WEBVTT - Episode Three: How to Launch a Diet Empire 0:00:02.200 --> 0:00:05.600 Okay, I won't do that many wounds, but you'll get 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:11.760 a sense of one certainly about what my boxing because 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:16.479 I'm not famous boxing. For the record, this is not 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:21.919 a famous boxer still thinks I'm gonna be champion. True, 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:26.520 we're coming the champ anyway. We we're coming from Mike Tyson. 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:31.680 It's a few more years. We're coming from the man 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:35.880 I'm standing with in a makeshift South Florida outdoor jim 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:41.600 with his trainer, surrounded by curious kids. Is Arthur Agatston. 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:46.600 You may not know his name, but you definitely know 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:51.080 his diet, which was everywhere in the early two thousand's 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:54.280 Real weight loss for real people. Go to South Beach 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:57.080 diet dot com today. You'll rev up your metabolism for 0:00:57.160 --> 0:00:59.760 even faster weight loss by the doctor behind the rebel 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.280 snary South Beach die. I'm a real person. I lost 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:09.160 nine pounds in Arthur is still hard at work on 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:12.880 his beach body. We're on the swanky island off the 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:16.759 coast of Miami, where Arthur lives with his wife Sarah. 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:21.440 His regular boxing lesson is about to kick off. We're 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:25.960 standing outside on a basketball court. Every so often a 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:32.039 ship comes by, blasting it's horn. Arthur's trainer is a 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:36.720 former professional boxer named Juan Arroyo. They start off with 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:40.959 some shadow boxing, then one takes out his boxing mites 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:51.320 for Arthur to hit jack shoulder how wide like this 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:55.640 when you gotta stand right to polo, wait in the 0:01:55.680 --> 0:02:01.320 middle to the chair so I can see what the 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:08.960 diet does. Arthur is nimble on his feet. As one 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:13.760 swings admit at him, he quickly ducks. He looks young 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:21.840 and agile. Arthur credits the South Beach diet with at 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:26.120 least some of his endurance. It is also the source 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:31.920 of some pretty immense wealth. The island where he lives, 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:36.840 Fisher Island, is accessible from Miami only by fairy or 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:41.360 private yacht. We got here today on the ferry in 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:48.080 a tesla. Arthur's neighbors include the model Carolina Kurkova, former 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:52.240 New York Knicks player David Lee, and tennis star Carolyn 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:56.520 was Niacki. Oprah owned a condo here at one point. 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:02.680 The police looks like a resort. People even travel around 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:06.880 the island on golf carts. But I'm not here to 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.920 rub elbows with the rich and famous or get feedback 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:15.240 on my right hook. In early two thousand's, the South 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:20.160 Beach Diet became a sensation. I was just a kid 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:22.840 at the time, but I know that my mom did 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:26.200 the diet for a little bit. Lots of people did. 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:34.800 It was everywhere, and I wanted to understand why. After all, 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:39.480 it's basically a low carb diet, which means eating lots 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:44.880 of protein and vegetables and not eating much bread, pasta 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.840 and dessert. And as we learned in the last episode, 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:53.800 low carb diets are nothing new. They've actually been around 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:59.000 for many, many years. And yet the South Beach Diet 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:03.800 book but Key a major bestseller and spawned a franchise 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:09.000 that has sold more than twenty three million books. It's 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:14.200 hey day. Everyone from former President Bill Clinton to actress 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:19.640 Nicole Kidman were reportedly fans. And the South Beach Diet 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:25.400 wasn't just insanely popular. It was insanely popular during a 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:28.640 time that I like to think of as the Golden 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:32.800 Age of the diet. From the nineties to the two thousand's, 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:38.920 the sheer number of diets was incredible. Wheat Watchers was 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:43.000 also exploding at the time. When you're on a diet hungry, 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.280 is there to sabotage you every step of the way. 