Life's A South Beach

Now that we are home again and settling back into a routine, John and I have begun the long delayed process of getting ourselves in better shape. I am signed up with our angelic neighbor next door, Teresa, for weekly Pilates sessions on Saturday morning; and John will re-up his daily one-hour morning walks.

We have also started the South Beach Diet program, which we followed a few years ago when it first became popular. At one week into Phase One, I can say a few words about this process.

First of all, good old Dr. Agatston has updated a lot of his first suggestions for Phase One. the basic philosophy is unchanged: Phase One is designed to reorient your pancreas. That is, the meal plans that include plenty of vegetables and meat and eggs (but little else) during the first two weeks consist of foods that eliminate the effects of high-glycemic intake (a strong effect of a bad diet). In lay jargon: sugar's gotta go. The original plan, which consisted mainly of a lot of eggs, very lean beef and chicken and fish, and unlimited amounts of green vegetables (and some rather gross sugarless "desserts"), was boring and repetitive – and thousands of dieters must have let Dr. A know about that. His new list of allowed foods in Phase One has expanded greatly over the past few years: it now includes other types of lean meats (pork and lamb loin, for instance); tomatoes and many other low-sugar vegetables; and more interesting interim snack foods (2 or 3 required daily between meals).

Working with the new guidelines, I've been able to make much more interesting menus up for lunches and dinners (but breakfast is still very eggy).

Our pleasant habit of a couple of highballs before dinner is now converted to a glass of John's discovery when he was in India: Lime Soda. This is nothing more than club soda with a good squeeze of fresh lime juice, a small dash of salt, and plenty of ice. It's really quite tasty. I'm going to try adding some crushed fresh mint leaves (we have plenty growing in our herb garden).

Have we lost weight yet? Yes indeed; I won't catalog the numbers here, but you can be assured that the diet is working. Well, they always work pretty well for the first week or so; I'll report back later on our future results.