South Beach or Atkins diet?

[GingerSnaps]

Which diet is the best one and why? What is the difference between both diets? I have to lose about 25 pounds and I want to do it before spring break.

I would greatly appreciate your feedback. :grouphug:

[Cuban_Liberal]

1. South Beach is.

The Atkins diet is good for weight loss, sure, but it teaches you NOTHING about healthy eating or keeping the weight off.

[VelmaD]

2. Neither...I've lost over 130 pounds...

in the last 2.5 years. I did it the old fashoined way. Eat healthy. Eat less. Exercise more. If you burn more calories than you consume every day...you lose weight. End of story.

[DARE to HOPE]

5. Coconut oil turns up the thyroid

corn, soy and canola oil turn it off.

Also, coconut fills you up, so you eat less, and heals your body to boot!

[abelenkpe]

10. cool

I love coconut. Yummy.

[GingerSnaps]

25. Coconut oil is the most fattening oil of them all

Are you sure that you know the correct oil to use? :shrug:

[Left Is Write]

20. That's what I did.

I lost 25 pounds by eating a healthy variety of foods and exercising a lot. I no longer rigidly count calories, because I've developed an idea of how much I can eat at my current weight and exercise level. I'm very active, and keeping yourself active is vital.

This is, of course, barring any medical issues that interfere with a normal metabolism and/or make activity difficult.

[Uzybone]

23. Amen.

the diet industry is generally a scam.

Eat less
Exercise more

[supernova]

3. They're both managed carbs

South Beach gives a little more on what constitutes a good carb.

Atkins focuses more on getting you to try different food to see which carbs you are highly reactive to (say gaining a lb the next day after a serving) and eliminating those.

Just depends on what you want to accomplish. I'd read both before making up my mind.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

6. South Beach also restricts fat more than Atkins

Compare recipes from the two and you'll see.

[supernova]

8. Yes that's true

but I enjoy all the olive oil and nuts I slurp up. :D

[democracy eh]

4. neither

go Glucosamine Index (G.I. diet)

regulates blood sugar, controls craving, snacking and empahizes whole grains and fibre

don't have details right now, but much better for you that Aitkins and South Beach
try googling it, popular in Australia

I was at a conference 2 weeks ago with a number of leading researchers and doctors they TRASHED Aitkins, very very strongly against it

I am going to dig you a link, hold on

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

9. Actually South Beach does base what carbs are allowed on the G.I.

[supernova]

12. As does Atkins

I say away from the more high glycemic foods now.

[abelenkpe]

7. South beach is probably healthier

But nothing beats exercise, and lots of it. Find something you find fun to do, so it doesn't seem like work like dance, tennis, soccer or hiking. Whatever it is, make it something you enjoy and you will reach your goals.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

13. I agree

I've lost 80 pounds over the last year with a combination of the South Beach Diet and at least 20 minutes a day of exercise.

[GingerSnaps]

29. RH -A

I bet it's a vegetarian diet right?

[DS1]

11. I could've SWORN you've asked this before

;-)

[GingerSnaps]

27. I haven't started it yet

I'll need to start something after the Holidays and I am trying to think about starting it in January. I am 25 pounds overweight and I am allocating a 5 pound weight gain for Christmas and New Years.

I just thought about something and it's a damn good idea. Tell me what you think about this please. Christmas Gift certificates for colonics :D

[DS1]

14. South Beach is essentially Atkins sans induction

The induction helps with the motivation to continue, both end up at nearly the same point, but the race to weight loss that Atkins puts your body through can hurt some organs.

[Taverner]

15. What's your blood type?

Seriously - Type O blood tends to do well with the lean meat diets, Type A tends to do well with ones offering more carbs.

[supernova]

16. I'm A+, what should I be eating?

just curious.

[Taverner]

24. Well current nutrition says

Eating more chicken as opposed to beef, and you can get away with more carbs than the type O blood types.

[Scrooge]

17. South beach

Any diet (like Atkins) that excludes food groups cannot be good. South Beach sounds much healthier, although nobody will ever convince me that all that meat is good. Give me veggies and fruit and grains anyday.

[supernova]

18. Atkins does not exclude veggies

You can have veggies on Atkins, though the first couple of weeks, you are litmited to the very low G.I. value ones to regulate your blood sugar levels.

