The South Beach Diet has got to be the perfect diet. It solves all the usual diet problems. First of all it’s about eating food that you enjoy. Second, it eliminates the food cravings that are always a problem with diets, and thirdly it’s a diet that you can stick with for the long haul and then stay on for life to keep your weight under control. Like many of the best diets, this was originally designed to prevent heart disease, so you know that as well as losing weight this diet is going to be good for your health.
One of the really great things about the South Beach diet is that you’re never hungry. The diet includes lots of very tasty food and it’s really designed for gourmet eating.
What’s so different about the South Beach Diet is that it doesn’t just control food intake. In fact you don’t even have to control the quantity of food you eat. The principle of the diet is to eat a lot of whole foods and to avoid highly processed carbohydrates. In practice this means that foods rich in simple carbohydrates are eliminated. This means getting rid of things like white bread, potatoes and white rice. Apart from the first kickstart phase of the diet, which only lasts two weeks, you’re encouraged to eat lots of whole grain rice and bread and other complex carbohydrates. That means that the diet is pretty filling and doesn’t leave you with that empty feeling that most diets do.
In the first two weeks of the diets you can’t eat any kind of bread, rice, potatoes, pastries, fruit or alcohol. That’s pretty strict, but it only takes a couple of days to get used to it. Instead you eat plenty of vegetables, apart from carrots, tomatoes and onions, and lean meat and fish.
In the second phase of the South Beach Diet, you can eat small quantities of pasta as well as tomatoes and onions and limited quantities of fruit. You stay on this phase until you reach your target weight.
In the maintenance phase of the diet you eat normally, just following a few rules which aren’t really very restrictive.
The South Beach Diet is based on the principle that we’re addicted to carbohydrates, and that’s why the first phase is so strict, in order to break that addition. The idea is to prevent the sugar-insulin cycle that traps you in constant carb snacking. Once that cycle is broken, it’s safe to start eating complex carbohydrates again.
I lost a lot of weight with the South Beach Diet and in the three years since I lost it I haven’t put on a pound. And I’m pretty sure that my weight is now under control for life, because I eat now in a completely different way, and I love the food I eat. So I don’t miss anything. I can even have a few drinks without a problem!