Speaker 1: Okay, I won't do that many wounds, but you'll get
Speaker 1: a sense of one certainly about what my boxing because
Speaker 1: I'm not famous boxing. For the record, this is not
Speaker 1: a famous boxer still thinks I'm gonna be champion. True,
Speaker 1: we're coming the champ anyway. We we're coming from Mike Tyson.
Speaker 1: It's a few more years. We're coming from the man
Speaker 1: I'm standing with in a makeshift South Florida outdoor jim
Speaker 1: with his trainer, surrounded by curious kids. Is Arthur Agatston.
Speaker 1: You may not know his name, but you definitely know
Speaker 1: his diet, which was everywhere in the early two thousand's
Speaker 1: Real weight loss for real people. Go to South Beach
Speaker 1: diet dot com today. You'll rev up your metabolism for
Speaker 1: even faster weight loss by the doctor behind the rebel
Speaker 1: snary South Beach die. I'm a real person. I lost
Speaker 1: nine pounds in Arthur is still hard at work on
Speaker 1: his beach body. We're on the swanky island off the
Speaker 1: coast of Miami, where Arthur lives with his wife Sarah.
Speaker 1: His regular boxing lesson is about to kick off. We're
Speaker 1: standing outside on a basketball court. Every so often a
Speaker 1: ship comes by, blasting it's horn. Arthur's trainer is a
Speaker 1: former professional boxer named Juan Arroyo. They start off with
Speaker 1: some shadow boxing, then one takes out his boxing mites
Speaker 1: for Arthur to hit jack shoulder how wide like this
Speaker 1: when you gotta stand right to polo, wait in the
Speaker 1: middle to the chair so I can see what the
Speaker 1: diet does. Arthur is nimble on his feet. As one
Speaker 1: swings admit at him, he quickly ducks. He looks young
Speaker 1: and agile. Arthur credits the South Beach diet with at
Speaker 1: least some of his endurance. It is also the source
Speaker 1: of some pretty immense wealth. The island where he lives,
Speaker 1: Fisher Island, is accessible from Miami only by fairy or
Speaker 1: private yacht. We got here today on the ferry in
Speaker 1: a tesla. Arthur's neighbors include the model Carolina Kurkova, former
Speaker 1: New York Knicks player David Lee, and tennis star Carolyn
Speaker 1: was Niacki. Oprah owned a condo here at one point.
Speaker 1: The police looks like a resort. People even travel around
Speaker 1: the island on golf carts. But I'm not here to
Speaker 1: rub elbows with the rich and famous or get feedback
Speaker 1: on my right hook. In early two thousand's, the South
Speaker 1: Beach Diet became a sensation. I was just a kid
Speaker 1: at the time, but I know that my mom did
Speaker 1: the diet for a little bit. Lots of people did.
Speaker 1: It was everywhere, and I wanted to understand why. After all,
Speaker 1: it's basically a low carb diet, which means eating lots
Speaker 1: of protein and vegetables and not eating much bread, pasta
Speaker 1: and dessert. And as we learned in the last episode,
Speaker 1: low carb diets are nothing new. They've actually been around
Speaker 1: for many, many years. And yet the South Beach Diet
Speaker 1: book but Key a major bestseller and spawned a franchise
Speaker 1: that has sold more than twenty three million books. It's
Speaker 1: hey day. Everyone from former President Bill Clinton to actress
Speaker 1: Nicole Kidman were reportedly fans. And the South Beach Diet
Speaker 1: wasn't just insanely popular. It was insanely popular during a
Speaker 1: time that I like to think of as the Golden
Speaker 1: Age of the diet. From the nineties to the two thousand's,
Speaker 1: the sheer number of diets was incredible. Wheat Watchers was
Speaker 1: also exploding at the time. When you're on a diet hungry,
Speaker 1: is there to sabotage you every step of the way.
Speaker 1: The Biggest Loser was about to hit our TV screen
Speaker 1: just a moment, one player will become this year's biggest Loser.
Speaker 1: And when the grand ride a two hifty dollars from
Speaker 1: new Visco one. There were even diet cookies you could
Speaker 1: eat for breakfast. You want to lose up to fifteen
Speaker 1: pounds of months get Smart for Life cookies. Doctors developed
Speaker 1: Smart for Life cookies with extracts from natural ingredients like fruits,
Speaker 1: vegetable for even the fashion of this time period seem
Speaker 1: to require being impossibly skinny, remember low rise pants and
Speaker 1: crop tops. In this episode, we're going to dissect the
Speaker 1: South Beach diet. It's the prototypical diet in many ways.
Speaker 1: It was created by a doctor. It designated certain foods
Speaker 1: as good and others as bad, and it became a huge,
Speaker 1: huge business. How does the diet become so popular that
Speaker 1: decades later there are people who still have a South
Speaker 1: Beach Diet cookbook hanging around their kitchen cupboard. How does
Speaker 1: a particular diet go viral preaching the same kinds of
Speaker 1: things diets have been preaching for many years. I'm going
Speaker 1: to break it down and reveal the formula for viral
Speaker 1: diet success. Like celebrity endorsements, I'm Bloomberg News health reporter
Speaker 1: Emma Court and from the Prognosis podcast, this is Losing It.
