Hey ladies! Are any of you on the beach? I'm an American living in Glasgow and was wondering if any of y'all are giving South Beach Diet a go?

No! It's the only 'diet' I have ever gained a stone on! Scared the bejabus out of me, thought my weight was going out of control. It's pushed as a healthier kind of low carbing so I dread to think what the eat 6lb of lard a day version does!

That's a shame the diet didn't work for you. I've lost a stone and a half in the last four weeks. I like the South Beach diet much better than Atkins. I must say the Atkins diet worked for a while but there were a lot of side effects I wasn't happy with.

I did it for a bit and I did lose but then - just like when I did Atkins - as soon as I slipped a bit it all came back on. That was right before I decided to go to the doctor and ask about Xenical and that has basically put me on the calorie and fat counting track. When it comes down to things no matter what diet we are on we are all counting something.

Different things work for different people. But I suspect low carbing in any form is probably the least effective long term because people report the moment they hit target the weight returns. Restricting any of the food groups may help weight loss as bottom line is you're intaking less calories. But I've come to the conclusion, it's healthier to simply eat good, wholefoods and if I restricted anything it was processed foods, and watching fat intake. If you keep everything at 5% fat or lower, that also takes care of itself! In the end what worked for me was simply eating fresh organic wholefoods and moving about more and that's probably all it boils down to for anyone! I lost 9lb in a fortnight doing South Beach and regained that and over another stone the second I tried to come off the induction phase, which made me think it was seriously damaging my body! So I prefer more sensible approaches like Rosemary Conley and/or Rick Gallop's Low GI - my weight loss was painfully slow, less than half lb a week most weeks, but hopefully healthy.

Have no doubt it works for some people, but I have PCOS and that makes it three times harder to lose weight as it is so messing about with my metabolism on such a fundamental level was probably never the way to go, for me!

I have PCOS too and I am with you on things taking longer. It really has been from just eating better through more veg and less saturated fats that it worked for me. When I think about it I am more or less low GI because of the wholefoods I eat but I don't overly thing about it even though I used to have the list of Rick Gallops green light foods on my fridge.