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:49.599 The Biggest Loser was about to hit our TV screen 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.839 just a moment, one player will become this year's biggest Loser. 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:57.200 And when the grand ride a two hifty dollars from 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:01.920 new Visco one. There were even diet cookies you could 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:04.839 eat for breakfast. You want to lose up to fifteen 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:08.120 pounds of months get Smart for Life cookies. Doctors developed 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:11.840 Smart for Life cookies with extracts from natural ingredients like fruits, 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:15.800 vegetable for even the fashion of this time period seem 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:22.039 to require being impossibly skinny, remember low rise pants and 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:26.480 crop tops. In this episode, we're going to dissect the 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:31.080 South Beach diet. It's the prototypical diet in many ways. 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:36.760 It was created by a doctor. It designated certain foods 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:42.560 as good and others as bad, and it became a huge, 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:49.360 huge business. How does the diet become so popular that 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:53.000 decades later there are people who still have a South 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:57.719 Beach Diet cookbook hanging around their kitchen cupboard. How does 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:02.320 a particular diet go viral preaching the same kinds of 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:06.680 things diets have been preaching for many years. I'm going 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.880 to break it down and reveal the formula for viral 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:16.400 diet success. Like celebrity endorsements, I'm Bloomberg News health reporter 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:21.680 Emma Court and from the Prognosis podcast, this is Losing It. 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:38.279 The story of the South Beach Diet starts with Arthur 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:44.640 Agatston and a little bit of a belly, specifically his belly. 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:48.600 For most of his life, Arthur was thin and athletic, 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:51.800 so thin that sometimes he would even eat junk food 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:55.080 to try to put on a few pounds. But one 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:58.120 day he realized that he had gained some weight, and 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:02.800 not on purpose. In the mid nineties, Arthur was putting 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:06.520 in long days as a cardiologist at a Miami hospital 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:09.440 and I was sitting around with out cardiology fellows posting 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:13.440 about some athletic exploittant. The fellow starts laughing at me. 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:17.400 Arthur asks this guy, what's up? Said, look at your belly. 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:21.320 Arthur looks down only to find I really I had one. 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.160 So Arthur goes on a diet. But the diet wasn't 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:27.880 just the start of a weight loss journey for Arthur. 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:31.960 It was the start of a whole new chapter in 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:36.440 his career. I met Arthur on a bright December Day 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:41.600 in his medical practices office in Miami Beach. In person, 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:45.560 Arthur was really more like your classic doctor than a 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.160 diet guru. There were a couple of models of the 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:52.240 human heart in his office and a white coat hung 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:56.080 on the back of his chair. Arthur himself comes off 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:01.160 as kind and straightforward. He's also excited bowl prone to 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:05.320 tangents even while in the middle of telling a completely 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:10.200 different story. But Arthur is also a diet guru. Back 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.520 when he invented the South Beach Diet, a different kind 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:17.720 of regimen was all the rage. You probably remember how 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:24.360 supermarkets suddenly started stalking low fat everything, low fat cottage, cheese, 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:31.120 fat free yogurt, even low fat cookies. This became popular 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.200 in the eighties as a way of preventing heart disease 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:38.640 and losing weight. At the time, even the American Heart 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:44.040 Association recommended a low fat diet, and Arthur was into 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:48.400 heart health. He was a heart doctor, after all, not 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:53.160 just any heart doctor, a pioneering one. A test named 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:57.600 after him, the Agatstan score, is still used to pick 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.360 up people's risk of things like hard attacks. So as 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.359 Arthur is trying to figure out how to lose weight, himself. 