The South Beach Diet and Its Phases
Food manufacturers are in a heated race to see who can get the most low-carb fare into the grocery stores, and every advertiser worth their salt is emphasizing the low-carb message. So, does the low-carb diet work? Anecdotal evidence and recent studies both conclude that following a strict low-carb diet will in fact help you lose weight. Serious questions remain, however, and must be addressed before fully embracing the low-carb lifestyle. In this series of articles we will attempt to address these issues. Real fitness experts emphasize that you should make changes to your diet that you can stick with for the long term. They don’t enjoy it, mainly because their “diet” is telling them they can’t eat the foods they love. For any “diet” to work, it has to be created in such a way that you can live with it. Life is simply too short to be absolutely miserable, and trying to willpower yourself into a “diet” that you can’t stick with is a sure path to misery.
So, should you start a low-carb diet? Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Slim-Fast, the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, and hundreds of other plans have all helped people, but not one of them has helped everyone. What’s important to realize is that you must discover your own nutritional plan: one that works for you. No matter what nutritional approach you take, all of the experts recommend that you exercise on a regular basis. So although the experts may disagree on what you should eat, they do agree on what you should do: exercise! For numerous individuals, New Year?s resolutions will involve vows to cut back on their food intake, get on a diet and exercise regimen and drop at least a few pounds. This is the question that a group of researchers set out to answer recently. Over a period of two months, 160 individuals were monitored closely as they followed a supervised program.
Researchers waited and watched in anticipation to learn which diet or diets would prove to be most successful.
