South Beach Diet Overview
The South Beach Diet is based on the bestselling diet book of the same name and was extremely popular for a time in the 1990’s. It still has followers who swear by the diet plan as a healthy and sustainable way to lose weight successfully.
The South Beach Diet focuses almost solely on food and how to improve ones eating habits for a lifetime. In fact, upon viewing the website, the first image seen is a delicious looking chocolate dessert and links to other featured recipes. The website has a large database of South Beach inspired recipes and menu planners plus links to the Kraft food range of South Beach convenience foods.
The website devotes a lot of space to the developer of the diet plan, Dr Arthur Agatson, a cardiologist who originally created the diet as a way of treating his own patients. This in turn led to the South Beach Diet book, plus a number of subsequent volumes and DVD’s.
South Beach Diet – Product Description
The cost of joining the South Beach Diet website is very reasonable although it does not offer as much as some of the other popular sites (Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig e.g.). For $5.00 per week (with a minimum sign up of 4 weeks) the customer is given access to all aspects of the website including personalized meal plans, weight trackers, community forums and expert advice. At the time of writing the plan was also offered as free for 7 days although this would not really be adequate time to properly judge the site
As with similar plans, it is split into three phases whereby the user starts eating strictly according to the plan and hopefully ‘jump starting’ their weight loss, continues to lose weight steadily whilst becoming more familiar with the plan and finally begins to make smart food and lifestyle choices independently. The first phase is designed to last two weeks although those with less than 10lbs to lose can eliminate this phase altogether and proceed straight to phase 2.
Fitness and exercise does not seem to be a major part of the South Beach Diet although obviously it is recommended as part of a healthy lifestyle. Subscribers are entitled to use the diet’s ‘Fitness Club’ which is a library of instructional online exercise videos and tips.
South Beach Diet Advantage
- The South Beach Diet has many avid followers and is known to be successful
- The cost of the plan is very inexpensive
- The diet encourages long term changes leading to sustained weight loss
- The low fat/ high fiber diet is a sensible way to lose weight and offers a good variety of food choices
- The diet was developed by a medical doctor and has been clinically successful
- The South Beach Diet has had positive press and media coverage
- The website is very easy to use and professional
South Beach Diet Drawbacks
- The diet focuses mainly on food rather than fitness
- It is the subscribers responsibility to follow the diet without the help of one-on-one counsellors or weekly meetings
South Beach Diet – The Bottom Line
As a lifestyle choice, the South Beach Diet certainly seems to have a good reputation for allowing the user to eat well, but lose and maintain long term weight loss. Because it is designed to help eliminate cravings and basically, re-educate the palate, the dieter should be able to easily incorporate these techniques into their life until, over time it simply becomes second nature to them. After seeing all the good food that is allowed, it is safe to say that this plan truly is, as stated on the site, a ‘food lover’s diet’.