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.560 He's also thinking about how nutrition impacts things like the 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:12.160 risk of heart disease, and he's pretty sure that low 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:16.680 fat diets aren't actually the answer. Low fat diets just 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:20.239 didn't work in clinical practice. It didn't lower your cholesterol, 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:24.760 and it didn't prevent diabetes or anything. Arthur thought low 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:29.199 fat diets were steering people in the wrong direction, people 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:33.720 like him. During late afternoons at work, he would sometimes 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:38.200 start feeling dizzy and shaky, so I would run down 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:42.160 to the doctor's lounge, have a low fat blueberry muffin 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:46.720 which was sugar and junk, and a cup of coffee 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.880 brought my blood sugar back up. Instead of low fat, 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:56.800 low carb diets were now becoming popular, led by another cardiologist, 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:02.600 Robert Atkins of Atkins Diet Face. So Arthur starts on 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:06.719 a low carb diet, and as soon as he does this, 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:11.920 he says that the pounds start melting away. He loses 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:17.560 about twelve pounds, the belly is gone, Arthur is back 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:22.480 to feeling like his usual fit self. He also suspects 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:27.280 that he is onto something. He thinks this diet would 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.719 be good for his patients too, so he meets up 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:36.800 with his colleague, a dietitian named Marie Almond. Together they 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:40.240 come up with what would eventually become the South Beach Diet, 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:45.080 a three phase plan for weight loss, but at the 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:51.760 time it had a different name, The Modified Carbohydrate Diet. 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:55.240 We eat healthy and did the best shape of your life. 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:59.920 Introducing the brand new Modified Carbohydrate Diet the Effective Weight, 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.240 Lose weight and learn the way to maintain a healthy 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:06.880 weight without hunger or deprivation. Catchy right. Arthur and Marie's 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:09.959 new diet was similar to Atkins, but had more of 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:14.800 an emphasis on healthy fats. Here's how it works. Phase 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:19.520 one is intense. That's when you have the most restrictions 0:11:19.559 --> 0:11:23.520 on what you can eat. You're eating protein like fish 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:28.079 and meat and lots of vegetables. You can have milk 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:31.360 and cheese so long as they're low fat or non fat, 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:38.080 but you can't have bread, potatoes, pasta, alcohol, desserts. You 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:42.400 can't even eat fruit. In phase one, the point is 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:45.600 to get rid of cravings for foods that the diet 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:49.600 says are bad for you, and during this part of 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:54.280 the diet the pounds are supposed to drop fast. In 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:58.480 Phase two, things relax a little. You can start adding back, 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:04.000 whole grain breads, high fiber cereals, sweet potatoes, some kinds 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:09.760 of fruit, wine, and even chocolate. Sparingly, that is so 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:15.040 we really introduced the concepts of the good fats and 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:19.079 good carbs. You didn't have to be high carb or 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:21.760 low carb, or high fat or low fat. It was 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:25.240 choosing the healthy ones. South Beach became known as a 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:29.640 low carb diet. Anyway, in phase two, you're not restricting 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:33.760 what you eat as much, so the weight loss happens slower, 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:37.480 and you just stay in this phase of the diet 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:40.520 for however long it takes to hit your goal weight. 