Speaker 1: The story of the South Beach Diet starts with Arthur
Speaker 1: Agatston and a little bit of a belly, specifically his belly.
Speaker 1: For most of his life, Arthur was thin and athletic,
Speaker 1: so thin that sometimes he would even eat junk food
Speaker 1: to try to put on a few pounds. But one
Speaker 1: day he realized that he had gained some weight, and
Speaker 1: not on purpose. In the mid nineties, Arthur was putting
Speaker 1: in long days as a cardiologist at a Miami hospital
Speaker 1: and I was sitting around with out cardiology fellows posting
Speaker 1: about some athletic exploittant. The fellow starts laughing at me.
Speaker 1: Arthur asks this guy, what's up? Said, look at your belly.
Speaker 1: Arthur looks down only to find I really I had one.
Speaker 1: So Arthur goes on a diet. But the diet wasn't
Speaker 1: just the start of a weight loss journey for Arthur.
Speaker 1: It was the start of a whole new chapter in
Speaker 1: his career. I met Arthur on a bright December Day
Speaker 1: in his medical practices office in Miami Beach. In person,
Speaker 1: Arthur was really more like your classic doctor than a
Speaker 1: diet guru. There were a couple of models of the
Speaker 1: human heart in his office and a white coat hung
Speaker 1: on the back of his chair. Arthur himself comes off
Speaker 1: as kind and straightforward. He's also excited bowl prone to
Speaker 1: tangents even while in the middle of telling a completely
Speaker 1: different story. But Arthur is also a diet guru. Back
Speaker 1: when he invented the South Beach Diet, a different kind
Speaker 1: of regimen was all the rage. You probably remember how
Speaker 1: supermarkets suddenly started stalking low fat everything, low fat cottage, cheese,
Speaker 1: fat free yogurt, even low fat cookies. This became popular
Speaker 1: in the eighties as a way of preventing heart disease
Speaker 1: and losing weight. At the time, even the American Heart
Speaker 1: Association recommended a low fat diet, and Arthur was into
Speaker 1: heart health. He was a heart doctor, after all, not
Speaker 1: just any heart doctor, a pioneering one. A test named
Speaker 1: after him, the Agatstan score, is still used to pick
Speaker 1: up people's risk of things like hard attacks. So as
Speaker 1: Arthur is trying to figure out how to lose weight, himself.
Speaker 1: He's also thinking about how nutrition impacts things like the
Speaker 1: risk of heart disease, and he's pretty sure that low
Speaker 1: fat diets aren't actually the answer. Low fat diets just
Speaker 1: didn't work in clinical practice. It didn't lower your cholesterol,
Speaker 1: and it didn't prevent diabetes or anything. Arthur thought low
Speaker 1: fat diets were steering people in the wrong direction, people
Speaker 1: like him. During late afternoons at work, he would sometimes
Speaker 1: start feeling dizzy and shaky, so I would run down
Speaker 1: to the doctor's lounge, have a low fat blueberry muffin
Speaker 1: which was sugar and junk, and a cup of coffee
Speaker 1: brought my blood sugar back up. Instead of low fat,
Speaker 1: low carb diets were now becoming popular, led by another cardiologist,
Speaker 1: Robert Atkins of Atkins Diet Face. So Arthur starts on
Speaker 1: a low carb diet, and as soon as he does this,
Speaker 1: he says that the pounds start melting away. He loses
Speaker 1: about twelve pounds, the belly is gone, Arthur is back
Speaker 1: to feeling like his usual fit self. He also suspects
Speaker 1: that he is onto something. He thinks this diet would
Speaker 1: be good for his patients too, so he meets up
Speaker 1: with his colleague, a dietitian named Marie Almond. Together they
Speaker 1: come up with what would eventually become the South Beach Diet,
Speaker 1: a three phase plan for weight loss, but at the
Speaker 1: time it had a different name, The Modified Carbohydrate Diet.
Speaker 1: We eat healthy and did the best shape of your life.
