The South Beach Diet Phase One

The South Beach Diet book became extremely successful as soon as the diet book by similar name was finally published and picked up with rapid succession among a dedicated inner circle. Armed with dieting successes to tell everyone about, the South Beach Diet book, officially titled as, The South Beach Diet: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan for Fast and Healthy Weight Loss, is still growing in popularity, but The South Beach Diet phase one keeps confusing readers.

The South Beach Diet phase one is the shortest of all phases of the diet, lasting for a two-week period. It was created to be in your face, kick-start your body and how you think about how you diet from that now on. The myth to popular thinking and one of the harder to understand parts to Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet, you don’t have to limit yourself only eating low carb foods.

In a nut-shell, Phase 1 instills in you the thinking to: rid yourself of bad carbs that are not doing anything nutritionally for your body, substitute the bad carbs that are found in surplus in most American diets with substantial amounts of protein, good fats and low glycemic index (G.I.) carbs that satisfy your hunger and regulate your blood sugar balance.

Foods that do more harm than benefit: fruit, candy, cereal, potatoes, grains, etc. all are to be eliminated, or the dieter must wean themselves off of during The South Beach Diet phase one. A safe bet, if you should have any confusion, is to consume all the salad, greens, and (most) vegetables you want, as they are right in line because of their dietary benefit.

It’s during this stage that Doctor Agatston believes that your body’s resistance to insulin will go down, thus depending on your current weight and current health, you may lose 7 to 13 pounds initially, just in the first two weeks right off the bat, as your body begins to shed extra body weight.

The major purpose of The South Beach Diet phase one has two objectives: to push you into a routine that you can manage which keeps you from being hungry and to plant a seed and the groundwork for a mindset that ensures you rid yourself of the bad foods and gravitate towards the food that will shed pounds, deliver energy and improve your lifestyle.

A regular author of the independently owned healthy living web site, Dave Whitsom, strives to share with his readers the essentials of healthy eating on a budget and its impact on your quality of life.

- Dave Whitsom