Rating: 
Summary: Expensive and Time-Consuming
Review: I haven't even started the diet and I'm already disenchanted. The shopping list alone is 3 columns long. It includes a variety of expensive fish and shellfish. Maybe fresh Mahi Mahi is readily available if you actually live in South Beach, but it's not always easy to find in other places. (And if you don't like fish or are allergic to shellfish you're out of luck.) I'm going to have to go to a gourmet grocery store to find some of the ingredients. (I've never even heard of "baby green beans".) I realize you can make substitutions if you can't find certain foods, but the amount of preparation is still daunting. I also realize that a variety of foods makes this diet more palatable, but we're going to have to take out a loan just to pay for the 10 different types of greens and lettuces used in the first two weeks, and I may have to plant my own herb garden to afford all the fresh herbs you're supposed to use.I'm also going to have to spend a lot of time chopping and dicing. I'm going to have to get up at 4:30 every morning just to get fix breakfast since my dh leaves for work at 5:30, then spend the majority of the afternoon and evening preparing dinner and next day's lunch (not sure yet how I'm going to do it with a 1-year-old whose a light sleeper.) If I was a working mom there's no way I could do this much prep and cooking. All that aside, the plan looks sound healthwise. The low-carb phase only lasts two weeks. (Despite what other diets say, you do need carbohydrates to live. Bread is the staff of life.) It incorporates principles you pretty much already knew - refined foods and sugars are bad, saturated fat is bad, fruits and veggies are good. I have no doubt you can lose weight on this diet as your overall caloric intake will be reduced. I also have no doubt that it's healthy, but I doubt I could eat this way forever. I don't think I want to eat this way forever. I think I'd rather exercise more, cut down on the amount of food I eat, and have some rice and potatoes now and then.
Rating: 
Summary: Everything you thought was good, isnt. And vice versa
Review: Now I know why my wife and I weren't losing weight while exercizing. We thought shredded-wheat-and-bannana breakfast and fruits were slimming. NOT!.
After one week on this diet, and virtually NO exercize (with one nice birthday lapse last week) I'm STILL down seven pounds. Tonight's dinner? roast beef with spinach/walnut and BLue Cheese salad. Non ce male.
If you don't buy this book and go on this diet, you deserve to be fat. Not nice, but true.
Rating:
Summary: Avoiding Bad Carbs/Bad Fats forevermore -- MELT pounds
Review: First, I've been on countless diets only to have the yo-yo effect add more to my problem weight. I was a vegetarian for 9 years (lacto-ovo) and learned to love wholesome breads, rice, pastas and such and became a quite good cook. While I again started being a carnivore when I married, we still ate often from what I thought were the good carbs. Over the next 30 years I slowly became morbidly obese and my husband of 24 years slightly so.
During this diet neither my husband nor I did any exercise (that's normal for us as we are both suffers of various ailments)In every diet I ever tried previous to this one, I had hunger pangs and thought of food often. This one truly satisfies. After the first two weeks --- I lost 16 pounds and my husband lost 11 pounds. We are believers and will continue on it.
This book isn't perfect (too many testimonials and chef recipes and not enough glycemic index info) but if you simply follow the logic and guidelines you will lose and understand why you either gained in the first place or couldn't shed it on the high carb diets. This book's premise is truly lifestyle changing and positive. You can easily lose weight if you follow these guidelines, just stay on course for life. Aloha pumehana!
Rating:
Summary: Lost Fat Fast. Easy To Follow. More Choice. More Food!!
Review: This is a great diet and a great diet book. There is a strict early phase for a couple weeks and then a more relaxed phase. In both but especially the latter phase, you can have lots of good carbs, even whole grain bread. The diet eliminates hunger and cravings within a week or so and it PRODUCES RAPID FAT LOSS. That is the best part of this diet. Having tried many diets what I noticed most is that my clothes were getting bigger FAST and I was losing FAT much more than more traditional diets. This diet is easier to read and follow than Atkins and emphasized eating good carbs and good fats more than Atkins (though Atkins in moving in this direction). The book reviews other diets and explains them and how the South Beach is different. Basically, besides being easier it is more oriented toward ensuring better healthy choices of food in addition to avoiding bad carbs. There is an emphasis on Glycemic Index or how a food raises blood sugar. This is why whole grain bread is OK --because it requires lots of digestive work before it raises blood sugar--while processed breads (white or wheat) are not good--they quickly produce high blood sugar. Overal a very good and easy to read diet book for a diet that is easy to use and produces rapid fat loss. If you can manage to eliminate the bad carbs--and it gets very easy after a couple of weeks when the cravings leave--it is a great diet choice because you can eat all the food you desire. Finally, someone recommended "Effortless Wellbeing" by Evan Finer and I read it and was blown away by it! I think it can help people with dieting and a lot more than that too. It helps me to get my act together overall to be successful with dieting. I lost about 35 pounds and still losing. Highly recommended as long as you are willing to eliminate the bad carbs.
Rating:
Summary: No more "Blah" diets
Review: I've been on so many diet programs where the food tasted just....BLAH!That is not the case with The Southbeach Diet. The foods are delicious and nutritious.The Southbeach Diet also beats taking these chalky powders that taste horrible and many are just low calorie sugar i.e. Slimfast.With Southbeach you are also getting many nutrients that would normally miss on other programs like Atkins which is prmarily a high protein diet. Southbeach has all of the good of The Atkins Diet, is lower in fat and better balanced. You get ore vitamins and minerals and trace minerals.And best of all...Southbeach ended the BLAH diets. It's great.
