TIME Magazine: TIME 100: Arthur Agatston


	NATION \| WORLD \| BUSINESS \| ARTS \| PHOTOS \| CURRENT ISSUE

Arthur Agatston

Heroes & Icons
	Nelson Mandela Aung San Suu Kyi Queen Rania of Jordan Shirin Ebadi Bono Bernard Kouchner Bill Belichick David Beckham Lance Armstrong Yao Ming John Bogle Mel Gibson Arthur Agatston Dalai Lama Tiger Woods Paula Radcliffe Oprah Winfrey Arnold Schwarzenegger Evan Wolfson BKS Iyengar
	Leaders & Revolutionaries Artists & Entertainers Builders & Titans Scientists & Thinkers Introduction Essay FROM THE ARCHIVE: Heroes & Icons from 1900-1999

Doc with the South Beach Diet

By JOEL STEIN

LENNY FURMAN/GETTY IMAGES

FROM THE TIME ARCHIVE

	The Low-Carb Diet Craze Fad diets come and go, but this one is exploding. Can you really lose weight by feasting on beef, eggs and bacon? And should you? [11/1/1999]

You've got to feel for a guy who can't stay on his own diet. "Over the holidays, my wife said I was the only one in the country not on the South Beach diet," confesses Arthur Agatston. So Dr. Agatston is back to Phase One, depriving himself of fruit, wine and whole grains. That is no major failure, according to his plan. It's exactly such permissiveness that made a famous cardiologist into a far more famous nutritionist. We all sensed that the grease in the bunless double cheeseburger was a bit much and that we could use some fiber, but Agatston did the research to make it clear. He wrote a book with a breezy storytelling style and slapped a cheesy title on the cover too. "My waiting room is not exactly filled with South Beach models," he says. He figured out that if he stuck with "modified — carbohydrate diet," as he had called it since 1997, no one would listen. We like to think about hot people when we're denying ourselves.

By getting us to focus on eating nutrient — rich foods instead of yelling about which types of junk will kill us, Agatston has ironically got people to stop being on diets and just start eating healthy. Now he is planning to write a book about heart — disease prevention—the book he really wanted to write in the first place. "The idea was not to fit into a bathing suit in a few weeks but to prevent heart disease," he says. "But people don't care when they die as long as they look good when they do." Finally a doctor has learned how to be patronizing in a useful way.

March 30, 1990 May 9, 1994 Aug. 14, 2000

Larger Cover
Larger Cover
Larger Cover