MIAMI -- The developer of Mount Sinai's South Beach Diet shared success stories and information Local 10 News.

The diet developer, Arthur S. Agatston, M.D., is the Medical Director of the Cardiac Prevention Center at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach. He has been at Mt. Sinai since he joined as Director, Non-Invasive Cardiac Laboratory and Director of Cardiac Rehabilitation in 1979. Since 1986, Dr. Agatston has also been an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

Mount Sinai's South Beach Diet is considered safe and effective and is within the American Heart Association guidelines for saturated fat intake. Local 10 had a chance to ask Dr. Agatston about the diet.

Q:What happens when people eat the wrong kinds of foods?

A: It's not always fat that creates fat in your body. In our country now it's more carbohydrate that's turned into fat by insulin. Unfortunately a lot of the lower fat foods are in fact fattening. They start as not fat, but that's exactly what they turn into.

Q:What is the premise behind the South Beach diet and what you can and can't have?

A: We're talking about the right fats and the right carbohydrates. What happened in this country was that the first recommendation of the American Heart Association was a low fat diet, but they thought it would be low fat like it is in Third World countries which was unprocessed carbohydrates… but what came to us was the processed food – the sugars and the starches. We know that it is the unprocessed carbohydrates that are healthy for us: the whole grains and the whole fruits. Those are absorbed slowly into the body - you don't increase your sugar and insulin levels, so it doesn't turn into fat.

So instead of white rice, white flour, the pasta you're suggesting the whole wheat, whole grains because they are absorbed more slowly, therefore your sugar doesn't rise as fast, and you don't get hungry.

A: You have to remember, the Chinese and the Japanese rice is not Uncle Ben's – it's whole grain rice and that's why they don't have the overweight and the diabetes problems.

Q:How is does this diet help the heart? I know you were first looking for preventive measure for heart disease. How does this diet work hand and hand with that?

A: Originally we thought that LDL the bad cholesterol was the primary and almost only culprit in heart disease, but now we know triglycerides and low HDL, which is the good cholesterol, are an important part. Those fats are very much affected by lifestyle – both what we eat and exercise. It's the carbohydrates that play a big role in the triglycerides and in the HDL.

Q:You've had such success with this diet, and I want to point out that people have lost a lot of fat on the diet. Tell us about your success stories. A lot of people are thankful for you doing this.

A: We found out really originally after having improved triglyceride levels and HDL cholesterol, what we found was that people were losing fat tremendously, particularly those people who were at risk for diabetes and heart disease – those with the 'apple-shape overweight' (round bellies and thin legs). Particularly in those people it appears that the fat just wastes away. Those are our best success stories.

Q: And what rate can people lose weight. How much weight can you lose within a week or two.

A: You can lose five to seven pounds in the first week or two, but you don't always have to start that strictly. One of the nice things is we do have stages, and for long term, one or two pounds a week is plenty.