Product Description

Based on the nation's #1 bestseller

Published in January 2004, The South Beach Diet Good Fats/Good Carbs Guide has sold more than three million copies and has continuously topped national bestseller lists. An essential tool for success, the completely revised and updated guide will feature a new, more user-friendly format and an expanded list of foods, as well as the most up-to-the-minute new information on nutrition and healthy eating to aid the now millions of early adopters.

The new edition will include:
o An expanded nutritional breakdown: total carbs and net carbs, total fat and saturated fat, fiber, and sugar.
o More food listings including meal replacement bars, other convenience foods, healthy fast-food menu items, and beverages.
o FAQs organized by phase and designed to answer dieters' most common questions.
o A foreword by Dr. Agatston detailing new research and outlining the changes to the diet.
o Each food listing will now have a recommendation by phase. For example, bananas might be a food to avoid in the first 2 weeks of Phase One but will be a food to enjoy in Phase Two.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16248 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-19
• Released on: 2005-04-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781594861987
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
ARTHUR AGATSTON, M.D., is an associate professor of medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Author of The South Beach Diet, he has frequently appeared on television and has authored more than 100 scientific publications. He lives in Miami Beach where he maintains a private practice.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Your Road Map to South Beach Success

Welcome! I'm glad you've decided to try the South Beach Diet and have taken the first step toward a future filled with health and vitality.

The South Beach Diet can't be classified as a low-carb diet, a low-fat diet, or a high-protein diet. Its rules: Consume the right carbs and the right fats and learn to snack strategically. The South Beach Diet has been so widely successful because people lose weight without experiencing cravings or feeling deprived, or even feeling that they're on a diet. It allows you to enjoy "healthy" carbohydrates, rather than the kinds that contribute to weight gain, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. You can eat a great variety of foods in a great variety of recipes. This prevents repetition and boredom, two obstacles to long-term success. Our goal is that the South Beach Diet becomes a healthy lifestyle, not just a diet. The purpose of this guide is to help you to accomplish this with ease. Read on for more on the principles of the diet, how to use this Guide, and shopping and dining-out tips.

Good Fats, Bad Fats

Fat is an important part of a healthy diet. There's more and more evidence that many fats are good for us and actually reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. They also help our sugar and insulin metabolism and therefore contribute to our goals of long-term weight loss and weight maintenance. And because good fats make foods taste better, they help us enjoy the journey to a healthier lifestyle. But not all fats are created equal--there are good fats and bad fats.

"Good" fats include monounsaturated fats, found in olive and canola oils, peanuts and other nuts, peanut butter, and avocados. Monounsaturated fats lower total and "bad" LDL cholesterol--which accumulates in and clogs artery walls--while maintaining levels of "good" HDL cholesterol, which carries cholesterol from artery walls and delivers it to the liver for disposal.

Omega-3 fatty acids--polyunsaturated fats found in coldwater fish, canola oil, flaxseeds, walnuts, almonds, and macadamia nuts--also count as good fat. Recent studies have shown that populations that eat more omega-3s, like Eskimos (whose diets are heavy on fish), have fewer serious health problems like heart disease and diabetes. There is evidence that omega-3 oils helps prevent or treat depression, arthritis, asthma, and colitis and help prevent cardiovascular deaths. You'll eat both monounsaturated fats and omega-3s in abundance in all three phases of the Diet.

"Bad fats" include saturated fats--the heart-clogging kind found in butter, fatty red meats, and full-fat dairy products.

"Very bad fats" are the manmade trans fats. Trans fats, which are created when hydrogen gas reacts with oil, are found in many packaged foods, including margarine, cookies, cakes, cake icings, doughnuts, and potato chips. Trans fats are worse than saturated fats; they are bad for our blood vessels, nervous systems, and waistlines.

As this Guide went to press, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled that by 2006, food manufacturers must list the amount of trans fats in their products on the label. (The natural trans fats in meat and milk, which act very differently in the body than the manmade kind, will not require labeling.) Until then, here are a few ways to reduce your intake of trans fats and saturated fats, South Beach style.

Go natural: Limit margarine, packaged foods, and fast food, which tend to contain high amounts of saturated and trans fats. Make over your cooking methods: Bake, broil, or grill rather than fry. Lose the skin: Remove the skin from chicken or turkey before you eat it. Ditch the butter: Cook with canola or olive oil instead of butter, margarine, or lard. Slim down your dairy: Switch from whole milk to fat-free or 1% milk.

