The "South Beach Diet" and my results.....

Good job man. Im dreading the day my metabolism slows down.

 

ha yeah, me too. Just try to stay active and run or get an hour of cardio in at least 3 times a week, thats what im going to do. It'll be significantly less excersize than i get now, but when im 40 im not going to be training to win anything.

 

Yeah, I'm 23 and my metobolism has come to a grinding halt over the past year. I've put on 30+ pounds in the past few years, and it seems to be getting worse by the day.

Actually, this week I was planning to do ab exercises, pushups, and jump rope daily. I also want to modify my diet... I was going to do the Special K diet until I found something I could work with. What's the premise of the South Beach Diet? I've heard it's a modified Atkins.

I think wrestling screwed me up. Starving yourself every winter for 4 years makes you really love eating.

 

I went from 180 to 160 on the South Beach diet and it has stayed off for 5 months. My waist shrunk by 4 inches and my overall taper increased to around 10 inches. It's nice to be able to wear my old athletic cut suits. South Beach was the jump start I needed to get my @$$ and return to old form.

 

Is this diet something you buy? A book, shakes, pills?

 

uhmmm .... I took a rigorous health class back in college that I thought was gonna be cake and it turned out to have a gung-ho teacher who was Mr. Health USA and he had written the book ... anyway's it was beaten into our heads that is unsafe to lose more than 1-1.5 lbs a week ... AT MOST TWO POUNDS ... anything over that you lose will bounce right back on you when you stop whatever you're doing right away and then some ... the best book I've read regarding losing weight was "Body for Life" ... everything in the book is accurate and worked for me perfectly as I was an amatuer body builder for two years ... the only downfall to the book is that he is sponsored by a nutrition company called EAS and he suggests these products throughout the book and also incorporates them into his plan ... nothing wrong with EAS just don't be fooled into thinking that that is ALL you can use ... I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THE BOOK and suggest you take a step back and realise that it really can't be safe to be losing sooooo much weight that fast ... you can't even really put that much weight on that fast ... please take a step back ...

 

well, after every year I've always gone back to my normal habit of not eating very much and being really skinny, this year the cut has been pretty hard though and I have been gorging... I hope I don't lose it this year

 

you will be shocked to learn that the more you eat the more weight you will lose ...

 

Its the truth eating like 6 or 8 smaller meals increases your metabolism. rather than eating 3 larger ones.

 

Eating alot of small meals is good for gaining muscle too. Bodybuilders eat 5 or more meals a day, none of the are exceptionally huge. i wish i acutauly had the time or the resoruces to eeat more than 3 a day. The problem is im always hungry 4 hours after every meal.
I find that its best to stay away from crap like soda and snack foods (other than things like carrots or celery). I also skim milk is better than 1%, 2% or whole. Once a day at breakfast i have a glass of half 1% chocolate and half skim, which keeps me from going crazy.

 

this may be true in some circumstances, but when your natural weight is 145-150 and you need to weigh 135, eating MORE definitely does NOT help

 

True, eating more often does make you lose more. In college, I was very much into lifting, and regularly ate 5 or 6 "meals" a day. I was in great shape.

The problem is, once you get a job, it's very difficult to get those small meals in. You eat before work, after work, and if you get lucky, sometime in-between. Since I do consulting work, I'm not in an office, so I'm often at a site doing work until it's done. That's my problem with Body for Life. I tried it for about a week, got the diet part to work for about a day. (EAS makes good stuff, BTW...)

Also absolutely true about gaining weight slowly. Prior to wrestling season, my natural weight was about 155-160. I would wrestle at 140. Immediately following the season, right back up in the 150s/160s.

Now I'm in the 190s. Eeek!

 

I eat 5 to 6 times a day ... I find it near impossible to have that many hot meals, I went to my local nutrition dealer and bought around 15 different canned shakes and after a week of tasting I found two that I liked the most, in this case RTD-40 Choclate & Coffee, then I got online and ordered three cases of each. Now I have breakfast, 3 hours later shake, 3 hours later lunch, then shake and vice versa ... it's really easy ... you don't have to eat small meals as long as you're eating healthy and excercising you can have as much good food as you want ...
I've found Subway to be a wonderful resource and now even more when I can order the atkins bread with my choice of toppings ... try to have chicken steamed and always have brown rice, put sauce on the side so you can monitor intake etc ....