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:45.240 Another sort of novel idea of the diet emphasizes is 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:49.560 snacking and strategic weights. Because your blood sugars did have 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:54.400 swings and before your blood sugar dropped, if you had 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:56.840 a snack and prevented that dropped, it would prevent you 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:00.120 from being very hungry and in general, blood shook er 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.560 is kind of a theme of the South Beach diet. 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:06.960 It tells dieters to eat foods with a low glycemic index, 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:11.200 especially in phase one. The idea is that these foods 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:15.000 should keep you full for longer and less likely to crave, 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:19.559 say mint, chocolate chip ice cream. Once you've lost weight, 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:24.840 you move into phase three. The diet basically says you've 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.360 learned how to eat, and you can relax a bit. 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:30.760 There's no list of foods to eat and foods to 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:35.640 avoid anymore like you can eat chocolate sponge cake now. 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:40.040 The book actually says that beyond the chocolate sponge cake, 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:43.800 the diet is honestly a little vague about exactly how 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:47.679 this phase should look. It does say that people can 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:52.400 overdo it and regain weight at this point. If that's 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:55.560 what happens, then the book tells you to start back 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:59.439 at phase one again. In this way, the South Beach 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:04.640 Diet spread a classic diet myth. The myth is this, 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:08.440 you diet for a little while, then get back to 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:13.559 your normal life now with a new slimmer body. Except 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:17.840 that's not really true. You have to keep up these 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:20.960 new habits if you want to keep the weight off. 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:25.320 If you don't, you wind up in a never ending 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:30.520 cycle of losing and gaining weight, which is not good 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:35.760 for your health. The diet I just outlined, by the way, 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:40.600 was the original South Beach Diet. There's also a newer version. 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:44.200 Before it was a book, The South Beach diet was 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:48.240 just a pamphlet, Arthur says. Even calling it a pamphlet 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:51.160 might be over selling it. It was three or four 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:56.720 sheets of Xerox paper stapled together. Arthur and Marie offered 0:14:56.760 --> 0:14:59.720 the pamphlets to patients at their hospital who were in 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:03.600 hardiac rehab, which is where people who have had heart 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:07.280 attacks and other heart problems come to get healthy again. 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:12.040 Arthur says he sometimes meets people who still have their 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:17.320 original staple together copies of the diet. Arthur's patients start 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:20.960 losing weight. Soon, a local TV station wants to do 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:25.640 a segment on the diet. Arthur is into it. He 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:30.800 also starts realizing that his diet has commercial potential. He 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.440 and his wife end up buying the rights from the 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:37.640 hospital where he works. It's called Mount Sinai Medical Center. 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:46.920 Arthur also realized that his diet probably needs a new name. 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:52.600 Modified Carbohydrate diet just didn't quite roll off the tongue. 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:56.160 He toyed with just calling it the Agatstan diet, in 0:15:56.200 --> 0:16:00.000 the model of other doctors turned diet gurus before him, 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:05.400 like Robert Atkins. But Arthur wasn't crazy about this idea. 