Of course, the South Beach Diet is the newest craze in diet-world. If you haven't heard of it you probably avoid watching the news or reading anything even remotely related to health or fitness.
I had never really considered myself a fad dieter. I pretty much stick to a calories in, calories out approach. If I eat too many calories, I will not loose weight. However, I don't always put enough emphasis on what I'm actually eating-or how those foods make me feel.
What I do know is that I am addicted to carbohydrates. I'm talking about bread, pasta, candy. I pretty much center my eating around those types of goodies. Breakfast this morning? An English Muffin with lean deli ham and a slice of fat free cheese. I followed that up with a banana. Then an orange. Then lunch of couscous and a small pork chop.
Not terrible choices but not the best either. I do suffer some of the symptoms of over-carbing like getting a little sleepy after my meals. Watching my calories does work (I have lost the healthy 1-2 lbs the past two weeks in a row) but maybe I should think more about what those calories are.
Enter the South Beach Diet. Essentially I did this for the month before my wedding without even knowing it. I needed to drop some weight fast to fit into my wedding dress so I cut out simple carbs and alcohol and focused on lean meats, veggies, and nuts. Sure enough I dropped 7 lbs in two weeks and my dress fit like a glove. Thinking back on that time I didn't feel hungry and I didn't feel sleepy. A coincidence, I think not.
A good friend of mine is a medical writer and it is interesting to get her going on pretty much any subject. She has a caveman diet approach which is simply we should eat whatever we could have when we were living in caves - meat, fruit, veggies, and nuts. Not to say you can't indulge every now and then (which she does) but if you watch what you are eating the majority of the time-you'll feel better.
My co-worker just started South Beach and I have to say it doesn't sound nearly as crazy as Atkins used to sound (I say used to because recently the Atkins camp sent out a press release stating that it too recommends making good choices and therefore not eating a pound of bacon for lunch). Being more aware of how the foods I eat affect my blood sugar, and choosing foods that will have less of an impact seems like a healthy thing to do. So maybe, just maybe, this will be a good long-term plan for me.
However, in true dieter's fashion, I will be waiting until mid-February before I make any major changes to my eating patterns. I'll be visiting Inn at Little Washington for dinner this Saturday (no dieting there) and in three weeks I'll be heading to Mobile AL for a weekend of Mardi Gras celebrations (sorry, again no dieting) but usually I feel like I need detox after that anyway so the intro period may be just the thing I need to recover!
Posted by jgrieves at January 21, 2004 01:26 PM