What is the South Beach Diet?

There are many different diets available these days, each with its own merits and potential downsides depending upon who is taking them on.

Each has a plan or strategy that you need to follow and it can involve restricting or even omitting certain food groups from your diet, while others promote a balanced diet and combine it with exercise to improve it effectiveness.

They all have one thing in common and that is they are designed to help people lose weight.

One such popular diet is the South Beach Diet and we'll take a look at what it is and how it can help you to lose weight.

Long Term Success

The South Beach Diet has been around for a number of years now and is more than just a straight diet in that there is a membership website associated with it that you can join to get the most from the diet. It includes an ongoing support program plus a social forum where you can interact with other members and share experiences and help each other through tough patches.

Three Phases

The actual diet itself is modeled around a three phase plan with the first, or initial phase being similar in context to the Atkins diet where you cut out all carbohydrates and force the body into burning fats to get its energy. Unlike Atkins, this phase lasts for two weeks maximum, where it is then followed by the second phase which re-introduces carbohydrates to your diet while restricting your calorie intake.

The third phase is the on-going section of the diet where you maintain a healthy eating pattern while keeping the calorie count down and make full use of the online support program to help you to keep the weight off once you lost it and maintain a healthy weight in the long term.

The process is toughest at the beginning when cutting out a whole food group can seem pretty tough, especially of you are used to eating fruits and vegetables as part of your regular diet. The obvious bulking foods are removed as well, including bread, pasta, potatoes and white rice.

This may severely limit your choice at first, but you have to remind yourself that it is only for two weeks and in that time you will experience the most aggressive weight loss.

So does it work?

How Well it Works

Well, yes it does as long as you are determined to make it work by sticking to the diet and not sneaking in the snacks when you think you're not being observed! The only real downside is this has been around for a long time and familiarity has a nasty habit of breeding content.

You could get right up to date with a similar but more progressive alternative such as the Dukan Diet which combines the effective phases with modern dieting strategies for greater and longer lasting success.

If convenience is more agreeable to you than putting in the work, there are better options. You may be better off working with a more modern and regularly perfected dieting program such as the Medifast diet for a higher degree of success.

If you need more info plus some customer opinions and stories, please check out these South Beach Diet reviews here. The system is explained in more detail and the real life reviews by past and present customers is well worth reading to get an overall idea of whether this is the right choice for you.

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Posted on Fri, Jun 18 2010 in Diet | 1 Comment



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