When you put on too much weight it can dramatically reduce the quality of your health and life in general. So when weight gain happens to most people, they seek out diets to get that weight down. And there are so many diets to choose from. Some want money to buy their special menus and others have requirements that cannot be consistently met. What is their result? They fail—simple as that. If you have to go to a specialty health food store to buy the proper food for a diet you will find it to be very expensive and unsustainable because it wrecks your budget. If you have to cut out carbohydrates or things you like to eat from your diet forever you will soon grow weary and go back to eating them—another diet failed. But there is a diet that gives you some balance and doctors recommend it quite often: The South Beach Diet.

The South Beach Diet was designed by cardiologist Dr. Arthur Agatston who set out to create a diet that was both safe and effective. The diet is a solution to the problem of insulin resistance in a person who eats a lot of foods with what is called a high-glycemic index. Eating too much bread, potatoes, candy, and foods with processed sugar can create what is known as insulin resistance syndrome. This syndrome interferes with insulin's ability to process fat and sugars therefore the person puts on more weight.

So the starting point with this diet is a period of two weeks when these high-glycemic foods are cut out of the diet in an attempt to force the body to lose its insulin resistance. This reduction in insulin resistance should cause the body to start burning stored fat and the person will start to experience significant weight loss in a short time. This is phase one of the diet. The person in phase one will eat three normal meals a day consisting of meat, fish, cheese (low-fat), vegetables, and eggs. Snacks between the noon and evening meals are required and can consist of products like nuts or cheese sticks. It is estimated that a person will lose between 8 and 12 pounds during this phase.

This is probably the most difficult part of the diet as one can go through periods of feeling weak and dizzy as their body adjusts to the absence of carbohydrates. Also, because the person has to do without many fruits and vegetables, there may be some vitamin deficiencies. Plus, the absence of bread in the diet can result in fiber deficiencies. So you may have to take some vitamin and fiber supplements.

Phase two of the diet consists of introducing small amounts of the forbidden foods (like bread) back into the diet. Weight loss should continue during this phase and the goal is to keep losing 1 to 2 pounds per week until the dieter achieves the desired target weight.

Once the target weight is achieved, phase three or the maintenance phase begins and the dieter needs to maintain a balanced diet. Monitoring the weight is still important because if it starts to climb again the dieter returns to phase one.

Copyright (c) 2008 Thomas Husnik