[taben07]

Hey everyone...New here. Any others out there doing the South Beach Diet??? If you have any advice or tips that is helping you through this phase or recipes would be awesome. Want to lose around 10-15 pounds. HELP!

Thanks!

[QuilterInVA]

South Beach is NOT low carb. Don't confuse it with Atkins. There are a ton of recipes right here.

[SBD Sass]

I have three...eat more than the min. number of cups of veggies. It fills you up. Love beans. Lastly, natural peanut butter makes a good snack.

[Ruthxxx]

And please, please read the book and the stickies in the FAQ Section. This is definitely not a low carb plan!

If you do decide to be a Beacher, please join us on the Phase I Chick Check Thread.

[beachgal]

Taben. I'm assuming you've read the book? If not, you definitely want to read it before starting.

[kaplods]

Phase I of SB certainly is low-carb, by most definititions, so I'm not sure the OP's title of the thread is inappropriate. Maybe if she were talking about day 15...

Even though South Beach is not a low carb plan in the traditional sense, it's often lumped with low-carb plans, even by the experts (doctors, dietitians, nutritionists...) because it's a low GI-carb plan, and the average person following any low-GI plan including South Beach is generally eating a lot fewer carbs than people eating a standard american diet.

So compared to Atkins, South Beach is definitely NOT low-carb. However, compared to what most people in the USA are eating, SB is generally much, much lower carb. Low-GI or Low-GL is a much better term, but since alot of people don't know what glycemic index or glycemic load is - low-carb is a lot easier to remember, even if a bit inaccurate.

One of the best review and explanations of South Beach (except in the SB book itself) I ever found was in a book called "The Low Carb Bible," by Elizabeth Ward. And while I know that calling SB a low-carb can be misleading, excluding it from the book, because it wasn't "low enough" would have also been a mistake. Whether or not you consider SB a low carb plan has more to do with your definition of "low" than an objective standard of reality. I think the real question is "low compared to what?"

[zeffryn]

Kaplods, the addition of beans and other legumes in Phase 1 makes it much less "low-carb" than, say, the induction phase of Atkins where participants are limited to <20 grams of carbs per day. Beans, legumes and dairy are all quite high in carbs and therefor are not allowed on Atkins I. Phase.

Also, the fact that carbs are not counted nor are they even talked about makes this quite different from a normal "low-carb" diet.

[kaplods]

I agree, I just feel it can be just as misleading to take South Beach out of the lower-carb and lower-GI arena. I think when most people think of carbohydrate-controlled and carbohydrate-restricting plans, they immediately think of Atkins, and not just Atkins, but Atkins induction or or even more extreme carb-restricting plans. The tendency is to think "as close to zero" carbohydrates has to be the goal.

Seeing carbohydrate-control on a spectrum has more advantages I believe. The differences are important, but the similarities are also.