Speaker 1: Introducing the brand new Modified Carbohydrate Diet the Effective Weight,
Speaker 1: Lose weight and learn the way to maintain a healthy
Speaker 1: weight without hunger or deprivation. Catchy right. Arthur and Marie's
Speaker 1: new diet was similar to Atkins, but had more of
Speaker 1: an emphasis on healthy fats. Here's how it works. Phase
Speaker 1: one is intense. That's when you have the most restrictions
Speaker 1: on what you can eat. You're eating protein like fish
Speaker 1: and meat and lots of vegetables. You can have milk
Speaker 1: and cheese so long as they're low fat or non fat,
Speaker 1: but you can't have bread, potatoes, pasta, alcohol, desserts. You
Speaker 1: can't even eat fruit. In phase one, the point is
Speaker 1: to get rid of cravings for foods that the diet
Speaker 1: says are bad for you, and during this part of
Speaker 1: the diet the pounds are supposed to drop fast. In
Speaker 1: Phase two, things relax a little. You can start adding back,
Speaker 1: whole grain breads, high fiber cereals, sweet potatoes, some kinds
Speaker 1: of fruit, wine, and even chocolate. Sparingly, that is so
Speaker 1: we really introduced the concepts of the good fats and
Speaker 1: good carbs. You didn't have to be high carb or
Speaker 1: low carb, or high fat or low fat. It was
Speaker 1: choosing the healthy ones. South Beach became known as a
Speaker 1: low carb diet. Anyway, in phase two, you're not restricting
Speaker 1: what you eat as much, so the weight loss happens slower,
Speaker 1: and you just stay in this phase of the diet
Speaker 1: for however long it takes to hit your goal weight.
Speaker 1: Another sort of novel idea of the diet emphasizes is
Speaker 1: snacking and strategic weights. Because your blood sugars did have
Speaker 1: swings and before your blood sugar dropped, if you had
Speaker 1: a snack and prevented that dropped, it would prevent you
Speaker 1: from being very hungry and in general, blood shook er
Speaker 1: is kind of a theme of the South Beach diet.
Speaker 1: It tells dieters to eat foods with a low glycemic index,
Speaker 1: especially in phase one. The idea is that these foods
Speaker 1: should keep you full for longer and less likely to crave,
Speaker 1: say mint, chocolate chip ice cream. Once you've lost weight,
Speaker 1: you move into phase three. The diet basically says you've
Speaker 1: learned how to eat, and you can relax a bit.
Speaker 1: There's no list of foods to eat and foods to
Speaker 1: avoid anymore like you can eat chocolate sponge cake now.
Speaker 1: The book actually says that beyond the chocolate sponge cake,
Speaker 1: the diet is honestly a little vague about exactly how
Speaker 1: this phase should look. It does say that people can
Speaker 1: overdo it and regain weight at this point. If that's
Speaker 1: what happens, then the book tells you to start back
Speaker 1: at phase one again. In this way, the South Beach
Speaker 1: Diet spread a classic diet myth. The myth is this,
Speaker 1: you diet for a little while, then get back to
Speaker 1: your normal life now with a new slimmer body. Except
Speaker 1: that's not really true. You have to keep up these
Speaker 1: new habits if you want to keep the weight off.
Speaker 1: If you don't, you wind up in a never ending
Speaker 1: cycle of losing and gaining weight, which is not good
Speaker 1: for your health. The diet I just outlined, by the way,
Speaker 1: was the original South Beach Diet. There's also a newer version.
Speaker 1: Before it was a book, The South Beach diet was
Speaker 1: just a pamphlet, Arthur says. Even calling it a pamphlet
Speaker 1: might be over selling it. It was three or four
Speaker 1: sheets of Xerox paper stapled together. Arthur and Marie offered
Speaker 1: the pamphlets to patients at their hospital who were in
Speaker 1: hardiac rehab, which is where people who have had heart
Speaker 1: attacks and other heart problems come to get healthy again.
Speaker 1: Arthur says he sometimes meets people who still have their
Speaker 1: original staple together copies of the diet. Arthur's patients start
Speaker 1: losing weight. Soon, a local TV station wants to do
Speaker 1: a segment on the diet. Arthur is into it. He
Speaker 1: also starts realizing that his diet has commercial potential. He
Speaker 1: and his wife end up buying the rights from the
Speaker 1: hospital where he works. It's called Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Speaker 1: Arthur also realized that his diet probably needs a new name.
Speaker 1: Modified Carbohydrate diet just didn't quite roll off the tongue.
Speaker 1: He toyed with just calling it the Agatstan diet, in
Speaker 1: the model of other doctors turned diet gurus before him,
Speaker 1: like Robert Atkins. But Arthur wasn't crazy about this idea.
Speaker 1: Arthur is an academic at heart, he didn't want to
Speaker 1: become Mr. Diet Doctor. Arthur says, it's his wife, Sarah
Speaker 1: who ultimately comes up with the name. They're at dinner
Speaker 1: one night, eating al fresco at a Mediterranean spot underneath
Speaker 1: a big tree in South Beach, a famous Miami neighborhood
Speaker 1: known for its beaches, nightlife, and gorgeous people. Serry thinks
Speaker 1: about it and she realizes it's the South Beach Diet.
Speaker 1: I love South Beach when my wife said it, because
Speaker 1: he we were on South Beach and South Beach was
Speaker 1: becoming hot, and what I concluded was unless you went
Speaker 1: to the public and marketing, you weren't going to be successful.
