You'll get the simple basics of diet chemistry...An easy plan for losing up to twenty pounds on two weeks... A Two-On-Two-Off Program for maintaining a healthy weight... And new diet-variation menus: gourmet, money-saver, vegetarian and international. Five complete 14-day menu plan.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Why the Phenomenal Success of the Scarsdale Medical Diet

I, personally, explain the Scarsdale Medical Diet's phenomenal popularity in two words: "It works." A slim, trim lady said to me recently, "Your diet is beautifully simple, and the results are simply beautiful." I just say, "It works."

Any good doctor will tell you that what you eat is important to your health. Perhaps my background of over forty years as an internist, cardiologist, and family doctor has made me especially diet conscious. For all these years, I have been counseling patients to eat and drink sensibly and stay trim. I have listed for them quite specifically what they should or should not eat if they want to lose weight, or if I think they need to.

A number of years ago I decided to save time by having my diet suggestions typed up and mimeographed. If my mail has been any indication, those well-read, dog-eared, mimeographed sheets have traveled the length of this country and to many places in Europe and the Mideast.

Recently the media got the message and, suddenly sparked by newspaper and magazine articles, literally thousands of people from all over the world were calling and writing for Dr. Tarnower's "Scarsdale Medical Diet." I am told that no diet has ever been as spontaneously and unanimously acclaimed as this one. At first it took off arithmetically - one patient telling another person. As word of mouth increased, its popularity grew geometrically, nationally and internationally.

How the "Just-Right" Combination of Foods Was Created

Nobody could be more delighted and surprised at the extraordinary success of the Diet than I, since I am not a "diet doctor."

Early in my medical career, I became impressed with the importance, even the absolute necessity, of proper weight management for maximum individual health and well-being. This is especially true for the heart patient.

I would tell my overweight patients to reduce, as do so many other physicians. However, that just didn't work with most people. I would say forcefully, "You must take off that unhealthy fat and flab. Go on a good reducing diet immediately."

The usual reply: "I've tried all the diets I could find, and they just don't work for me, Dr. Tarnower."

I finally decided that I would have to do something about that very real problem myself. Nineteen years ago, at the time that I founded the Scarsdale Medical Center, I concentrated on creating a reducing diet that would be simple and effective. One that would keep them trim for the rest of their lives. Taking the weight off was basic, but they also had to keep it off - for many the most difficult aspect.

Studying other diets and their faults and flaws, I came to the conclusion that they were too complicated or too slow, overly demanding, or had other defects that turned people away.

Thus the Scarsdale Medical Diet (SMD) evolved. A great deal went into creating it, but essentially my guides were medical knowledge gained through years of medical practice, day-to-day experience with all kinds of patients, and just plain common sense.

Over the past nineteen years, patients who reduced and kept trim on the Scarsdale Medical Diet spread the news through their own improved appearance and well-being. The word got around that something phenomenal was happening in weight loss.

Teachers in some physical fitness classes distributed the Diet to hundreds of students, recommending exercise to firm off inches, and the Scarsdale Medical Diet to take off pounds.

Jogging groups took up the Diet. A nurse who lost 11 pounds quickly and easily, introduced it where she worked. Her husband, a policeman, lost 14 pounds and alerted overweight fellow officers in the New York City Police Department.

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© 1982 by Herman Tarnower.

Tags: Diets and Weight Loss