Rating:
Summary: Works like a diet while you eat like your at a banquet
Review: The Southbeach Diet is without a doubt the easiest diet program to follow. It works like a diet, you get results fast while your at like your at a banquet. You get to eat a lot of good food. The Southbeach Diet is liberal. It's nutritionally balanced. You lose weight without deprivation. No hunger pangs. High energy and a feeling of well being, the opposite of what I have experienced on other diets and programs. I highly recommend The Southbeach Diet. Great program.
Rating:
Summary: Not a fad but a thriving new trend!
Review: You can hardly watch television, read the paper or go anywhere without hearing about low carb this or low carb that. Even Subway, McDonalds and SlimFast have or are going low carb. Compare this to ATKINS? Read both books and you'll understand the diefference. I've used both and Southbeach is more user friendly. I know a lot of people who couldn't stay on Atkins but are doing very well on Southbeach. This is not to knock Atkins, it has worked for me and many other people, I just feel that Southbeach is better. Don't worry about the fat intake. Keep the carbs low and watch the fat melt away. If you like eggs like I do and are afraid of fats and cholesterol, try the low fat eggs with omega fatty acids and vitamin E added in. And like Dr. Agatston recommends, eat the whole egg. The Southbeach Diet is a excellent program for permanent weight loss and most importantly, fat loss. Any program can deliver temporary weight loss that never lasts. And most programs cause you to lose muscle and water only, not fat. You usually end up looking like a smaller fat person. ENT! Try The Southbeach Diet and experience the difference. You'll love it. We do.
Rating: 
Summary: I Don't Think So
Review: My good peoples. You ain't gotta be wastin yo time on this sheezy. You gots to dig who you is, large or small, black or white, rich or poor. I tellin ya, if I can't have my Roscoes Chicken & Waffles or my mama's red beans & rice with jambalaya then life ain't worth livin ya'lls.
Rating: 
Summary: How to be on a diet without being hungry!!!!!!!!!
Review: Ever since I heard about the South Beach diet, I thought it was another fad. South Beach diet! yeah right...
It turned out that the doctor who developed the diet works at the prestigious Mount Sinai hospital in Miami Beach (hence the name of the diet). Like many women with slow metabolism, I've tried every diet under the sun but I've always been hungry (even if I ate all I wanted). I never knew why I was hungry after eating snacks! everyone told me to eat 6 meals a day to speed my metabolism but the more I ate the hungrier I was.
I used to snack on fruits, watermelon, cantaloupe... no wonder!
Of course, every body is different!
For over a year I've been trying to change my eating habits. After re-gaining 20 lbs in the last 2 years a friend recommended me the diet. I decided to give the diet a try. I started to follow my friend's advice (without buying the book) I had a list of allowed foods and made my own recipes. The first two weeks are very restrictive but to my surprise I was not hungry at all!!! I did not crave bread or pasta or fruits (my biggest concerns). Cut down alcohol??? well, dont we have to do that anyway?
This is not a magic solution. We still have to watch what we eat, but unlike most diets, this one is very easy to follow.
Eating right is not cheap. The truth is that, cheap food is loaded with sugars and simple carbohidrates. But all the money we save now on unhealthy food we will spend later in doctors... The diet use simple ingrediets you find in most supermarkets. Also, following a healthy lifestyle requires a lot of planing. Yes, you will be preparing most of the foods and exercise is not required but recommended.
The book has a lot of testimonials I could care less (because I was already sold on the diet) I just skipped those and read how the system works... The recipes included are great (like the ricotta limon zest, the mashed "potatoes") but also they give you ideas how to use the ingredients allowed in creative ways.
I've lost 8 lbs in two weeks and feel great!!!!. Dr. Agatston deserves my $15!
*** Update: Almost two months later I am still on the diet! No mood swings, I am down one dress size. More than a diet it has become a lifestyle!
Rating:
Summary: The pros and the cons
Review: I do enjoy this diet. The meals are filling and tasty and I lost 12 pounds in the 2 weeks of Phase 1. I have only 2 complaints.
One is that - if you're single or cooking just for yourself - only the breakfasts are for 1 person. Most recipes vary between 4 to 8 people and aren't always easy to break down or how much is a portion. (For example, you make a pound of pistachio bark for dessert in Phase 2 - but much is one portion?) Much as I love this diet, my main problem is the book's structure. Part 1 is background info - the history and science behind the diet itself. Part 2 is all recipes and meal plans. But I've been through the book several times and there's *nothing* in that ties the parts 1 and 2 TOGETHER! There's no mention of recommendations for substitutions within recipes, whether you can mix and match days on the meal plan or within days on the meal plans, or even if you need to follow them at all or if they're just suggestions. I looked for even a single sentence on this. Given how liberal Phase 2 is, some dieters need more structure or guidelines than a list of "foods to avoid" and 2 weeks of meal plans. (Alternatively, there are the free forums at Prevention.com.) Overall, if you really follow it, it does what it promises: eliminates cravings and loses pounds. For those dieters who do better with a more structured long-term program and at the same time have a lot of pounds to lose, this diet may require a little more effort over the long haul.
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