Overview of the South Beach Diet

Diet fads are a dime a dozen these days. It seems like every time you turn around there's a new, latest and greatest way to shed those extra pounds you've been trying to get rid of for so long. My wife periodically falls prey to these weight loss schemes and recently decided that we should give the famed South Beach Diet a try. What follows is a brief overview of the pros and cons of the South Beach Diet, based on the experiences of my wife and me.

When deciding to try the South Beach Diet, the best place to start your weight loss program is the diet's official web site, on the World Wide Web at http://www.southbeachdiet.com. At the top of the homepage is a free diet profile tool which allows you to height, weight, target weight, age and gender to get a profile with your entered data, along with your current and ideal body mass index, or BMI.

The profile tells you where your current BMI stands in relation to your ideal BMI, and then gives the standard line about how the South Beach Diet can help you reach your weight loss goal. The profile also gives you recommendations for your favorite type of cuisine when dining out, as well as information on your current level of exercise activity.

If you sign up for the South Beach Diet through their web site, you get a customized plan that includes the interactive South Beach internet pages, useful tools that help you track your weight, phase and diet goals, a personal meal planner and nutrition tool, support from other South Beach Diet members, hundreds of recipes for preparing meals at home (including vegetarian meals), the ability to have questions answered by Dr. Agatston (creator of the South Beach Diet), and an automated shopping list generator.

The South Beach Diet teaches weight loss seekers how to change the balance of the food they eat, getting rid of bad carbohydrates and bad fats and increasing the intake of good carbohydrates and good fats. The diet is broken up into phases, as follows.