The South Beach Diet: A Doctor's Plan for Fast and Lasting Weight Loss (Paperback)

The best thing about this diet is that it's healthy. It was designed to lower cholesterol and other nasties in your blood, not to lose weight. But it does both.

It is a really refreshing look at diets and 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 and 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 really 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 and eggs, quiche, omelette....all of which I like but started to get really 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 and 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) and 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 and meal plans include low fat mayo, de-caffeinated coffee, and 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 and find out how some accepted nutritional advice isn't so smart, try the South Beach diet. It has this layman convinced.