1. You need to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day they said.

- Not such a good advice as far as nutrition is concerned. If you live in a very hot climate you have to make sure you are getting enough water to compensate for what you lost through perspiration. But in normal circumstances – drink when you feel thirsty.

- Any kind of liquid is good to keep the water levels in your body in check. What so much water does is dilutes your electrolytes and makes you feel full. You are advised to drink that amount if you want to lose weight.

2. Do not eat after 7 PM

– The French laugh at it and for a good reason. People live different lives on different schedules. Some work at night. There is no formula that fits all. It’s really about what you eat not when you eat it.

3. Eat as much chocolates as you want, it’s good for you.

- Wrong. The bitter chocolate that contains at least 70% of cocoa has health benefits. The regular milk or filled chocolate is good for your sweet tooth only. It has no health benefits.

4. Another idea that has been popular is that carbohydrates are bad for you and will make you fat.

- That is an idea that gathered speed in the 70’s when Dr. Atkins came out with his revolutionary low carbs diet by avoiding carbohydrates all together.

- Some carbs (as they are called) are indeed bad for you. Sugars, white rice, white flower, pasta are all heavy with simple carbs that get turned to sugar very quickly.

- When there’s excess, this carbs turned sugar will be stored as fat, probably around your middle section.

- There are a lot of healthy complex carbs you should eat and not avoid. Your body needs it. Eat beans, vegetables, fruit, brown rice and whole grain flower and it will take the body a lot of effort (calories) to break it down and won’t raise your insulin levels.

5. Another myth is that you don’t need dairy products after you’ve grown up.

- Look at the calves, they say. When they grow up they stop drinking milk and eat hey instead. Well, we are not cows and our stomachs and bodies work differently.

- We need the calcium that dairy products are full with, and we need the vitamin D they are enriched with to help the calcium be absorbed. Stay away from dairy products that are full of saturated fats (whole milk, sour cream, whipping cream etc.) and keep the ones that are low fat or fat free.

- Recent research showed that Americans, especially children, have very low levels of vitamin D probably because of sun blocks or because they hardly play outdoors. Doctors believe high levels of vitamin D help combat different kinds of cancers. So do make sure you are getting enough calcium to avoid osteoporosis.

6. Don’t eat more than one or two eggs a week is another idea that is rebutted.

- Yes, eggs have cholesterol but they also have a lot of proteins that keep you satisfied and not hungry for a long time. They have B vitamins, iron and minerals that our body needs. There is no risk in eating one egg a day, every day, if you are healthy.

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.