Speaker 1: The imagery that South Beach conveyed was perfect. It made
Speaker 1: you think of beautiful women in teeny bikinis and tan,
Speaker 1: muscular men on a glamorous white sand beach, and South
Speaker 1: Beach the place was itself having kind of a moment.
Speaker 1: Miami had already been a popular place to visit with
Speaker 1: its son and sand, but South Beach started becoming really
Speaker 1: well known in the eighties thanks to new investments in
Speaker 1: hotels and restaurants. There was also a new hit show
Speaker 1: called Miami vice. By the time the South Beach Diet
Speaker 1: hit the scene, South Beach had become the sort of
Speaker 1: place rich and beautiful people like to hang out. The
Speaker 1: newly named diet is featured on local TV in South Florida,
Speaker 1: which ends up being kind of a turning point for
Speaker 1: Arthur and the South Beach Diet. Arthur in the Diet
Speaker 1: become pretty well known locally. At least then everybody said,
Speaker 1: where you have to write a book, And at that
Speaker 1: point no, no, so Arthur did. The book is called
Speaker 1: The South Beach Diet. The Delicious Doctor Designed foolproof plan
Speaker 1: for fast and healthy weight loss. The Diet hit bookstores
Speaker 1: in April two three and spent almost nine months at
Speaker 1: number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Eventually,
Speaker 1: it would be translated into more than thirty languages, spawn
Speaker 1: a whole franchise of South Beach guides and cookbooks, and
Speaker 1: sell more than twenty three million books under the South
Speaker 1: Beach Diet brand. It was a phenomenon. It's a groundbreaking
Speaker 1: phenomenon with a global following. The South Beach Diet and
Speaker 1: the South Beach did change the way Americans dieted, but
Speaker 1: not forever. Millions of people did the diet back then.
Speaker 1: One of them was Jeanette fold Up. She's a freelance
Speaker 1: web developer who lives in Indianapolis. At the time she
Speaker 1: tried out the diet, she was twenty four and had
Speaker 1: been struggling with her weight since middle school. Jeanette was
Speaker 1: skeptical of fad diets, but she had been trying to
Speaker 1: lose weight on her own for a while and it
Speaker 1: hadn't been going so well. She needed a plan, and
Speaker 1: the South Beach Diet didn't seem like that much of
Speaker 1: a fad diet. For one thing, it had been invented
Speaker 1: by a cardiologist. I chose the South Beach Diet because
Speaker 1: my brother had lost about sixty pounds on it, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't doing anything crazy. You eat lean meats like
Speaker 1: turkey and chicken, You eat whole grains stead of like
Speaker 1: white bread, eat vegetables and foods, and that all seems
Speaker 1: reasonable to me. Jeanette kept a weight loss blog. After all,
Speaker 1: this wasn't just the golden age of the diet. This
Speaker 1: was also the heyday of internet blogging. Jeanette's blog was
Speaker 1: called Pasta Queen. The South Beach Diet cracks down on
Speaker 1: pasta by the way, I combed through its archives to
Speaker 1: see what she had written about the South Beach Diet
Speaker 1: at the time. I could see how some of the
Speaker 1: facets of the diet we've been talking about drew her
Speaker 1: to it and kept her on it, like the first
Speaker 1: phase where Jeanette lost sixteen pounds in two weeks. Here's
Speaker 1: Jeanette reading from one of her early posts. You learn
Speaker 1: some basic rules about what types of food to eat
Speaker 1: and about how much, and then they set your free.
Speaker 1: You can do what you want with the permitted foods,
Speaker 1: allowing for lots of variety. Plus you're supposed to eat
Speaker 1: until you're full. Wow, a diet that didn't expect you
Speaker 1: to starve. All of those traits combined to make diet
Speaker 1: that I think I can actually follow for a long
Speaker 1: period of time, hopefully the rest of my life. Basically,
Speaker 1: I've chosen the South Beach Diet because one, you start
Speaker 1: losing weight immediately to the regiment isn't difficult to learn.
Speaker 1: You just learn the basic principles, what you eat is
Speaker 1: flexible within the rules, and three, I should never feel
Speaker 1: hungry or deprived. I hope it works. Ah. Yes, a
Speaker 1: diet that's flexible as long as you follow all of
Speaker 1: the rules. We've heard this from dieters before, like Damie Cologne.
Speaker 1: In episode one. Janette also says that in retrospect, the
Speaker 1: diet sort of taught her what healthy eating was supposed
Speaker 1: to look like. She had some vague ideas, but the
Speaker 1: diet really pinned those details down. In the past, I've
Speaker 1: kind of tried to eat healthy, but because I didn't
Speaker 1: know specifically, like what should I be eating, you know,
Speaker 1: that was a little hard. I did, like the South
Speaker 1: Beach Diet did have like a list of food where
Speaker 1: it was okay, this is okay in phase one, this
Speaker 1: is okay, Phase two, this is okay, and phase three,
Speaker 1: so I can kind of referred to that just be like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know our bananas on the list. For the record,
Speaker 1: bananas are not on the list in phase one, but
Speaker 1: you can have them specifically medium sized bananas in phase two.
