South Beach Diet Offers Dieters Three Stages Of Eating

If you have ever wondered how to lose your excess weight while still enjoying good food, then you may have heard about the South Beach diet.

Dr. Agatston, more specifically, has designed a diet that helps people lose weight and feel healthy, all while eating real, whole foods.Sounds good? Well, let us find out more about the South Beach Diet, which can reduce your risk of heart disease, help you lose weight and feel more energetic in the process.

The South Beach Diet was developed by Dr. Arthur Agatston, a Miami-area cardiologist. He developed the diet after working with many heart patients who could not control their heath with the typical low-fat diets.

He based his diet upon studies that found that it is really the consumption of bad carbohydrates that help to increase insulin levels and contributes to insulin resistance, which prevents the body from properly processing fat and sugar. This can lead to heart disease.

Since many people eat a good deal of processed foods and high-carbohydrate foods when trying to lose weight, Dr. Agatston thought perhaps that was the culprit. If you have ever found yourself turning to an inexpensive, chemical-laden entre for lunch, you know what type of food that he was talking about!

The South Beach Diet works something like this: There are three phases to the diet and you begin with phase 1, which lasts for two weeks and focuses on a diet of average size servings of meat, fish, vegetables, cheese, nuts and eggs. No fruit or alcohol is allowed in this stage. It is thought that during this stage, that bodies will lose their insulin resistance and most dieters will lose between 8 and 13 pounds, which is a nice encouragement to move onto phase 2.

When you get to phase 2, things get a little more interesting. This phase lasts until you reach your desired weight. So this could be weeks or months, depending on how much weight you want to lose. In this phase, you can eat whole grain foods, dairy products and fruits.

Your portions of these foods will be smaller, however, than you probably ate before. You still should focus on foods that have that low glycemic index (proteins, complex carbohydrates, and the like). Although potatoes and most rice products are a no-no, you can eat sweet potatoes in this stage.

If you were feeling a little deprived in phase 1, phase 2 allows you to add yes, red wine in small amounts.

You move to phase 3 when you have lost all the weight you would like to lose. This is really a maintenance stage and it allows you three full servings of whole grains and three servings of fruits a day, but you should still emphasize foods that are low on the glycemic index. To make things easier, there are packaged foods now available from Kraft that help you with meal planning.

There are many reasons why this diet has been around and popular for almost 5 years. We can point to various benefits to dieters, which include:

1. Weight loss

2. Lower cholesterol

3. Lower blood pressure

4. A feeling of wellness

5. A reduction in the risk of heart disease and related diseases

So, now you have the fundamentals of the South Beach Diet. Although Dr. Agatston founded the diet to help people reduce their risk of heart disease, many found weight loss to be a huge and lasting benefit as well.

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