A review of the South Beach Diet

By Colin Evans

In his diet, known as the South Beach Diet, Dr. Arthur Agatston promotes a return to healthy eating with an emphasis on eating lean proteins, the right carbohydrates and the right fats. The South Beach Diet, which is neither low carbohydrate nor low fat, is geared towards increased cardiovascular health.

Though the South Beach Diet eliminates some foods that would normally be classed as healthy, just because they have a high glycemic index number, it emphasizes eating whole grains, fruits and vegetables and encourages three balanced meals, snacks between meals and allows a great deal of flexibility in food choices.

The late Dr. Arthur Agatston maintained an active, full-time cardiology practise and devoted a large part of his research to the science of non invasive cardiac imaging. In the mid-90's he became disillusioned with the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet of the American Heart Association and developed the now famous South Beach Diet as a way of preventing or reversing heart and vascular problems that stem from being over weight.

In the South Beach Diet, I found the most value in the fact that my cravings for certain foods virtually disappeared and I was never left feeling hungry.

Most diets leave you in a constant state of acute hunger, so it was encouraging to find an explanation as to why you get food cravings and how to eliminate them.

A particularly useful feature of the South Beach Diet are the sections that contain details of how to identify "bad" carbohrdrates and fats, why you should eliminate them from your diet, and what foods you should avoid.

In addition, there are a number of meals and meal plans, included with the South Beach Diet, which takes the guesswork out of preparing your own meals.

The South Beach Diet consists of three phases:

• Phase one, which lasts for two to three weeks and is designed to eliminate food cravings by cutting all "bad" carbohydrates out of your diet.
• Phase two, which lasts until you have reached your desired weight, where you reintroduce the foods you like to eat, but in controlled amounts.
• Phase three, which lasts indefinitely, is known as the diet for life.

I was initially quite skeptical about phase one and then reintroducing all the things I like in phase two, it didn't seem to make much sense. But if you gradually reintroduce the foods you like and are careful with the amounts you eat, you will not regain the weight you have lost in phase one and you will have overcome your food cravings.

Most experts agree that a diet must encourage healthy eating and the South Beach Diet certainly does that.

If you're looking for a diet that will help you loose weight and then keep that weight off, then I recommend the South Beach Diet which scores an (extremely hard to earn) 8 on my scale of 1 to 10.

For more information on the South Beach Diet please visit http://www.SouthBeachDiet.com.

Bookmark this website so you can come back whenever you need more information.