Your metabolism is like a motor? It takes a while for it to warm up to effeciency ... if you eat one meal or two meals a day your metabolism will start up but never reach full before shutting back down ... continuing to eat every three hours after the first meal will keep your motor (metabolism) running at full throttle so anything you eat after the first meal and especially by the end of the day is being burned up fast ... that's why people who feel like eating less or one meal a day don't understand why they're not losing weight?

If you stick to it, first two weeks the most difficult, and eat low carb healthy meals 5 to 6 times a day you're metabolism gets stronger and faster but then things start to change ? ..... your metabolism is strong but stays the same up to a point because now it's used to burning up light foods so it doesn't have to work very hard ... it's like going to the gym and bench pressing the same 100 lbs over and over for months ... your muscles never grow because it's the same ... to help your metab. grow you need to SHOCK your body, only if you stick to it good, choose one day a week to eat the worst food you can think of ... in my case I order a pizza or fast food etc ... now your sytems is like "whoa what the hell is this stuff?!?!?!" and starts to go into over-drive hence getting stronger and you getting leaner ...

Dario

 

Never tried the shakes... hmmm...

 

Another VERY strong endorsement here for the Body For Life method -- I started a few months ago and have a) lost about 20 pounds of fat, b) gained about 10 pounds of muscle, and c) am eating like clockwork every 2 - 3 hours. And I don't even have to remember to eat -- I get absolutely _starving_, even after a bigger mini-meal. It's kinda cool when the change is so clear that you can feel yourself getting hungry at the right times and craving healthier food. It definitely definitely works.

Also, I'll second the idea of using the pre-packaged shakes/bars as your in-between meals. I have breakfast, a shake/snack (apple & cheese or something like that), then lunch, then a bar (usually a Zone bar), then dinner, and sometimes a healthy dessert. Works very well for me.

 

I'll chime in.

My girlfriend and I are doing the south beach diet. Finished up the third week (am currently in Phase 2).

I lost 10 pounds in the first two weeks (phase 1), and 2 pounds the first week of phase 2 (week three on the diet).

It's very much a lifestyle. Girlfriend and I have discovered some wonderful breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and desserts. It has totally changed our outlook on eating. Like, why have ice cream when you can have strawberries in sugar free pudding? Our eventual idea is to eat really well most of the time, and just forget about whatever worries when we go out to eat.

All sugar is gone. I was physiologically addicted to it--had withdrawals and all. Sugar drinks are out of the picture--coke, mountain dew, all cut. I would have two of those a day consistently. Sugary cereals are ound, bran cereal with fruit is in. LOTS more veggies are making it into the diet. Beer and Fruit juice are out, water, tea, coffee, red wine are in. Whole grains are in, white bread and other white starches (white rice, white potatoes) are out. Eating snacks is in (controls hunger), skipping breakfast is out.

The diet has caused us to really look objectively at our old eating habits. It has been a very educational experience for us. I expect it to grow in popularity, as, although Americans are "fat" in general (stastically a fact!), we're certainly not "dumb" as a society, and intelligent people will see the logic and results in this diet (more of an eating ideology) and will cut out the crap we were raised on. Already, we're starting to see food manufacturers wake up to this trend.

Fitting into my old pants, and not having to get new pants one size larger was a major win for me (179lbs to 167lbs currently).

So--one last thing--I'm in phase 2 now, hardly feels like a diet anymore. I should have been eating like this long ago--it just makes sense nutritionally.

The whole diet is based on getting a healthier heart and pulmonary system in general--better blood cholesterol. Very restrictive on saturated fats, in sharp contrast to Atkins. Atkins was developed in the early 70s, when research on the negative effects of saturated fat had not been carried out. The South Beach Diet, on the other hand, was developed in principle by a cardiologist in the mid 90s after the detrimental effects of saturated fat on your blood chemistry and arteries was better known.

Just a few rambling thoughts on the SBD.