South Beach: Great Short Term, Difficult Maintenance
by Anna
(Charlotte, NC, USA)
I tried the South Beach diet a couple of years ago - it only lasted about six months. The first couple of weeks it was easy and quite motivating - I was excited and encouraged by the short term results.
I was definitely hungry but it didn't bother me because I had lost about 5 pounds I would say. The many tools available to you on the program make it easy to know what you can and cannot eat, and I liked the philosophy behind starting off more restricted and then easing back into more types of food.
I didn't find going out to eat incredibly difficult. The main issue was carbs - this diet severely restricts your carb intake (even in the later phases of the plan you can't have very many carbs) and that became increasingly difficult for me as time went on. I found myself craving them all of the time.
And eating just a handful of peanuts (and counting them out every time) for a snack wasn't really cutting it. I realized eventually that cutting carbs out of my life was not going to be realistic long term, and the moment you start letting the bread back into your life from the South Beach diet, the weight comes back.
I have now found a more balanced approach involving whole grains, am much happier for it, and have lost weight that I am keeping off.
The other thing I didn't really love was the pre-prepared foods that South Beach provides. None of it is very tasty, and they are filled with chemicals and preservatives.
Overall, this diet is better than many others, but creating my own strategy using common sense and exercise was ultimately a much better solution for me long term, as I was able to stop focusing on restriction and start focusing on health.
Anna
Do you need a little more help with your weight?
Anna,
A lot of people say that the pre-packaged foods you get from diets like South Beach, or Nutri-System, just don't taste very good.
It must be difficult to make pre-packaged food, because the South Beach Diet book features some of the finest chefs in Miami. I guess they're not involved with the company's products.
Anyway, you can't reach your goal and stay there by eating food out of a box. As you discovered, for long-term weight loss you need a good balance of nutritious food, and it needs to be foods you enjoy. Otherwise you can't stick with the program.
Dr. Dan