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.400 Arthur is an academic at heart, he didn't want to 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:14.880 become Mr. Diet Doctor. Arthur says, it's his wife, Sarah 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:19.040 who ultimately comes up with the name. They're at dinner 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:23.760 one night, eating al fresco at a Mediterranean spot underneath 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:27.880 a big tree in South Beach, a famous Miami neighborhood 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:34.160 known for its beaches, nightlife, and gorgeous people. Serry thinks 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:38.920 about it and she realizes it's the South Beach Diet. 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:41.920 I love South Beach when my wife said it, because 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:44.680 he we were on South Beach and South Beach was 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:49.560 becoming hot, and what I concluded was unless you went 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:53.320 to the public and marketing, you weren't going to be successful. 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:59.200 The imagery that South Beach conveyed was perfect. It made 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:03.760 you think of beautiful women in teeny bikinis and tan, 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:09.040 muscular men on a glamorous white sand beach, and South 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:13.359 Beach the place was itself having kind of a moment. 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:19.760 Miami had already been a popular place to visit with 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:24.840 its son and sand, but South Beach started becoming really 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:28.560 well known in the eighties thanks to new investments in 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:33.040 hotels and restaurants. There was also a new hit show 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:43.840 called Miami vice. By the time the South Beach Diet 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:47.040 hit the scene, South Beach had become the sort of 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:50.560 place rich and beautiful people like to hang out. The 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:54.760 newly named diet is featured on local TV in South Florida, 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:58.359 which ends up being kind of a turning point for 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:02.280 Arthur and the South Beach Diet. Arthur in the Diet 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:08.359 become pretty well known locally. At least then everybody said, 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.399 where you have to write a book, And at that 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:17.679 point no, no, so Arthur did. The book is called 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:23.240 The South Beach Diet. The Delicious Doctor Designed foolproof plan 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:27.760 for fast and healthy weight loss. The Diet hit bookstores 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:32.480 in April two three and spent almost nine months at 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:36.919 number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Eventually, 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:41.080 it would be translated into more than thirty languages, spawn 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:45.080 a whole franchise of South Beach guides and cookbooks, and 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:48.800 sell more than twenty three million books under the South 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:54.119 Beach Diet brand. It was a phenomenon. It's a groundbreaking 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:59.240 phenomenon with a global following. The South Beach Diet and 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:03.720 the South Beach did change the way Americans dieted, but 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:11.960 not forever. Millions of people did the diet back then. 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:15.960 One of them was Jeanette fold Up. She's a freelance 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:20.080 web developer who lives in Indianapolis. At the time she 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:23.360 tried out the diet, she was twenty four and had 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:27.679 been struggling with her weight since middle school. Jeanette was 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:31.520 skeptical of fad diets, but she had been trying to 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:34.400 lose weight on her own for a while and it 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:39.320 hadn't been going so well. She needed a plan, and 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:42.399 the South Beach Diet didn't seem like that much of 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:46.160 a fad diet. For one thing, it had been invented 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:49.480 by a cardiologist. I chose the South Beach Diet because 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:52.400 my brother had lost about sixty pounds on it, and 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:56.960 he wasn't doing anything crazy. You eat lean meats like 0:19:57.040 --> 0:20:00.679 turkey and chicken, You eat whole grains stead of like 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:05.320 white bread, eat vegetables and foods, and that all seems 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:09.240 reasonable to me. Jeanette kept a weight loss blog. After all, 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:12.480 this wasn't just the golden age of the diet. This 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:16.800 was also the heyday of internet blogging. Jeanette's blog was 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:20.800 called Pasta Queen. The South Beach Diet cracks