Speaker 1: In two years, Jeanette ends up losing nearly two hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: Let me just say that again, two hundred pounds. She
Speaker 1: lost half of her body weight, and she actually ends
Speaker 1: up writing a memoir about all this. Here's Jeanette on
Speaker 1: the Today Show and Jeanette Foldy is with us this morning, Janette,
Speaker 1: welcome and congratulations. I'm gonna start off with a question
Speaker 1: I don't normally start off with guests. How much do
Speaker 1: you weigh now? Pounds? Jeanette brings her old pants to
Speaker 1: the show and holds them up before the audience. The
Speaker 1: chiron reads skinny story Weight Loss two. She's sitting on
Speaker 1: a stool in the interview, and she told me that
Speaker 1: she thinks they sat her there on purpose, so her
Speaker 1: whole body was visible in the shot. We'll come back
Speaker 1: to her and what she calls after the after photo
Speaker 1: in a bit. Remember our original question, why did the
Speaker 1: South Beach Diet take off? Was it the name or
Speaker 1: that it was invented by a doctor? Was it that
Speaker 1: it seemed easy with only two weeks of really restrictive dieting.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get to the bottom of this question,
Speaker 1: so I talked to Carol Angstad, who designed the cover
Speaker 1: of the original South Beach Diet book. The name obviously
Speaker 1: was a big part of what sent The South Beach
Speaker 1: Diet to the top of the best seller list, but
Speaker 1: the way I see it, Carol's book design is another
Speaker 1: key factor. It's publisher, a company called Roedale was banking
Speaker 1: on the book taking off. Rodale wanted it to look
Speaker 1: like a big book, a publishing term for covers that
Speaker 1: are eye catching and look like best sellers. In practice,
Speaker 1: that usually means having the title in huge letters, taking
Speaker 1: center stage. So Carol pitched exactly that. The background was
Speaker 1: a bright turquoise color with a palm tree peeking out
Speaker 1: on one corner. It was actually a stock photo. The
Speaker 1: words the South Beach Diet are stacked in front of
Speaker 1: the beach shot, taking up most of the page, and
Speaker 1: then Arthur's name is on the bottom. It reads Arthur
Speaker 1: Agatston M d It's really, you know, when you look
Speaker 1: at it, very basic and simple. It's just, you know,
Speaker 1: the blue and the green kind of flowing together, are
Speaker 1: in just a hint of the palm frond. This is
Speaker 1: the design the publisher Rodale goes with. They also add
Speaker 1: onto the cover the words lose belly fat first. This
Speaker 1: is what they call a hook of the diet, a
Speaker 1: thing that sets it apart and draws people in. They
Speaker 1: also end up printing the cover on shiny foil paper,
Speaker 1: which is more often used for things like romance novels.
Speaker 1: Carol says that made the book feel sexy, which was
Speaker 1: exactly what they were going for. It didn't even really
Speaker 1: look like a diet book or even something health related.
Speaker 1: Here's Tammy Booth Corwin, who became the editor in chief
Speaker 1: and president of Rodale Books. And I remember the day
Speaker 1: we were in my office now in Pennsylvania, myself and
Speaker 1: our publisher Amy and all really all a big game.
Speaker 1: Our deputy editor, Mary South, and we all stood around
Speaker 1: and our designer put on the floor of my office
Speaker 1: probably forty covers, and then one by one we took
Speaker 1: out the ones that just weren't hitting us in some
Speaker 1: special way, and and then it came down to the
Speaker 1: cover that we that we published with. And one of
Speaker 1: the things we loved about it was it looked like
Speaker 1: a novel. It looked like something you'd sit down and
Speaker 1: read on the beach. Diet publishers like Rodale knew that
Speaker 1: standing out was the key to a successful diet book.
Speaker 1: They were already tons of diets out there. A book
Speaker 1: needed to sound new and fresh to get attention and
Speaker 1: especially to sell. The other important piece was the way
Speaker 1: the diet was structured. The three phases gave people a
Speaker 1: sense of momentum, especially with a strict initial phase that
Speaker 1: was likely to shed pounds fast. The fact that South
Speaker 1: Beach had three parts to it was a classic move
Speaker 1: from the diet playbook. The Acting Diet, for example, has
Speaker 1: four phases. Phases help dieters feel like they're progressing and
Speaker 1: moving forward even during periods of time when weight loss
Speaker 1: slows or even stops, and phases also make dieters feel
Speaker 1: like they'll eventually be done with the diet. In other words,
Speaker 1: they can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 1: With the South Beach Diet, that light is phase three.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot so far about what made the
Speaker 1: South Beach Diet successful, but we need to also talk
Speaker 1: about what the diet overpromised and where it fell short.
Speaker 1: These are themes we've looked at earlier in the series.