Good Carbs, Bad Carbs

Carbohydrates, foods that contain simple sugars (short chains of sugar molecules) or starches (long chains of sugar molecules), have been blamed for our epidemic of obesity and diabetes. This is only partially true, because there are both good and bad carbohydrates. The good carbs contain the important vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that are essential to our health and that help prevent heart disease and cancer. The bad carbs, which have been consumed by Americans in unprecedented quantities (largely in an attempt to avoids fats), are the ones that have resulted in the fattening of America. Bad carbs are refined carbs, the ones where digestion has begun in factories instead of in our stomachs. The good carbs are the ones humans were designed to consume--the unrefined ones that have contributed to our health since we began eating! Unrefined carbohydrates are found in whole, natural foods, such as whole grains, legumes, rice, and starchy vegetables. They're also called complex carbohydrates, so named for their molecular structure. Besides being packed with fiber, vitamins, and minerals, good carbs take longer to digest--a good thing, as you'll soon see.
Refined carbohydrates, on the other hand, are found in packaged, processed foods, such as store-bought baked goods, crackers, pasta, and white bread.

Refined carbohydrates are made with white flour and contain little or no fiber. In fact, many products made with white flour are advertised as fortified with vitamins and minerals, because the process of turning grain into white flour strips away its fiber and nutrients. One of our South Beach Diet rules is to avoid foods labeled as "fortified." Current evidence is that fortification with vitamins does not recreate the benefits of the natural vitamins that have been removed.

Despite the fact that good carbs are a critical part of a healthy diet, the typical American diet is filled with the bad kinds. And when we're overweight as a result of a diet laden with bad carbs, our bodies' ability to process all carbohydrates goes awry. To understand why, you need to understand the role of the hormone insulin.

Customer Reviews

It's working for me!
This companion book to the original South Beach Diet book serves as an excellent resource for figuring out which foods we can have and which we must avoid. It's a food guide, not a full-blown description of the diet. As such, it suits it's purpose just fine.
I've lost over 30 pounds on this diet in the past 3 months, without suffering and misery. The similiarities between South Beach and Atkins are clear to see. So are the differences. South beach is the product of a cardiologist, which is aimed at preventing heart disease and diabetes. It's not just low carb, it's correct carbs. It also emphasizes avoiding saturated fats and trans-fats. With all due respect to the late Dr. Atkins and his diet, this one presents a healthier alternative that has proven effective. This isn't the only diet book out there but it's a good one with good explanations for those serious about losing weight in a safe manner.

Pick the right foods to get slim!
"The South Beach Diet Good Fats Good Carbs Guide" is a 138 page companion book to the best selling book, "The South Beach Diet".

According to the author, Dr. Arthur Agatston all fats and carbs are not created equal. The good fats and carbs will nourish your body, help you stay healthy and lose weight. Eating the wrong kinds will trigger cravings, decrease your ability to burn off calories and make you hungry.

In this book, Dr. Agatston shows you at a glance which fats and carbs are compatable with "The South Beach Diet". Each entry lists a food item, its carbohyrate, sugar and fat grams. Foods are then ranked as limited, very limited or avoid. There are over 1,200 listings.

The beginning of the book gives a quick overview of "The South Beach Diet". It describes why we need to select certain foods in order to lose weight and get healthy. Though it does not go into the great detail of the original South Beach Diet book, you could purchase this mini book and learn enough to be able to follow the diet successfully.

The book packs in a lot of information. In addition to the overview, and food ratings there are also shopping tips and meal makeovers. A handy dining out section makes it easier to stay on the South Beach track at your favorite restaurants.
A quick guide also lists what foods to enjoy on each phase of the diet.

The only drawback to the book is though its smaller than a normal sized book (7" tall by 5" wide), it's still to large to fit in a pocketbook. It would be nice if it were smaller, making it more portable, thus I deducted one star.
Other than that, the book is a super handy resource, excellent for those following the South Beach diet or concerned about their health.

It's not a complete and easy reference as the title states
This review was written originally in December, 2004 and was about the first edition. Since then, a new edition has appeared, and some of the faults I found with the original book have been addressed. Since the original edition is still available, I have left my review intact. However, I have added comments at the end to address the changes. If you are planning to buy the revised edition, see the comments at the end too.

Original review:
If you are looking for a diet that is easy to follow, does not leave you hungry, is effective, nutritionally balanced, and improves your overall health, the South Beach Diet may be for you. In this companion book to The South Beach Diet book, Dr. Agatston lists many common foods, as well as whether they can be enjoyed in abundance, limited, or avoided completely. While this could have been done with a simple food list, this information is presented in a table that also lists carbs, sugar, and total fat.

The beginning of the book gives a brief overview of the diet, and a discussion of trans fats and why they should be avoided. It also has a discussion of the glycemic index. Although the recommendations in the book are based on glycemic index, glycemic load, and other factors, this information does NOT appear in the tables, purportedly because it's not available for all foods. Leaving it out for that reason, even when known, defies credibility.

As followers of this diet know, it's not about following the glycemic index, or counting calories or carbs. While the GI may serve as a guideline to let you know where foods fit in, it can also be misleading since some foods with similar GI values may not be of equal value to your diet. All this is explained in the main diet book, which gives a brief list of GI values for common foods. Likewise, we are told that total fat is not the big factor, but how much is saturated or trans fat vs unsaturated fats is important. That distinction is not made in the tables, which list total fat.

