Wed, Mar-31-04, 21:52
|
Senior Member
Posts: 989
|
|
Plan: South beach (modified)
Stats: 185/154/150
BF:
Progress: 89%
Location: Michigan
|
|
Please read also the forum founders "sticky" at the beginning of the South Beach forum - they argue why they consider South Beach a low carb diet, in spite of the fact that the author says it isn't. I would agree. It is low carb compared to the standard American diet, and low carb compared to the American Heart association, and compared to Weight Watchers.
South Beach is clearly not as low carb as Atkins. Not only that, Atkins seems to really rely on ketosis, and many on the Atkins forum state that by eating more oils and fat, they increase weight gain. I think that will not work on the South Beach diet because you might be in ketosis at times during induction, but certainly not after that. So, South Beach may be closer to traditional diets in that I think it relies more on calorie reduction through not being hungry by eating a lot of fiber and protein.
Many of the low carb books explain at length how glucose in sweets and processed white flour spikes blood glucose, trigger insulin, which results in a hunger response that then craves for more sweets. It is not just the bread - I have bread, the whole grain type that is allowed on South Beach! - it is the concept that weight gain comes from a vicious cycle of glucose - insulin - hunger - more glucose, and that it is that cycle that needs to be broken that in my mind is in common to all the low carb diets.
Long answer! Sorry! Hope it helps. You have relatively little to loose compared to most of us here. If you are willing to go slowly, you could probably just drop all sweets, processed flour (white bread, white rice and pasta), and softdrinks from your diet, make sure that you are never hungry and thus always have breakfast and snacks, and loose what you need to loose.
The funny thing is, if you read maintenance at the end, Atkins, South Beach and even the current official medical establishment aren't so different - they all advocate dropping the same things above - it is really with fat where there are large differences in opinion (AHA/WW etc. official: all fat is bad; South Beach: saturated animal and artificial trans fats are bad; Atkins: natural fats are ok, trans aren't)
|