The South Beach Diet: Eating Right Is Just the Start

IN THE SOUTH BEACH DIET, Arthur Agatston, M.D., emphasizes
balanced eating, relying on lean protein, good fats, and good carbohydrates.
As you’ll see, some of South Beach’s nutritional principles
are similar to those of the Abs Diet. Agatston focuses
heavily on the role of insulin and how spikes in blood sugar
make you hungry. While his diet focuses on how food works in
relation to losing weight, it doesn’t show you how to tune up
your metabolism, your body’s natural fat burner. The Abs Diet,
on the other hand, incorporates factors like exercise that can
have a profound impact on not only the amount of fat you can
lose but also the rate at which you lose it. By revving up your
body’s fat-burning mechanism, you can take control over not
30 T H E A B S D I E T
only the calories coming into your body but also the calories
being burned away by it.
• • •
As I said at the beginning of this book, most diets are about
losing. The Abs Diet is about gaining. The Abs Diet is based on the
simple notion that your body is a living, breathing, calorieburning
machine, and that by keeping your body’s fat furnace constantly
stoked with lots and lots of the right foods—and this is
important—at the right time, you can teach it to start burning off
your belly in no time. In fact, this diet can help you burn up to 12
pounds of fat—from your belly first—in 2 weeks or less. And just
look at what you’ll gain in return.
You’ll gain meals. Americans have huge appetites.We hunger
for success, we hunger for freedom, and yeah, we hunger for food.
Traditional calorie- or food-restricting diets run counter to this
uniquely American appetite. They leave us hungry, miserable, and
one snap away from going psycho in the chips aisle. But not the Abs
Diet. You will eat on this program—and eat often. In fact, you’ll be
refueling constantly, and with every delicious meal or snack, you’ll
be stoking your body’s natural fat burners. Imagine that: Every
time you eat, you help your body lose weight and turn flab into abs.
You’ll gain muscle. With the Abs Diet and the Abs Diet
Workout, the more you eat, the more muscle you’ll build, and the
more fat you’ll lose. This program converts the food you eat into
muscle. The more lean muscle mass you have, the more energy it
takes to fuel it—meaning that calories go to your muscles to sustain
them rather than convert to fat. In fact, research shows that
adding lean muscle mass acts as a built-in fat burner. Again, for
every pound of muscle you gain, your resting metabolic rate goes
up as much as 50 calories a day. The strength-training component
can put several pounds of muscle onto your body. You won’t beef
up like a bodybuilder, but you will build enough muscle to shrink
and tighten your gut—and, depending on your starting point,
W H Y T H E A B S D I E T ? A N D W H Y N O W ? 31
show off your abs. When you add exercise into the mix, you can
think of it as a simple equation:
MORE FOOD MORE MUSCLE LESS FLAB
Now, consider the alternative:
LESS FOOD LESS MUSCLE MORE FLAB
Isn’t it incredible that most diets focus on the “less food” equation?
And isn’t it time we changed that? (Sure, some studies have
shown that you’ll live longer on a super-restrictive diet of less
than 1,400 calories a day. But given how such a plan would make
you feel, you probably wouldn’t want to.)
You’ll gain freedom. Most diets deprive you of something—
whether it’s carbs, fat, or your manhood. (Tofu? No thanks.) In this
plan, you will not feel deprived. You’ll stay full. You’ll eat crunchy
food. You’ll eat sweet food. You’ll eat protein, carbs, and fat. In fact,
there’s even one meal during the week when you can eat anything.