Oh, today's New York Times has a cute article on the creator of the South Beach Diet. Poor Dr. Agatston never wanted to be a diet guru. You have to register for the NYT site to read it, but it's free. If you don't want to register, it's about how he developed this diet to help his cardiac patients and considers the weight loss a fringe benefit, but it wasn't about making people look great in bikinis. I thought it was cute that he had to pull a cheat sheet out of his pocket to tell the reporter, "my wife says these are my favorite recipes...." He's not into food, it's all about cardiac health to him. As someone with a family history of heart disease and diabetes, I'm on it more for those reasons than as to take off the extra poundage I gained in my 40s on the "healthy American diet." I tried WW - lost a bit, gained it back, got bored counting points, and was always hungry. Cutting out crap carbs that raise your blood sugar cuts hunger like magic - I know I'm consuming less food and higher quality calories this way than I did when I was doing cereal and skim milk for breakfast. I know I'm eating better. I'm like a South Beach evangelist at this point - my Boss credits me with saving him from himself, he had pudged out a bit through business travel and stress eating, and he's taken off over 20 pounds since around November on this diet. He is as skinny as when I met him 10 years ago, and has adopted it as a lifestyle. I'm amazed, because I've known him 10 years and he is the original Carb Boy - he loves bread and potatoes and such as much as my Girlchild does. I've seen him demolish a restaurant bread basket while talking non-stop about whatever case we were working on at the time, and follow it with a helping of potatoes. Now he's 20 pounds thinner and much more moderate in his bread consumption - he eats a bit and stops. Today we went to lunch with an attorney friend and the three of us were all on a low carb, low fat South Beach-esque regime - green veggies and grilled fish for all. Our friend ate the bread, I had none, Boss had one small piece. It's just reasonable and sensible and BETTER - I get half-crazy when it's lumped with "high protein fad diets" in the media, but then dumb, like fat, is an American epidemic.