Speaker 1: How with dieting, there's a thin line between information and misinformation.
Speaker 1: When scientists evaluated various nutrition facts in Arthur's book in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, they found that only a third
Speaker 1: was clearly backed up by published scientific research. For example,
Speaker 1: one big draw of the South Beach diet was that
Speaker 1: people lose eight to thirteen pounds in their first two weeks,
Speaker 1: but the authors of this paper weren't able to find
Speaker 1: any research backing that up. I spoke with one of
Speaker 1: the studies authors, David cats. He points out that the
Speaker 1: South Beach Diet does steer people away from processed foods
Speaker 1: and added sugars, which is good, but it also tells
Speaker 1: people to make changes that aren't sustainable, like eliminating certain
Speaker 1: foods before bringing them back in later phases. The South
Speaker 1: Beach Diet was an attempt to improve on Atkins and
Speaker 1: say not all carbs are created equal, not all fat
Speaker 1: is created equal. The emphasis on how this was a
Speaker 1: uniquely effective way to lose weight was distortion. What David
Speaker 1: is talking about here is something many weight loss programs
Speaker 1: are guilty of, the idea that this diet works way
Speaker 1: better than all the other diets out there. David doesn't
Speaker 1: approve of health professionals and scientists, in particular giving the
Speaker 1: public misleading information. After all, they're supposed to be the
Speaker 1: people we can trust. Another questionable fact is the very
Speaker 1: one promoted on the book's cover, lose belly fat first,
Speaker 1: As if we can't determine where on our body pounds
Speaker 1: will disappear from people lose weight in all kinds of ways. Arthur,
Speaker 1: by the way, stands by the book, so he acknowledges
Speaker 1: they got some things wrong, and the science has evolved
Speaker 1: in areas. And when I bring up the criticisms, he
Speaker 1: doesn't get defensive or anything. Did they about snacking? But
Speaker 1: he says, basically he stands by the diet, that they've
Speaker 1: corrected the record where they were wrong. Now the principles
Speaker 1: everybody should be eating that way, as far as the
Speaker 1: basic principles of avoiding sugars, avoiding bad cards. For all
Speaker 1: Arthur's confidence, I still have questions overstating aspects of a
Speaker 1: diet or going beyond the scientific evidence at the time.
Speaker 1: Those things affect people. And yet none of this kept
Speaker 1: the diet from becoming a sensation. It didn't matter whether
Speaker 1: it did exactly what it said it would, because word
Speaker 1: about the diet spread faster than the criticisms, and the
Speaker 1: hype was compelling diet. The book became a bestseller eight
Speaker 1: years ago and caused a revolution in the dieting world,
Speaker 1: from cutting cards to swearing off sweets, The South Beach
Speaker 1: Diet changed the way many Americans slim down, something that
Speaker 1: seems to have worked to the South Beach diets advantage
Speaker 1: was the reach of its publisher. Rodale was an important
Speaker 1: player in the health and fitness world. It owned nine magazines,
Speaker 1: including Men's Health, Prevention and Runners World, reaching about seven
Speaker 1: million readers altogether. When The South Beach Diet was published,
Speaker 1: Prevention ran an eleven page spread. There were pieces in
Speaker 1: Runners World and Men's Health. Diet also made the cover
Speaker 1: of another well read magazine called Women's World, which wasn't
Speaker 1: owned by Rodale. Rodale also sent out five million direct
Speaker 1: mailers to get the word out. In other words, Rodale
Speaker 1: had some serious resources and it used them to tell
Speaker 1: people about the South Beach Diet. And there was another
Speaker 1: new way to reach people, the Internet. This is the
Speaker 1: two thousand's, the era of Internet businesses, including an early Amazon, Yahoo,
Speaker 1: and eBay. People are starting to get smarter phones and
Speaker 1: even watch cat videos online, and the Rodale team put
Speaker 1: the butting Internet to work. They partnered with a company
Speaker 1: now called Everyday Health to offer subscription diet content and
Speaker 1: message boards for dieters. Part of that was community, which
Speaker 1: we could not offer in the book. For example, that
Speaker 1: was Tammy again from Rodale, and it really complimented the book.
