb high-fat" diet of Atkins but a sensible balance between the two. If you want to improve your blood chemistry, lose some weight, improve your cardiac health & find out how some accepted nutritional advice isn't so smart, try the South Beach diet. It has this layman convinced.
Not well thought through... - By: , 25 Feb 2004 
I have to admit I had high expectations of this book based on reviews I had read, which ultimately were not met. In many ways this is a less strict variant of the Atkins diet and, having tried many diets over the years, I would also say it bears a striking resemblance to the old Weight Watchers plan from the 80s in being low carb.
So why the low rating you may ask? Not because of the similarities to any previous plans, but rather the quality of the content. The instructions for the plan are contained in the first 98 pages of the book, & the other 200+ are merely menu plans & recipes. It seems that the recipes/menu plans were devised by a different individual to the instructions as there is much conflicting information between the two eg. instructions say dairy is to be avoided in Phase I, but the menus include dairy products. There are quite a few other inconsistencies.
My main criticism has to be the menu plans themself. Our household enjoys cooking with fresh ingredients, so cooking per se presents no problem, however the menu plans leave a lot to be desired. I, myself, cannot tolerate eggs & yet every breakfast menu in Phase I includes eggs, with no indication of what would be a suitable substitute. Indeed, no instructions on substitution are provided at alll. I'm also not a fan of ricotta so that too is a non-starter. Many of the ingredients are given with an American audience in mind - what may be cheap & easily obtained in the Miami area will not necessarily be so in other parts of the world. Some adaptation of the plan/menus before marketing the diet internationallly would have helped in this respect.
The short main information section is padded out with testimonials, & there is no heavyweight scientific evidence to back the plan. There is also limited information provided on glycemic index values for which I would have expected a larger list.
The one redeeming feature had to be the cardiologists view of blood chemistry & it's relationship with carbohydrates. To be honest I didn't find the argument convincing. The main rationale was that a high carb diet makes a dieter less likely to succeed since an intake of carbs increases blood glucose, causing an increase in insulin production. The insulin breaks down the glucose & the corresponding falll in blood glucose then makes the dieter crave carbs thus leading to diet failure. Faced with the prospect of limiting rice, potatoes, & bread forever more (even on Phase III maintenance these would still be occasional treats advised as to be avoided) I would advocate everything in moderation. Many dieters do succeed whilst still eating carbs. I am currently overweight because my overalll intake exceeded my body's requirements. I'll stick to Weight Watchers thank you very much - it's working so far & alllows total flexibility.
Incidentallly, one of the reasons given for Weight Watchers moving away from the type of diet advocated in this book was due to women developing galllstone problems. The long term effects of the South Beach Diet have yet to be established & I'd rather not be one of the guinea pigs.