down on 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:24.240 pasta by the way, I combed through its archives to 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:26.560 see what she had written about the South Beach Diet 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:29.040 at the time. I could see how some of the 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:31.800 facets of the diet we've been talking about drew her 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:35.159 to it and kept her on it, like the first 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:40.399 phase where Jeanette lost sixteen pounds in two weeks. Here's 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:43.680 Jeanette reading from one of her early posts. You learn 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.119 some basic rules about what types of food to eat 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:48.560 and about how much, and then they set your free. 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.040 You can do what you want with the permitted foods, 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:54.160 allowing for lots of variety. Plus you're supposed to eat 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:57.200 until you're full. Wow, a diet that didn't expect you 0:20:57.240 --> 0:21:00.399 to starve. All of those traits combined to make diet 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:02.360 that I think I can actually follow for a long 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:06.080 period of time, hopefully the rest of my life. Basically, 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:09.520 I've chosen the South Beach Diet because one, you start 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:13.400 losing weight immediately to the regiment isn't difficult to learn. 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:15.920 You just learn the basic principles, what you eat is 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:19.200 flexible within the rules, and three, I should never feel 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:24.080 hungry or deprived. I hope it works. Ah. Yes, a 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:29.119 diet that's flexible as long as you follow all of 0:21:29.160 --> 0:21:34.480 the rules. We've heard this from dieters before, like Damie Cologne. 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:38.159 In episode one. Janette also says that in retrospect, the 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:41.320 diet sort of taught her what healthy eating was supposed 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:45.080 to look like. She had some vague ideas, but the 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:48.560 diet really pinned those details down. In the past, I've 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:51.679 kind of tried to eat healthy, but because I didn't 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:54.760 know specifically, like what should I be eating, you know, 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:58.120 that was a little hard. I did, like the South 0:21:58.119 --> 0:22:00.200 Beach Diet did have like a list of food where 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:02.159 it was okay, this is okay in phase one, this 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:04.680 is okay, Phase two, this is okay, and phase three, 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:07.360 so I can kind of referred to that just be like, okay, 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:11.719 you know our bananas on the list. For the record, 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:15.199 bananas are not on the list in phase one, but 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:19.960 you can have them specifically medium sized bananas in phase two. 0:22:21.440 --> 0:22:25.800 In two years, Jeanette ends up losing nearly two hundred pounds. 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:31.879 Let me just say that again, two hundred pounds. She 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:36.040 lost half of her body weight, and she actually ends 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:39.679 up writing a memoir about all this. Here's Jeanette on 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:42.720 the Today Show and Jeanette Foldy is with us this morning, Janette, 0:22:42.760 --> 0:22:46.360 welcome and congratulations. I'm gonna start off with a question 0:22:46.400 --> 0:22:48.359 I don't normally start off with guests. How much do 0:22:48.400 --> 0:22:54.199 you weigh now? Pounds? Jeanette brings her old pants to 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:58.000 the show and holds them up before the audience. The 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:03.439 chiron reads skinny story Weight Loss two. She's sitting on 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:06.600 a stool in the interview, and she told me that 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:10.119 she thinks they sat her there on purpose, so her 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:13.880 whole body was visible in the shot. We'll come back 0:23:13.920 --> 0:23:17.080 to her and what she calls after the after photo 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:26.159 in a bit. Remember our original question, why did the 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:30.400 South Beach Diet take off? Was it the name or 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:33.760 that it was invented by a doctor? Was it that 0:23:33.880 --> 0:23:38.679 it seemed easy with only two weeks of really restrictive dieting. 