The 22 Miles North of South Beach Diet

I've always had a battle with my weight. When I graduated from high school, I weighed 195 pounds at five feet ten and a half inches tall. That may not sound like I was obese but my waist line told another story as my 34 inch jeans would barely button.

When I hit my early 30s I decided to leave my years of inactivity and fatty fast food diet behind to start a new way of life. I took it slow and in the beginning I bought a bicycle. Over the course of several weeks I worked up to a 13 mile ride a day. At that point I tried a low-fat diet and lost about 30 pounds but I found that maintenance, at least for me, was difficult.

A couple of years later, about a year into the low-card diet frenzy, I bought a copy of the South Beach by Dr. Arthur Agatston. I had great success with it and was actually able to adapt many of the basic principles into a way of eating that enabled me to maintain a better weight and drop a few pounds quickly when I had cheated for a week or so.

Basically, when I want to loose weight, I cut out all bread, pasta, potatoes sugars, sweets, fruit, alcohol and dairy except for lower fat cheeses like Parmesan and mozzarella for one or two weeks. If I am active, I usually drop 10-14 pounds in 14 days. Then I reintroduce fruit, sweet potatoes and 100% whole-wheat bread and pasta in small quantities. I will continue to lose 1-2 pounds a week. When I reach a goal weight or when my pants start to fill a little loose, I pretty much eat what I want within reason, just watching my refined sugars. I am usually able to enjoy my favorite foods and keep a constant reading on the scales.

When I introduced weight training into the mix about 6 years ago, I found the higher my lean muscle mass, the more I can eat, the more I weigh but the smaller my midsection measures. Therefore, I have started to rely more on how well those 30 inch waist jeans fit and not be as concerned with what the dreaded scales has to say!