If a strict look at those factors is not a necessary part of the diet, then why are they in the table? That's not clear. The portion that describes how to use the guide acknowledges that you need not be a slave to the numbers, but the real advice ultimately boils down to following the main diet book, in which case all but the last column (whether and how much to eat) seems irrelevant.

The other problem is that this supposedly complete book is far from complete. It has too many entries for items that are obviously not allowed on the diet, and few entries for what might be suitable substitutes.

If you look at breakfast foods for instance, you'll find bacon and eggs, cereals, and pancakes. Yet you won't find French toast. You may be able to figure it out based on the rules from the diet book, but then why do you need this book? It's not as if processed foods or foods prepared from recipes that may vary were left out. There seems to be no rationale for what's included.

If you do look at cereal, you will find a couple of pages of cereals that are limited or should be avoided completely. But do I really need this book to tell me to avoid Frosted Flakes and Corn Pops if I know how the diet works? Yet if I look at the myriad "healthy" cereals in my supermarket, not one of them is listed in this book. The same is true for the ones in natural food stores, even if they are available nationwide.

I might be able to figure out on my own that Uncle Sam cereal is a good choice, but then why buy the book? On the other hand, I might find another supposedly healthful cereal, and the label may show me that it's whole grain and high in fiber, but has more sugar than I would want. It's foods like these for which I would like the book to give me an idea if it's acceptable.

There are way too many common foods left off the list, which is surprising considering the exhaustive permutations and combinations listed for others. I don't need five pages to tell me that all baked and broiled fish is good, but breaded fish is not. If it's the recommendation that counts, I don't need a separate entry for tuna, canned, light, in water, and different ones for dark tuna in all its permutations, when ultimately, they fall into the same recommendation as other fish.

The bottom line is that if you stick to the main diet book, and manage to work around the flaws in the way it was written, you won't need this guide. This book might be helpful if you are on Atkins or even Weight Watchers, however.

UPDATE:

Although the original edition listed only the total amount of fat for each entry, the new edition lists both total fat and saturated fat. It also lists recommendations based on the phase of the diet, which makes more sense than the former blanket recommendation.

Saturated fats and trans-fats are culprits in a bad diet, so it's good to know the balance of "good fats" to "bad fats." Since trans fats are not listed, a reader cannot assume that whatever is not saturated is a "good fat." But since trans-fat levels will not be listed on nutrition labels until 2006, the advice given to read the ingredient list is the most sensible solution for now. This new way of listing fats is a welcome improvement, and the remaining issue with trans-fat listing is the fault of the food manufacturers, not the book.

The new edition covers many more foods, but still lacks much of what was missing in the first edition. I had mentioned that Uncle Sam cereal was inexplicably missing from the tables, and now it is there. So are many others, especially ones that are co-branded Kraft/South Beach Diet foods. This latter point seems a bit self serving. I doubt that anybody would reasonably expect that South Beach Diet foods would not be compatible with the diet, so it really adds little practical value. Other commonly available cereals that may border on acceptability are still missing, and those are the ones I would use a guide for.

As supermarkets add more and more whole grain foods, it would be helpful if they appeared in a guide such as this. For example, whole grain waffles that are as low in sugar and higher in fiber than SBD branded foods are now easy to find in the market, but are still not in this guide. Many common breakfast cereals are now marketed as whole grain and it's not necessarily clear why they are listed the way they are.

I wondered why something like SBD Whole Grain Crunch was listed as "good" for phase two and three, but Cheerios is listed as "limited," meaning once a week at most. They are identical in calories and almost identical in carbohydrates. But the SBD cereal has four times the sugar and only a gram more fiber. Then I noticed that both this edition and the previous one list six grams of sugar for Cheerios, while the cereal package lists only one gram per serving. A taste test makes it clear that it's the book that's wrong here. While I doubt that it's a deliberate effort to promote his own foods over competing products, having a guide book with such gross errors raises questions. I don't need a book to tell me to avoid virtually all commercial cereals except for the South Beach Diet branded ones.

The book continues to list total carbohydrates, while at the same time, telling the reader that total carbohydrates are irrelevant. Perhaps this column listing would help somebody who is on the Atkins diet, but the author is not recommending the Atkins diet.

The second edition is an improvement over the first edition. If a food is listed as good for a given phase, it's probably a good food to eat. But if it's not listed, reading the ingredients and the nutrition label for the food is still the best bet. Skimming through the book may help to give an idea of what foods are good or bad, but if you are in a supermarket, the package in front of you may be a better indicator than the book.

If you feel that it's more important to gain a strong understanding of how the diet works and to be able to figure out on your own what foods will work, then the main diet book is much more helful for that. If you are more interested in picking foods and using recipes because somebody gives it a stamp of approval, and you don't want to risk making a bad choice, then using this guide in conjunction with the South Beach Diet cook books will provide you with tools you need.