Speaker 1: All of the branding they did drove book sales. Book
Speaker 1: sales drove to the digital product with South Beach Diet
Speaker 1: dot com. It's now easier than ever to lose weight
Speaker 1: while eating the foods you love. I do. I get
Speaker 1: to eat the sweets now with South Beach. And there
Speaker 1: was another thing that really helped push the South Beach
Speaker 1: Diet to the masses, celebrity endorsements. Former President Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: happened to have a new book coming out around the
Speaker 1: same time, so he went on a book tour and
Speaker 1: he looked great, and people were asking him, you look great,
Speaker 1: and he said, I think it was in New York Magazine.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm almost stopped me to diet, and from
Speaker 1: there sales skyrocketed. Jessica Simpson, who famously wore short shorts
Speaker 1: in the two thou five Dukes of Hazard movie, was
Speaker 1: also said to have used the diet to fit into
Speaker 1: her Daisy dukes. The actress Bette Midler was another South
Speaker 1: Speech diet fan. Celebrities are especially effective diet ambassadors because
Speaker 1: people already want to look like them. As the diet
Speaker 1: was taking off, Tammy and other Rodelle employees would gather
Speaker 1: around their publisher's office every week and wait to hear
Speaker 1: how well the book had sold. Back then, you had
Speaker 1: to wait for the numbers to come in. You couldn't
Speaker 1: just check them online. Then the publisher, Amy Rhodes, would
Speaker 1: decide whether they needed to print more copies. And literally,
Speaker 1: in the first year we went back to press twenty
Speaker 1: three times. I think it was. It would be so exciting.
Speaker 1: Amy would say, I'm pushing the button for another hundred
Speaker 1: thousand copies, And the first time that happened, we we thought,
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't another stratosphere. Now. This brings me
Speaker 1: to the final and critical piece of all this timing
Speaker 1: and context. Remember before the Southweach diet launched, everyone was
Speaker 1: talking about a different dietary villain fat. This was the
Speaker 1: era of fat free cookies and frozen yogurt. After all,
Speaker 1: the cultural tide started to shift with the Atkins diet,
Speaker 1: which made carbs into a dirty word. Instead, you walked
Speaker 1: in the studio and a collective gas over, how fantastic
Speaker 1: you look. I know you're doing Atkins. I'm doing Atkins.
Speaker 1: In the first six weeks, I lost twenty three pounds,
Speaker 1: then I went to thirty pounds I lost, and then Christmas.
Speaker 1: That was Sharon Osborne, who was a celebrity ambassador for
Speaker 1: the diet. Atkins was extremely popular, but it was also
Speaker 1: criticized because it told people to eat a lot of
Speaker 1: fatty foods. Doctor said then that it could be dangerous
Speaker 1: for people. Then Robert Atkins, the inventor of the Atkins Diet, died,
Speaker 1: He'd been injured, but it started this huge controversy about
Speaker 1: whether Robert Atkins himself was in poor health. There was
Speaker 1: a discussion around the time of his death about, you know,
Speaker 1: did he have a bad heart. You know, people said
Speaker 1: he was OBEs. A doctor who worked with Atkins, by
Speaker 1: the way, denied a lot of this back then and
Speaker 1: said Robert atkins medical issues likely weren't because of his diet.
Speaker 1: It was all very sad. However, having a heart healthy
Speaker 1: diet to replace it almost at the same time was
Speaker 1: just a very odd, odd bit of timing that ended
Speaker 1: up being something that helped the book kind of take
Speaker 1: that place. It's customary for diet books to come out
Speaker 1: in January, but Rodell actually put The South Beach Diet
Speaker 1: out in April, wanting to set it apart a little bit. Remember,
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton is going on his own book tour around
Speaker 1: this time and talking about the diet, and then the
Speaker 1: very month the South Beach Diet book comes out, Robert
Speaker 1: Atkins dies, the timing couldn't have been predicted, but it
Speaker 1: would wind up being very important. And really, this is
Speaker 1: one of those stories of a book or a launch
Speaker 1: where you do everything right in your mind, you do
Speaker 1: everything you can do, and then you send it out
Speaker 1: into the world and you don't know what will happen next,
Speaker 1: and then there are all of these X factors that
Speaker 1: go into it, the timing, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: how people receive it, what else is happening in the marketplace,
Speaker 1: in at specific category, in elsewhere, and so on. To
Speaker 1: recapt the South Beach Diet succeeded because of its branding,
Speaker 1: it's tremendous reach, celebrity endorsements, and timing. That formula worked
Speaker 1: for this diet, and it's worked for countless other diets too.
Speaker 1: For the people behind the South Beach Diet, it was
Speaker 1: a success story. It had blown past expectations, dominated the
Speaker 1: cultural moment, and redefined how well a diet and a
Speaker 1: diet book could do. But for at least one person
Speaker 1: who actually did the diet, it was way more complicated
Speaker 1: that person was Jeanette Folda, who we spoke with earlier.
Speaker 1: She lost almost two hundred pounds on the South Beach diet.
Speaker 1: This is the story of after the after photo. As
Speaker 1: she puts it, Jeanette loses all that weight and keeps
Speaker 1: it off for about a year and a half. Then
Speaker 1: it starts to creep being back. But that was the
Speaker 1: least of her problems. I still have that. It's been
Speaker 1: fourteen years now. I've had a four fourteen years. Jeanette
Speaker 1: started getting these persistent headaches, not because of the diet
Speaker 1: or anything. They just started happening, and nothing really helped
Speaker 1: to relieve the pain. Dealing with health issues made it
Speaker 1: really hard to keep dieting, as you might imagine. So
Speaker 1: I was worrying at nine to five job, and I
Speaker 1: would just be exhausted at the end of the day
Speaker 1: and I would just stopped the grocer staring at something
Speaker 1: the ice cream or you know, chocolate covered almonds or something,
Speaker 1: and I would eat as soon as I got home,
Speaker 1: and that was like the best part of the day.
