Canter Bridge

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‘Eat up!’, the diet doctor might say. That’s the point of this short introduction to the diet regimen that Dr. Agatston-a heart surgeon-stumbled upon while trying to figure out how to help his patients enjoy healthier hearts. When he discovered that the plan worked for people whose main concern-unlike their cardiac surgeons-was to lose weight, he produced this rarity, a diet book that treats its readers with respect and makes the assumption we want to know how things work. Including our bodies.

He could have called The South Beach Diet ‘the glycemic index for dummies’, because it’s all about evening out the upturns and downticks of our blood sugar by eating well, eating often, and eating the right stuff.

It’s a diet for the sensible man or woman who believes, like Agatston, that the point of food is to be enjoyed. You won’t find this guy sitting on a high pole living the life of a dietary monastic hermit in Egypt. He seems to live pretty well in South Beach.

His three-stage diet eases you into a life where you eat good carbs not bad ones, good fat not bad fat, and you actually have a way to recover when you fall off the wagon.

Though I own the book for reference, I also purchased the audio version and have listened to it three or four times. I recommend the practice with some reservations. It is not true that listening to Dr. Agatston’s voice is like having your hair removed with a garden rake. All things considered, it is slightly worse.

But you don’t listen to the diet doctor for the aesthetics of the performance. You do it because you want to understand how his diet works. And, truth be told, there is a residual pleasure in listening to a guy who talks like your doctor does when you stumble in for your annual visit and he tells you you’ve gained another three pounds and will obese and dead if you keep this up.

Like any diet book, the proof is in the pudding. So, did this reviewer lose weight?

No.

But I did stop gaining, which is an initial triumph of modest proportions. Moreover, the weak link has been me, not Dr. Agatston’s plan for my waistline and my long and happy life. Here’s the bottom line: when I get some other things sorted out (including my ability to exercise regularly), this diet is going to work for me. And, when it does, I’ll understand what’s going on.

If that’s what you want, buy the book.