Health Informative Council

This is a relatively new diet, conceived by a cardiologist Dr. Arthur Agatston and a dietician Marie Almon as a way to help his patients prevent heart disease and stay healthy. It became known as a weight lose diet only in the beginning of 2000.

The idea behind this diet is the glycemic cycle happening in our bodies when we eat. When we consume sugars and carbohydrates, the body produces insulin to break the sugars down. The more sugars we eat, the more insulin is produced.

The doctor theorized that this causes a cycle; we eat sugars, insulin breaks it down and when there is no more sugar to break down, we feel hungry and eat again. If we prevent the spike in insulin production we will avoid the hunger feeling that causes us to eat more of that same food.

People have been confusing this diet with a low-carbohydrate diet such as Dr. Atkins, but it is not the same. You are not ask to forgo carbohydrates all together, rather choose complex carbs, such as beans, vegetables and whole grain rice and flower, which makes the body work longer and harder to break down. Same thing happens with regard to fat.

Do not avoid fat all together, like many popular, health oriented diets (such as the Pritikin diet) have advocated, rather choose the Good Fat – unsaturated fat and foods rich in omega 3 oil (fish). His diet was a new way of healthy living rather than a diet you do only to lose weight.

The plan calls for three phases; the first phase takes two weeks. No sugars, no processed carbohydrates, no fruit and no vegetables high in sugars (such as beets and carrots) are allowed. No alcohol of any kind either. The purpose of this phase is to re-train the body to produce less and less insulin and get you off the craving for carbohydrates. What you are losing in this first phase is mainly water, so you have to be careful not to get your electrolytes out of balance.

Phase two continues as long as you want to lose weight. It reintroduces fruit, vegetables and some complex carbohydrates, such whole grains but still avoids sugar.

Phase three of this diet is the one you will stay on for the rest of your life. There is no list of allowed or not allowed foods. You are expected to understand and feel in your body what causes your insulin to spike and avoid those foods.

In 2004, Kraft Food Company came out with a line of prepackaged food along the guidelines of the South Beach Diet, and called it South Beach Living. It includes whole grain, whole rice foods with complex carbohydrates and complex sugars and meant to help you stay healthy and lean for many years to come.