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:42.240 I wanted to get to the bottom of this question, 0:23:43.080 --> 0:23:45.840 so I talked to Carol Angstad, who designed the cover 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:50.760 of the original South Beach Diet book. The name obviously 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:53.400 was a big part of what sent The South Beach 0:23:53.480 --> 0:23:56.919 Diet to the top of the best seller list, but 0:23:57.200 --> 0:24:00.640 the way I see it, Carol's book design is another 0:24:00.720 --> 0:24:06.000 key factor. It's publisher, a company called Roedale was banking 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:09.960 on the book taking off. Rodale wanted it to look 0:24:10.040 --> 0:24:14.320 like a big book, a publishing term for covers that 0:24:14.359 --> 0:24:18.960 are eye catching and look like best sellers. In practice, 0:24:19.240 --> 0:24:23.560 that usually means having the title in huge letters, taking 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:29.080 center stage. So Carol pitched exactly that. The background was 0:24:29.119 --> 0:24:32.600 a bright turquoise color with a palm tree peeking out 0:24:32.680 --> 0:24:37.439 on one corner. It was actually a stock photo. The 0:24:37.480 --> 0:24:40.200 words the South Beach Diet are stacked in front of 0:24:40.240 --> 0:24:43.280 the beach shot, taking up most of the page, and 0:24:43.320 --> 0:24:46.960 then Arthur's name is on the bottom. It reads Arthur 0:24:46.960 --> 0:24:50.640 Agatston M d It's really, you know, when you look 0:24:50.640 --> 0:24:57.080 at it, very basic and simple. It's just, you know, 0:24:57.160 --> 0:25:00.119 the blue and the green kind of flowing together, are 0:25:00.119 --> 0:25:02.840 in just a hint of the palm frond. This is 0:25:02.880 --> 0:25:07.200 the design the publisher Rodale goes with. They also add 0:25:07.280 --> 0:25:12.360 onto the cover the words lose belly fat first. This 0:25:12.440 --> 0:25:15.600 is what they call a hook of the diet, a 0:25:15.760 --> 0:25:20.040 thing that sets it apart and draws people in. They 0:25:20.080 --> 0:25:23.359 also end up printing the cover on shiny foil paper, 0:25:23.840 --> 0:25:27.400 which is more often used for things like romance novels. 0:25:28.240 --> 0:25:31.600 Carol says that made the book feel sexy, which was 0:25:31.760 --> 0:25:35.719 exactly what they were going for. It didn't even really 0:25:35.880 --> 0:25:39.920 look like a diet book or even something health related. 0:25:40.720 --> 0:25:44.159 Here's Tammy Booth Corwin, who became the editor in chief 0:25:44.200 --> 0:25:47.480 and president of Rodale Books. And I remember the day 0:25:47.520 --> 0:25:50.600 we were in my office now in Pennsylvania, myself and 0:25:50.680 --> 0:25:54.240 our publisher Amy and all really all a big game. 0:25:54.280 --> 0:25:58.960 Our deputy editor, Mary South, and we all stood around 0:25:59.000 --> 0:26:02.120 and our designer put on the floor of my office 0:26:02.359 --> 0:26:08.119 probably forty covers, and then one by one we took 0:26:08.119 --> 0:26:12.120 out the ones that just weren't hitting us in some 0:26:12.359 --> 0:26:15.040 special way, and and then it came down to the 0:26:15.080 --> 0:26:17.760 cover that we that we published with. And one of 0:26:17.760 --> 0:26:20.439 the things we loved about it was it looked like 0:26:20.480 --> 0:26:23.239 a novel. It looked like something you'd sit down and 0:26:23.280 --> 0:26:27.560 read on the beach. Diet publishers like Rodale knew that 0:26:27.640 --> 0:26:30.680 standing out was the key to a successful diet book. 0:26:31.560 --> 0:26:35.359 They were already tons of diets out there. A book 0:26:35.520 --> 0:26:38.879 needed to sound new and fresh to get attention and 0:26:39.080 --> 0:26:43.000 especially to sell. The other important piece was the way 0:26:43.119 --> 0:26:47.000 the diet was structured. The three phases gave people a 0:26:47.040 --> 0:26:51.719 sense of momentum, especially with a strict initial phase that 0:26:51.800 --> 0:26:57.080 was likely to shed pounds fast. The fact that South 0:26:57.119 --> 0:27:00.280 Beach had three parts to it was a classic move 0:27:00.480 --> 0:27:04.359 from the diet playbook. The Acting Diet, for example, has 0:27:04.400 --> 0:27:09.159 four phases. Phases help dieters feel like they're progressing and 0:27:09.200 --> 0:27:12.800 moving forward even during periods of time when weight loss 0:27:12.880 --> 0:27:18.000 slows or even stops, and phases also make dieters feel 0:27:18.040 --> 0:27:22.080 like they'll eventually be done with the diet. In other words, 0:27:22.560 --> 0:27:25.040 they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. 0:27:25.840 --> 0:27:29.240 With the South Beach Diet, that light is phase three. 0:27:30.000 --> 0:27:32.439 We've talked a lot so far about what made the 0:27:32.440 --> 0:27:36.160 South Beach Diet successful, but we need to also talk 0:27:36.200 --> 0:27:39.720 about what the diet overpromised and where it fell short. 0:27:40.640 --> 0:27:43.360 These are themes we've looked at earlier in the series. 0:27:43.680 --> 0:27:48.640 How with dieting, there's a thin line between information and misinformation. 0:27:49.800 --> 0:27:54.240 When scientists evaluated various nutrition facts in Arthur's book in 0:27:54.320 --> 0:27:58.160 two thousand and six, they found that only a third 0:27:58.359 --> 0:28:03.520 was clearly backed up by published scientific research. For example, 0:28:04.040 --> 0:28:07.199 one big draw of the South Beach diet was that 0:28:07.280 --> 0:28:11.919 people lose eight to thirteen pounds in their first two weeks, 0:28:11.960 --> 0:28:15.199 but the authors of this paper weren't able to find 0:28:15.320 --> 0:28:19.119 any research backing that up. I spoke with one of 0:28:19.160 --> 0:28:23.439 the studies authors, David cats. He points out that the 0:28:23.480 --> 0:28:27.640 South Beach Diet does steer people away from processed foods 0:28:27.720 --> 0:28:32.479 and added sugars, which is good, but it also tells 0:28:32.560 --> 0:28:37.760 people to make changes that aren't sustainable, like eliminating certain 0:28:37.800 --> 0:28:41.920 foods before bringing them back in later phases. The South 0:28:41.920 --> 0:28:46.280 Beach Diet was an attempt to improve on Atkins and 0:28:46.400 --> 0:28:48.840 say not all carbs are created equal, not all fat 0:28:48.920 --> 0:28:52.120