Hi there, my coworker is on South Beach and has lost a great deal of weight on it. One of the things that has always turned me off about the diet is that you have to eat low fat dairy, low fat meats, and avoid butter.

My coworker admitted this morning that she never followed the low-fat rules of the eating plan - she still kept using butter, using full-fat cheeses, even whole milk on occasion, and still ate her favorite high fat meats. She uses full-fat blue cheese salad dressing on her salads! She said she followed all the other rules of the three phases though.

What I marvel over is that she doesn't count, weigh or measure anthing - just follows South Beach with her own, above-mentioned, tweaking. I just have to know- anyone else successful just following South Beach and avoiding the "low fat" advice?

Thanks for any input!

If you use the regular-fat foods as "accents" to otherwise healthy meals, things can still work okay, but it varies from person to person I think. I virtually got rid of butter and switched to olive oil and olive oil margarine. I try to go with low fat meats as much as possible (i.e., Canadian bacon for breakfast) but I will sometimes use regular bacon bits as an accent to a salad or an omelet; the amount I use is probably equivalent to about a half-slice of bacon, but if it's small and mixed in, it seems like much more than that.

Also, if you read the book, you see it recommends introducing various favorite foods that aren't really on the diet and eat them from time to time, if it helps you to stay on the rest of the time. The only caution is that if you find you gain weight with a certain food, you should cut back on it. If you continue to lose, you can keep the food in your diet. In my case, I never quit eating cole slaw, and I have always had chocolate (in moderation, of course). What your friend is doing really is in the spirit of the diet.

I think the SBD is really a framework or foundation of a weight loss program; it is more strict than it needs to be and has some wiggle room built into it. It's designed to have some cheating involved.