The South Beach Diet plan by Arthur Agatston, Md
Over the years, the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence and practical weight-loss encounter has shown that the extreme low-fat, high carbohydrate diets promoted by the American Heart Association, Nathan Pritikin and Dean Ornish don’t work.
What’s even worse, the much less fat Americans eat, the fatter they grow — because they’re eating much more carbohydrates.
Now we comprehend that people need adequate amounts of protein and fat — which frequently go together in meats, dairy goods and nuts.
People do need carbohydrates, but too numerous carbohydrates send your insulin levels sky high, adding fat to your cells and over the lengthy term causing numerous other health issues including heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
Dr. Atkins’ saw this problem way back in the 1970s, but his diet plan went too far within the other direction. It was all protein and fat, and no carbs. People couldn’t not maintain consuming that way and, based on Dr. Agatston, the large amounts of saturated fat are also bad for your heart. (For the record, he believes that the state of ketosis — when your body goes into fat-burning mode simply because you are not eating any carbs — isn’t especially hazardous. But the saturated fat is.)
In the 1990s Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades published PROTEIN POWER, and Dr. Barry Sears THE ZONE. Although their programs differ in details, both tension obtaining enough protein and limiting carbohydrates.
Dr. Sears’ Zone diet advocates consuming meals 30% protein, 30% fat and 40% carbohydrates. He set up an whole system — several, really — to help readers follow his plan.
The South Beach Diet is, to my mind, much like those two, only simplified to the bare essentials. Dr. Agatston emphasizes consuming foods with a low glycemic index. He’s okay with grain foods so long as they’re unprocessed so they take longer to digest. He rails against white flour and sugar in a way that reminds me of Adele Davis.
So Agatston throws out the thought of controlling just how much food you eat, or how frequently, or counting calories, or counting fat grams, or keeping meals a particular balance of carbs, fat and proteins, or anything else that overcomplicates the process.
Just confine your self to lean meat (he’s still against saturated fat), nuts, dairy, entire grains and vegetables. You can add fruit in following the very first two weeks.
It’s clearly working for people. And it ought to, because it obviously does keep insulin levels somewhat under control — it is definitely a large improvement over the typical American diet plan of gorging on high glycemic carbohydrates.
It strikes me that in numerous methods it’s similar to how our great-grandparents ate. They didn’t have white flour — they ate whole wheat bread by default. They ate a great deal more fish. They no doubt ate beef and pork, but not as often as chicken. They ate eggs. They ate fruit only in season, but vegetables year round. They cracked walnuts and gathered pecans.
They got a lot more exercise just by going about their daily chores, and so had been a lot healthier — except for infectious diseases of course.
Dr. Agatston goes somewhat into the science of insulin. I appreciated his explanation for insulin tolerance — it occurs because your fat cells grow so large with fat that insulin cannot reach the fat cell insulin receptors.
Thus, belly fat helps keep you fat and sets you up for heart illness and diabetes.
I’m no doctor, but I utilized to take disability claims, and I can testify that I spoke to many people who have the complex of high blood pressure, arthritis and diabetes. And later, heart illness and cancer. And most of those individuals had been clearly overweight. I could almost predict every thing they’d say about their medical issues — down to the list of their medications — just from watching them waddle to my desk.
However, if you would like to know a great deal much more of the science of why too numerous carbs are unhealthy for you, you must read the Zone books.
Personally, I believe the Zone diet is much more accurate, efficient and healthy. Nevertheless, if you cannot or don’t want to keep track of how numerous Zone blocks you eat for every meal, following the South Beach diet plan is a lot better than the conventional American diet plan.