The South Beach Diet
by Marcia Purse
Why diet? Because from 1994 to 1999 I gained 60 pounds on Prozac and other medications prescribed for my bipolar disorder, and a lowfat diet and increasing exercise have failed to do any good at all. And why the South Beach Diet in particular? Glad you asked ...
- My family history includes a great deal of heart disease and related issues, and I'm already on medications for two of those - high cholesterol and high blood pressure - and the South Beach Diet was developed by a cardiologist initially for heart patients.
- There's also a history of diabetes in my family, and South Beach is very conscious of keeping a healthy blood sugar level.
- My doctors had recommended a modified Atkins diet, but frankly, what I've read about Atkins scares me. I just don't see how it can be healthy. The South Beach Diet eliminates the starchy carbohydrates that raise blood sugar but not healthy ones like vegetables, and focuses on the "good," monounsaturated fats.
- Plus - Kimberly, my partner in this site, had started the South Beach Diet just a few days before I was ordered to start dieting!
Here's a comparison table - on the left, typical meals from before I began dieting, and on the right, typical meals on the diet.
| BEFORE | SOUTH BEACH | ||
| Breakfast | |||
| Can of Slim-Fast Dark Chocolate Royale | Scrambled eggs Small can of V-8 | ||
| Morning Snack | |||
| None | 1 Part-skim mozzarella stick | ||
| Lunch | |||
| Sandwich on medium-fiber bread: *Brummel & Brown spread *Lowfat mayonnaise *Lowfat turkey breast slices *Lettuce Water | Large salad: *Lowfat chicken chunks *Lots of Romaine lettuce *Feta cheese *Chopped tomatoes *Olive oil *Lime juice Water | ||
| Afternoon Snack | |||
| Nonfat cottage cheese Del Monte "Fruit to Go" sliced peaches | Nonfat cottage cheese (I really miss those peaches) | ||
| Dinner | |||
| 4 ounce pork chop Applesauce Small muffin (or two) New potatoes Brummel & Brown spread on the two above Cauliflower with "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" spray Skim milk Salad | 4 ounce pork chop Huge serving of cauliflower with "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" spray Water Salad Ricotta crème dessert | ||
The diet on the left contains a lot more of the types of carbs that convert to sugar and then fat. Slim-Fast, for example, has 40 grams of carbohydrate: 5g fiber and 35g sugars. It may be lowfat - but it's definitely NOT South Beach material.
But now - ye gods! In the time when once I de-glued my head, now I have to fix or reheat and eat, not drink, breakfast, and put together my luncheon salad and afternoon snack. (Salads, in my opinion, are soggy and nasty if kept overnight in the refrigerator - they have to be made fresh in the morning.) It's not working. I have been late to work more often than not for three weeks, and often arrive without makeup because I forgot it.
Second - I keep cheating with chocolate. I'm sure I'd have lost more weight by now if I weren't a chocoholic.
Physical adjustments - on the second day of the diet I had a stomach-ache all day, and on the third, an all-day headache. This was my body adjusting to a radically different intake of starches and sugars and a lower, more stable and healthier blood sugar level. Since then, I have had ongoing problems with sleepiness, apathy of lack of energy that I now believe are related to the new blood pressure medication, Tenoretic, that I started taking the same day I began the South Beach Diet. (I have begun to tinker with my night-time medications and the time of day I take Tenoretic to see if I can minimize this problem, because it's getting worse instead of better. I'll talk to my psychiatrist about the issue on Thursday.)
Problems I've Encountered
First is a logistical problem - I am not a morning person. My preferred routine is to get up at 7:00, get dressed, have a cup of coffee and a cigarette, then stare at the computer screen, slowly allowing the glue to seep out of my brain, until 8:15, when I put my makeup on, gulp down my meds with the aforementioned can of Slim-Fast, and leave the house at 8:35. (Mom would make my sandwich, the way she used to do for my dad long ago.)Success!
In two weeks of Phase 1 and a week of Phase 2 (where certain carbohydrates such as some fruits and high-fiber bread are slowly incorporated back into meals), I've lost 8 pounds! What? No cheers? No congratulations? Come on now - I haven't been able to lose this much in so short a time in all the time I've been trying to lose weight, and that's several years now. Let me hear you cheering!
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