[grneyedmustang]

So, last night I'm looking at some of the recipes in the South Beach book, and I notice some of them are a bit heavy on the calories.

For example, the Salad Nicoise (p. 159) has 459 calories. The spicy tuna (p. 158) has 626 calories. The florentine style T-Bone (p. 167) has 885 calories.

Should I also be concerned about my daily intake of calories (or points - in the WW world - I was doing WW before I started South Beach)?

[Schmoodle]

It's a hard transition for folks that have been counting points or calories to SBD, where counting and weighing is not required. If you eat the recommended foods, in the recommended servings, you do not need to worry about calories. I guarantee you it does work and you will lose weight without counting. However, there's no reason you can't count calories along with SB, and I have done this for short periods of time, mostly because I didn't trust my judgment of serving sizes, or my loss slowed and I wanted to do a reality check. I know there are also a couple of chicks around here that combine WW and SBD and they do track points as well. Mostly though I love not having to worry about calories. As with any plan, it all comes down to what works for you. If you feel you need to track, by all means do. When I quit counting calories, it was a scary feeling for a while, but very freeing, and I have continued to lose.

BTW, there are limits as to the fat servings, nut servings, and other calorie heavy foods you eat, so if you were to prepare recipes that included these foods, that would count in your daily intake, and it would even out over the day.

[murphmitch]

I was skeptical of this for a long time. That's one of the reasons I didn't start South Beach. I belonged to WW for 20+ years. When I finally took the plunge, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought I would overeat for sure. Well the scale told the truth. I have lost weight faster than WW. I am full & rarely overeat (except when planned). I did check the calorie math when I was on phase II & it was pretty close to the same as what I was eating for WW. The quality of the food is just so much better!

[2fat2jump]

I've been on WW for about 10 weeks now. The first month and a half I was dropping weight slowly- between .5-1.5lbs a week. At the time I could barely get all my daily WW points in let alone the 35 flex points. About 3 weeks ago I started doing SB along with WW and have seen a drastic difference in my weight loss. I've now started to lose 3-5lbs a week. Initially I had a hard time with the addition of SB because I was using a LOT more points than I had in the past, especially with steak. Plus before SB I was eating too many of the weight watchers products like ice cream and cakes. These things may have only been 1 WW pt, but they were full of refined sugar. It didn't help that I'd rather grab a cake as an easy snack. Now I have my meat portion sizes figured out. I eat healthier snacks like cheese and nuts, and I'm eating more vegetables than before. Now I'm using all of my daily WW points and I'm even using all of my flex points. I also feel fuller longer and more satisfied throughout the day.