Diet Recipes Books

Before and After The South Beach Diet Supercharged

After 6 weeks, Allison Brady, age 37, lost 12 pounds and 12 1/4 inches--6 inches in her belly alone! Allison also reduced her blood cholesterol levels by 45 points.
(Photos by Jeffrey Salter for Redux)

Before

After

Dr. Agatston Answers Frequently Asked Questions about South Beach Dieting

I'm doing so well on Phase 1. Why can't I stay on it indefinitely?

There are two types of people on the South Beach Diet: those who cannot wait to start Phase 2 and those who never want to see Phase 1 end.

Why are some people so enamored with Phase 1? The reason is that it's simple and to the point. You don't have to do a lot of thinking about food choices. You're basically eating lean protein, high-fiber legumes, low-fat dairy, good fats (including some nuts), and plenty of vegetables. Those highly processed refined carbs that were your downfall are out of sight and, within a few days, out of mind (at least for most people). You're encouraged to eat until you're full and snack before you get hungry. And every time you step on the scale, you get a big grin on your face because those unwanted pounds and fat are just melting away. So it's not surprising to me that Phase 1 fans often ask, "If I'm doing so well on Phase 1, why do I have to move on to Phase 2?" Phase 1 is not meant to be a long-term eating plan. Its dual goals are to jump-start weight loss for people who have 10 or more pounds to lose (thus providing immediate positive reinforcement) and to control swings in blood sugar and eliminate cravings for sugar and refined starches. Phase 1 can also have a positive effect on sugar in people with pre-diabetes. In just 2 weeks, you should have achieved these two goals and be ready to move on.

Once your sugar and cravings are under control, there's a key reason to go on to Phase 2: we don't want you to miss out on the myriad vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that come from reintroducing whole fruits and whole grains to your diet, not to mention the added fiber. These foods contain thousands of phytochemicals that protect your body against a host of diseases, including heart disease and cancer. If you were to continue indefinitely on Phase 1 and deny yourself these foods, you would not be learning how to make good food choices in the real world. More importantly, you'd be missing out on some of the best medicine nature has to offer.

In addition, if you were to continue with the smaller palette of foods recommended on Phase 1, your diet would get dull over the long haul. And once you're bored, you're much more likely to revert to your old eating habits. For the diet to truly become a lifestyle--one that allows you to sustain weight loss and garner all the related health benefits--there has to be variety and satisfaction in your eating plan. That's another reason why we move you on to Phase 2 so quickly.

Remember, it may take you longer to lose weight by following the three phases of our diet. But the chances of keeping that weight off are far better.

Can I still eat as much protein now that I'm eating more carbohydrates on Phase 2?

As you know, on the South Beach Diet, we don't expect you to count grams of protein or weigh your food on any phase. Now that you're gradually adding satisfying high-fiber whole grains and fruits to your diet on Phase 2, you'll naturally be less hungry, and the amount of lean protein you require to feel full will no doubt be less than you were eating on Phase 1. That said, I encourage you to eat some protein--fish or shellfish, lean beef or pork, white meat chicken or turkey, or soy protein, for example--along with these good carbs at most meals.

Protein helps slow down the digestion of carbohydrates, which means that your body will make less insulin, your sugar swings will be reduced, and you won't crave more food in between meals. I also urge you to eat slowly, savor your food, and really enjoy the variety of foods you'll introduce on Phase 2. If you do this, your focus will no longer be on how much protein you can have because you'll never be hungry. Another tip: Once you're satisfied, push your chair away from the table. It's fine to leave some food on your plate at the end of a meal.

Can I really eat anything I want on Phase 3?

If you're talking about dessert as an occasional treat, of course. On Phase 3, we don't regulate what you can eat. Yes, you can finally have that small bowl of ice cream or a small piece of chocolate cake or the white bagel that you couldn't have before. But you shouldn't do it too often, and you should continue to watch amounts on desserts. Phase 3 isn't about abandoning the good principles of the diet and suddenly resuming your old eating habits. It's about continuing to make smart, healthy food choices--for life. If you follow the principles of the diet most of the time, we expect you to enjoy anything you want now and then.

Six Ways to Succeed on South Beach

The South Beach Diet

The South Beach Diet Cookbook

The South Beach Diet Supercharged Workout DVD

The South Beach Diet Quick & Easy Cookbook

The South Beach Diet Taste of Summer Cookbook

The South Beach Diet Heart Program

Hit the Kitchen with Hungry Girl

Just because you're watching your waistline doesn't mean you need to go hungry. Recipes from Hungry Girl--like the Fiber-Fried Chicken Strips featured below--feed your every craving without piling on the calories. What's more, Lisa Lillien's lighthearted love for food and fun shines through in every recipe, making it easy to follow her healthy example and even come up with your own simple calorie-saving shortcuts.

Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, America's most trusted doctor team and authors of the bestselling YOU series, are now translating this cutting-edge information to help you shave inches off your waist. They're going to do it by giving you the best weapon against fat: knowledge. By understanding how your body's fat-storing and fat-burning systems work, you're going to learn how to crack the code on true and lifelong waist management.

Roizen and Oz will invigorate you with equal parts information, motivation, and change-your-life action to show you how your brain, stomach, hormones, muscles, heart, genetics, and stress levels all interact biologically to determine if your body is the size of a baseball bat or of a baseball stadium. In YOU: On a Diet, Roizen and Oz will redefine what a healthy figure is, then take you through an under-the skin tour of the organs that influence your body's size and its health. You'll even be convinced that the key number to fixate on is not your weight, but your waist size, which best indicates the medical risks of storing too much fat.

Because the world has almost as many diet plans as it has e-mail spammers, you'd think that just about all of us would know everything there is to know about dieting, about fat, and about the reasons why our bellies have grown so large. YOU: On a Diet is much more than a diet plan or a series of instructions and guidelines or a faddish berries-only eating plan. It's a complete manual for waist management. It will show you how to achieve and maintain an ideal and healthy body size by providing a lexicon according to which any weight-loss system can be explained. YOU: On a Diet will serve as the operating system that facilitates future evolution in our dieting software. After you learn about the biology of your body and the biology and psychology of fat, you'll be given the YOU Diet and YOU Workout. Both are easy to learn, follow, and maintain. Following a two-week rebooting program will help you lose up to two inches from your waist right from the start.

With Roizen and Oz's signature accessibility, wit, and humor, YOU: On a Diet--The Owner's Manual for Waist Management will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the food you consume, so that you'll diet smart, not hard. Welcome to your body on a diet.

Whether you're carrying a few extra pounds of fat on your thighs or a suitcase's worth in your belly, it's hard not to think about fat. You feel it when you walk, you roll on it when you sleep, and you curse it when you try to slide into last year's jeans. But while most of us are intimately familiar with how fat looks on the outside, we're not quite as familiar with how it works on the inside.

As we explain in YOU: On a Diet, we believe that to change your body, you need to know your body.

In the simplest form, everyone knows the formula for gaining weight. Daily buckets of ranch dip plus photo-album-sized hunks of cheesecake plus a life of couch-dwelling equals a very unfortunate conclusion: too-frequent popped buttons.

But many of us really don't know how fat works and how it works against us. Here's the inside story on the story of your insides.

Continue reading this exclusive essay

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Amazon.com Exclusive
YOU: On a Diet--The Shopping List

Print out this exclusive shopping list, created by Michael F. Roizen, MD, Mehmet C. Oz, MD, and UnitedHealthcare, to get a jumpstart on the waist-reducing, health-boosting plan you'll find in YOU: On a Diet.

Check out the exclusive Shopping List

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Getting to Know YOU

YOU: On a Diet Workout DVD

YOU: On a Diet [Audio CD]

YOU: The Owner's Manual

YOU: The Smart Patient

Black Bean & Goat Cheese Tostada Click here to download this recipe as a .pdf

Tempeh Dagwood Sandwich Click here to download this recipe as a .pdf

Turkey Parmesan Click here to download this recipe as a .pdf

More South Beach Titles:

The South Beach Diet (Now in paperback)

The South Beach Diet Cookbook

The South Beach Diet Good Fats/Good Carbs Guide (Revised)

A top nutritionist provides her simple, proven five-level diet plan to safely make the transition to eating raw foods, and to detoxify and achieve a perfect body no matter how you eat now.

The raw food craze has taken off, as raw restaurants spring up and celebrities, models, and other fans tout the effects of eating raw. However, many people who are intrigued by raw food simply don't know how to make the transition from what they're eating now, or how to achieve the benefits of eating raw without giving up their lifestyle or the foods they love. Natalia Rose, an in-demand nutritionist, shows how in The Raw Food Detox Diet. Whether your diet is primarily made up of meat and potatoes, or tofu and tempeh, you can incorporate the flavour and lasting health benefits of raw food into your life.

Over time, our bodies build up poisons and store waste from food that is not fully eliminated. Raw food helps to detoxify the body by flushing out these poisons and setting us back on a course toward greater energy, clearer skin and shinier hair, and a slim, natural figure. But making the transition to a raw diet too quickly can have negative effects on the body. Instead, the healthier way is to make a gentle change based on your previous diet and current needs. You do not conform to The Raw Food Detox Diet; it conforms to you, and you choose how far you want to go. Whether you're looking to live an all-raw lifestyle, or just to improve your energy and shape while still eating the foods you love, this groundbreaking diet book will energize and inspire you to achieve your goals safely and easily.