South Beach Diet Review
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South Beach Diet® Review Basics:
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Overview |
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The South Beach Diet was created by Dr Agatston, a cardiologist from Miami. He originally wanted to create something which would improve the blood chemistry of his patients and help them have healthier hearts (as well as lose a little weight), but he quickly found that his patients enjoyed the diet and had such great results that they were recommending it to their friends who didn’t have heart problems! It is split into 3 phases, the first phase cuts out all carbs (even fruit) apart from those present in vegetables, so you eat lots of meat, vegetables, cheese and eggs etc. The explanation behind this is that for 2 weeks you are supposed to let your body get over its addiction to ‘bad’ carbs which is brought about by our current diets, and then after that 2 week carb detox then you can start to eat the new healthy carbs and you won’t have sugar cravings and your insulin resistance will have died down. The book says phase 1 is supposed to be easy but it can be quite restrictive and it is the main gripe people have with this diet as lots of people feel lethargic and/or ill when they go through this phase. It is supposed to give rapid weight loss though with about 8 – 13lbs in two weeks being promised, that won’t be all fat though, it will be muscle and water loss as well so don’t get too excited! Then you move onto phase 2 where you slowly start to introduce carbs back into your diet, you add in low GI ‘good’ carbs though and stay away from foods that will spike your blood sugar and cause havoc with your insulin levels which the author claims leads to health problems. This phase is much easier to stick to as you eat lots of good fats, you get ample protein and your fix of carbs too, plus you get to snack during the day as well. You are supposed to lose 1 – 2lbs of fat per week which is a good healthy amount to lose. Phase 3 is supposed to be the maintenance phase which starts when you reach your target weight and you stay on for the rest of your life, but in the book and even on the membership site then very little is said about how it differs from phase 2. You are just cut loose and told to stick to the basic rules of the diet but if you want to cheat a little sometimes then go ahead, in the supercharged book then you are given more details to help you understand what you can and can’t do in phase 3. The book skips all over the place at times, the first half of the book takes you through how and why it was developed and what you should be eating and why, you also get introduced to what you need to do in each phase. Then after about 100 pages you get given a page for each phase outlining what to so, and then 14 days worth of meal plans and a bunch of recipes (100 in total) for each phase. The diet does not concentrate on calories or portion sizes, instead relying on your much more stable blood sugar levels to stop you from craving snacks all the time and by eating more good fats and carbs then you feel fuller for longer. This does call for some self control on your behalf which will be the hardest part of this diet, you need to make sure you don’t pile your plate up with food just because it is more healthy than the stuff you usually eat. You need to pay attention to how much weight you are losing and then tailor the amount of food you eat up or down accordingly to get that healthy steady weight loss. More information on this side of things would be nice as you are just led to beleive you can eat whenever you are hungry and not measure portions or count calories and just keep losing weight. Exercise is only very briefly touched on in the book for a couple of pages, this diet focusses mainly on what you eat, but he does recommend 20 minutes of gentle exercise every day just to help things along, but says changing your eating habits is more important at first. We also bought the new ’supercharged’ book which is actually focussed on exercise to supercharge the diet rather than any major changes to the diet itself. It covers the diet again for those that haven’t read the main guide, and it is actually a really good summary of the diet which cuts through some of the waffle in the main guide. Then you get introduced to a routine of interval training for 20 minutes every other day, and on the days inbetween he suggests you do some total body workouts which are simple pilates-style exercises designed to tone and strengthen your body for about 20 minutes. These concentrate on your core muscles around your lower back and abs to help prevent common injuries from things like lifting shopping bags out of cars which people suffer from when they have a weak core. The whole thing is well written and the exercises are shown with multiple pictures with a good talk through of how to do everything. They are really simple exercises to do and even the interval training is simple as he suggests interval walking rather than jogging, so almost anyone can do it no matter how unfit they are to start (and you are given 3 phases to work through as you get fitter). Personally I am just about to start this exercise routine as I like how low impact it is and how little time it takes, yet the total body workout also looks like it will really help me gently strenghten my whole body and keep me flexible and injury-free. The book then finishes off with some new meal plans and new recipes, along with the answers to some common questions that people have sent in over the years about each phase, so it covers what to do if you start putting on weight in phase 3 and what to do if you reach a plateau in phase 2 etc which are things that were missing from the main guide. Finally there is a membership site you can join which gives you a load more recipes, it also have a discussion board and some tools and articles etc. I found it to be a bit ‘clunky’ to get around, it was really confusing to try and dig through it all to find out what everything was and if it was helpful or not. The discussion boards are good though and you get to ask their nutritionists for help and get your questions answered, a nutritionist is different to a dietician though and if you want one on one support from a dietician then that will set you back another $2.99 per week. The site tailors itself to the phase you are on so when you search for recipes it seems to only find ones for your phase which is good, plus it gives you discussion boards relating to that phase so you can speak to people at the same stage as you. Exercise is not mentioned in the membership site, but for another upgrade of $2.99 a week then you can get access to 100 exercises they recommend with videos. I think the main book is all you need to follow this diet really, but the supercharged book is also a good buy and if you grab yourself the cookbook at the same time to give yourself more recipes then you don’t really need the membership site.
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Proof we actually own the books and signed up to the membership site – click either picture to enlarge |
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What’s included? |
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The two books we purchased are:
Then with the online membership you get:
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South Beach Diet® Review – The Good & The Bad:
Pros
- After phase one then it encourages a slow healthy fat loss of 1 – 2lbs per week
- It encourages you to cut out the high GI foods which play havoc with your blood sugar
- Phase two onwards encourages you to eat lots of fruit and vegetables and healthy fats, a sensible long term plan
- In the Supercharged book then it gives you a simple and effective exercise plan to help you burn more calories and strengthen your body
Cons
- Phase 1 is quite extreme and may leave you feeling weak & wanting to quit
- Doesn’t really give any details about how phase 2 differs from phase 3 until it gets to the new Supercharged book
- Mentions testing foods during your reintroduction of carbs in phase two as we all have different sensitivity to carbs, but doesn’t really explain much further on that
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User Comments |
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Looking online then the feedback is mostly positive, there are a lot of people who have reported using it successfully to lose weight, but also a lot of people complain that the first phase is too intense and makes them feel ill and want to quit. There are negative comments too, but apart from the ones talking about phase 1 then most of the others seem to be from people who haven’t tried it because they never go into any detail about why it is bad, they just call it a fad diet with no further explanation. |
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Customer Support |
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Obviously for the book there is no customer support, but the membership site gives both email support and they have a discussion board where other members can help you, along with a specific board where you can ask their nutritionists questions and get an answer. We sent in a question to the email address they gave as we had trouble signing up, we had a friendly email back answering our query less than 2 hours later! So this gets 4.5 stars as it is not perfect because a forum would be better than that message board, but it is better than lots of the other diets we have reviewed who don’t even have that. |
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