"How do you spell apricot?"

Dr. Real Food or: How I Learned to Stop Dieting and Love my Meals.

My cashier at the grocery store this weekend seemed particularly clueless. I fear for the teenagers of today. He asked me, “What is that?” about each of the following:
Apricots
Brussels sprouts
Eggplant
Kiwis
Avocado

In fact, he asked me how to spell apricot when he couldn’t find it in the computer. Meanwhile, the lady in front of me had a sad state of affairs. It was nothing but Lean Cuisine meals and the largest industrial-sized tub of “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter” that I have ever seen. I did the whole diet TV dinners thing for a long time. In the beginning, they were such an improvement from rich restaurant meals that I did lose weight. But it didn’t take much time before it stalled. They have all the staying power of cardboard and it doesn’t take long before you’re hungry again. When I was eating them on a daily basis, it would take 4 or 5 of them per day to make me feel even close to full. The manufacturers like it that way though; the more of them that you have to eat in a day, the more of their products you are buying. It’s all about the bucks.

So in thinking about South Beach, I wanted to post a few final notes here. I survived Phase 1 and moved into Phase 2. I felt that it helped me accomplish what I wanted (i.e. getting rid of processed junk while eating more fresh veggies), so I was ready to get off of a “diet.” I’ll do some pros and cons.

Pros:
*I did lose water weight and bloating, especially during the first week. It’s always beneficial to get rid of that.
*It forced me to stop reaching for junk food. Just because something says “low carb” or “low calorie” doesn’t make it a good choice. If it’s a protein bar or some crap in a cardboard box, you can probably do a lot better. A fresh apple is bound to be a better choice than a granola bar with chocolate chips and a bunch of empty carbs. Or something with sugar alcohol that will make you fart all day, LOL.
*It helped me to supplement my plant consumption with vegetables as opposed to only fruit.
*It helped me to make better choices about fruit instead of gnawing on pineapple, watermelon, raisins, dates, etc, which have a lot of sugar. There’s nothing wrong with them inherently; it’s just that you probably should not make high sugar fruits a constant habit.
*It helped me to drink more water, tea, and coffee instead of reaching for something “diet.” I love me some Coke Zero but there’s no need to nurse a bottle of it all day. Allowing yourself a vice is not a bad thing, but a little of that stuff is better than a lot of it. The artificially sweetened stuff tends to be even sweeter than sugar and it can blow your taste buds out of alignment.
*I learned more about nuts. (Giggity.) I now have a stash of pistachios, almonds, and cashews around the house.
*I think overall, it is less restrictive and more doable than very low carb, low fat, and/or low calorie diets.
*It helped me to get rid of my instant oatmeal and cereal collection, which was doing me no favors.
*It caused me to learn about the law of diminishing marginal utility and food. (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingutility.asp) More on this point later.
*The recipes are generally pretty good. Quite a few of them are good recipes in general that don’t have to be relegated to South Beach, especially the ones with a lot of fresh vegetables.

Cons:
*It’s still a diet. Bottom line. The two weeks of Phase 1 are the toughest and it is easy to get bored. By the end of it, I was tired of eggs and bacon or a bowl of ricotta cheese every breakfast. I was missing my oatmeal or homemade bread.
*He puts an emphasis on sugar free products that I can’t entirely agree with. I think I used more Splenda and Sweet N Low during South Beach than I have in the last year. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the notion that Sugar Free Cool Whip is somehow better for the body than whipped cream made with real dairy. Granted, you shouldn’t be eating something like that every day, but as a treat, have the real thing for God’s sake.
*Sugar free popsicles are not terrible but they weren’t my favorite either. I found myself eating too many of them because they really do nothing to satisfy your appetite. Instead of getting 60 calories of empty liquid, I guess I’d rather have 60 calories of a real cookie or brownie made from real ingredients. Even better than that would be to have 60 calories of fresh fruit.
*I take issue with the demonization of things like whole milk and butter. His assertion that companies have found ways of making margarine without harmful trans fats is dicey to me at best. And skim milk is like bleached out water. There is no comparison in taste between skim and whole. If you want the benefits of the dairy fat, you have to buy milk with the dairy fat still in it. Granted, you can’t sit down and drink a giant 16oz bottle of it without accumulating some calories, but if the choice is between having 75 or 80 calories in a 4oz cup of whole milk or 80 calories in an 8oz cup of skim milk, I’ll take the former rather than the latter. I had a handful of pistachios with a 4oz cup of whole milk on Saturday and didn’t get hungry again for three hours.
*I don’t know how sustainable it is for the long haul. I suppose if you don’t consider Phase 3 to be a “diet,” you might have better odds. But still. It might be better to be in maintenance mode without actually categorizing it that way. As situations change in your life, you may have to add or subtract exercise time and tinker with the things you’re eating. You need the flexibility to do that without worrying about “defiling your diet plan.” Seems like it might be easier to roll with the punches if you said, “No, I am not on a diet. I eat healthy and make choices on a case-by-case basis.”
*The South Beach app calculates calories and macronutrients. If you go “over” an arbitrary amount, it has a red line. This can seem oddly punitive. The book says not to count such things but the app does.

In sum, I don’t think it’s a terrible plan. I’d say you could do a hell of a lot worse but you could certainly do better, too.


I was reading an article about the law of diminishing marginal utility and its relevance to food: the first couple of bites you have of something are better than the last couple. If you are ravenous, almost anything will be good. As you get full, the pleasure is less. The idea is that once you realize this, you can have 1/3 of a slice of something rich instead of the whole thing. This may mean the difference between eating 250 calories versus 1000. Or the difference between having one slice of cake or pie versus a binge eating session. Having an unbridled bender (as in: not an isolated treat meal but a full-blown, days long free-for-all) is as bad to me as going on some low calorie crash diet; neither one does anything for your health and you feel like dog shit afterwards. There is a certain freedom in telling yourself, "Nothing is off-limits forever; just take it easy and don't gorge. The average day is not Thanksgiving dinner." You aren't counting calories, carbs, fat grams, protein or anything else. You don't get a brain fog from too few carbs or the StayPuff Marshmallow Man feeling from a binge on carbs and sugar. I eat when I'm hungry and don't when I'm not. When I embarked on this journey, I had trepidation about whether I could handle the freedom without going wild like a kid in a candy store. But honestly, I haven't. What I have done is focus on real food. I had good intentions when I started making more foods from scratch last year. Unfortunately, I think I tried to change too much too fast and when I was short on time, it became easier to revert to processed junk again. I also lost an important part of Michael Pollan's advice: eat food, mostly plants, not too much. I'm finding that eating a genuinely balanced diet is working well for me. High quality meat (not deli meats or cold cuts), fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, whole grains (nothing instant and no kiddie cereals or processed flakes), nuts, and high quality dairy. Vegetables are good for you. Feeling full is good. Feeling overly stuffed and comatose is not.