Speaker 1: It's not just Jeanette. Dieting might be manageable in the
Speaker 1: day to day when everything is going right, but then
Speaker 1: again when does everything go right. Things come up, including
Speaker 1: unfortunately illness for Danny Cologne, the calorie counter, who we
Speaker 1: talked to in our first episode The road Bump, was
Speaker 1: a family member's health crisis. This is incredibly common. For Jeanette,
Speaker 1: it was her own health troubles. I can't blame the
Speaker 1: headache entirely. I think part of the problem was by then,
Speaker 1: I've gotten out of my good habits and I kind
Speaker 1: of entered this new normal where it was normal not
Speaker 1: to exercise, not to eat healthy, and trying to transition
Speaker 1: back to that. I think it's very difficult. She thinks
Speaker 1: about losing weight again, but doesn't have the energy. It's
Speaker 1: harder to exercise, especially when comparing herself to earlier Jeanette,
Speaker 1: who would run a half marathon. Over the course of
Speaker 1: nine years, she gains it all back, nearly two hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: You don't notice it first because twenty pounds a year
Speaker 1: is just one or two, because it's maybe like one
Speaker 1: dress size per year, so I'd have to buy new
Speaker 1: clothes in the fall, but hey, it's the fall I'm
Speaker 1: gonna buy, and it blows anyway that it would just
Speaker 1: be another size. It's depressing. I think it's always depressing
Speaker 1: when your body is doing something you don't want it
Speaker 1: to do, particularly when you're trying to do it for
Speaker 1: your good health. You know, I'm not trying to hurt myself,
Speaker 1: like I want to be healthy, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: my body wants me to get fat again. Jeanette's headaches
Speaker 1: aren't as bad anymore by the way, she's doing better.
Speaker 1: I was impressed that Janet was so open about sharing
Speaker 1: her story. We see people on TV all the time
Speaker 1: talking about the weight they lost, but gaining weight isn't
Speaker 1: exactly celebrated. It's stigmatized. She told me the only reason
Speaker 1: she feels comfortable talking about it is because she's been
Speaker 1: dieting and losing weight again. Over the course of two years,
Speaker 1: she's lost about a hundred and ten pounds. I guess
Speaker 1: the thing that really kicks started me was the pandemic,
Speaker 1: where suddenly there's this killer virus out there, and I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, obesity isn't gonna kill me twenty years
Speaker 1: from now, It's gonna kill a twenty days from now.
Speaker 1: I was struck by that number. Hundred and ten pounds.
Speaker 1: That's a lot. I remember she had previously lost almost
Speaker 1: two hundred pounds all those years ago before regaining the weight.
Speaker 1: As I was poking through Jeanette's old blogs, one early
Speaker 1: post in particular stuck out to me. Back then, at
Speaker 1: the very start of her weight loss efforts, she learned
Speaker 1: that the vast majority of people who lose weight regain it,
Speaker 1: and this is what she wrote about that stat. I
Speaker 1: plan on being one of the five percent. He doesn't.
Speaker 1: This idea keeps diets in business. We all want to
Speaker 1: be the exception to the rule. I'm going to dig
Speaker 1: into exactly what the scientists say about this in our
Speaker 1: next episode. I'll be traveling to a sprawling research campus
Speaker 1: in Baton Rouge, Louisiana that's home to every gizmo and
Speaker 1: gadget that could possibly help research or steady weight loss.
Speaker 1: One of my co leagues used to say, it's like
Speaker 1: toys as for a kid. Uh, you know, it's toys
Speaker 1: as for a scientist. We'll take a look at the
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom about dieting, that classic formula of calories in
Speaker 1: calories out and explore how researchers know it's true, but
Speaker 1: also how they know there's more to it than that.
Speaker 1: We'll also dive into the never ending showdown between low
Speaker 1: carb and low fat diets to see which one, if any,
Speaker 1: is actually better. And last, but not least, we'll dive
Speaker 1: into the secrets of successful dieters like and so I
Speaker 1: bought the food staves so that I could put the
Speaker 1: food that I had trouble controlling myself with those food staves.
Speaker 1: Losing It is written and reported by me I'm a
Speaker 1: Court and edited by Kristin D. Brown. Magnus Hendrickson is
Speaker 1: our senior producer, Stacy Wong our associate producer, and Blake
Speaker 1: Maples is our audio engineer. Our theme was composed and
Speaker 1: performed by Hannis Brown thanks to Francesco Leavi and Tim Anette.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to Prognosis if you haven't already,
Speaker 1: and if you like our show, please leave us a
Speaker 1: review that helps others find out about it. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: See you next time.