[Scrooge]

21. okay

but dont they pretty much ban fruits? I dont know, I just have such a hard time believing that a vegan type diet wouldnt be better nutritionally, although I dont know enough about it all to get into a debate over it. I saw a program on the Atkins where the dieter ate about a lb of bacon every morning for breakfast. To each his own, but that would never be a diet that I would succeed on.

[Winamericaback]

19. How about neither?

Go with something healthy not the quick fix crap.

Atkins has proven to lead to memory loss and fatigue and it hasn't been evaluated long enough for any doctor to make a claim as to its health validity.

Carbs break down in your body as energy, why would you deprive your body of something you need?

I'm on Weight watchers, I've lost 40 pds so far. I loose on average 8 to 10 pds per month. Its healthy and it stays off. The one time I went off the "diet" I gained only a few pounds back in a 6 month time frame, my fault for eating burger king again like once a day

Once you go off Atkins and reintroduce carbs you will BALOON back up..

OR you could just lower your caloric intake and excersise :)

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

31. The problem with Atkins is your brain needs at least 100 grams of carbs...

a day to function. Your limited to less than that especially in the beginning.

[Winamericaback]

35. Exactly my point

but too many people jump on the low carb craze not realizing the harm they are doing to their body because they alas do not educate themselves.

My Fiances father is on a low carb diet instituted by his doctor because he has diabetes so carbs are anethma to him and his Doc told him NEVER to go under 100 carbs a day.

The first few weeks on Atkins you go down to less than 25 or 30 in order to force yor body into ketosis which is an unhealthy state.

And of course you might NEVER be able to eat 100 carbs a day on the diet after that, as you reintroduce carbs on Atkins you stop at the point where you start gaining weight back for some people that is less than 75 and lets not forget that Dr. Atkins suffered from heart disease.

[wickerwoman]

33. You don't know what you're talking about.

You do eat carbs in both South Beach and Atkins, it's just restricted to 3 servings a day or grains and three servings of fruit (both low Glycemic index), reintroduced gradually after a short de-tox period.

Neither diet is anti-carb- they just try to break the insulin roller-coaster that many overweight people are on.

You don't balloon back up again unless you go on an all McDonald's diet. I lost 35 pounds on South Beach. Quit two or three months ago and haven't gained anything back.

Objectively, I bet you couldn't tell the difference between the menu of someone on their fourth or fifth week of South Beach and someone on a Weight Watchers diet. I've done both. The only difference I've seen is that I didn't have cravings on South Beach and I did on Weight Watchers (so of course I cheated and didn't lose anything.)

[Winamericaback]

34. Actually

you can as WW has a CORE program now which is a South Beach copy. But if you used WW then of course you would know that.

Your carb and fat intake is limited. It isn't anti carb, if you actually read what I typed you would see that I made NO comments about South Beach and if you actually can sit there and recommend Atkins to people then you are very irresponsible. Atkins IS NOT healthy, many doctors have come out against it.

People that need to loose weight DO NOT need a quick fix diet. They need to be taught how to eat healthier.

Also, when I went on a low carb diet I lost NOTHING, NADDA, ZIP. I loose the best the more carbs I eat. Every body is different.
And yes if you reduce your carb level to what ATKINS suggests you will gain the weight back once you reintroduce carbs into your diet.

I'm not going to fight with you about weight loss as this isn't an approprote forum.. come to the WW message boards one day.. your opinion just might be changed.

Good Luck on your weight loss journey.

[wickerwoman]

40. "How about neither?"

"Go with something healthy not the quick fix crap."

This refers to South Beach as well as Atkins, does it not?

I'm not in a position to comment on Atkins as I don't know that much about it. I do know quite a bit about South Beach and Weight Watchers (although I haven't done WW for a few years.) It doesn't surprise me that they have a South Beach-type program. As I said, it's virtually impossible to tell the difference between WW and South Beach after the first few weeks.

Reading the first few pages of South Beach does teach people how to eat healthier. They say many of the same things as WW. And they make the point that the diet won't work for everybody- only people who gained weight as a result of insulin-resistance and pre-diabetes.

Read something about South Beach. Your opinion might just be changed. Or at least you wouldn't be here spreading uniformed misrepresentations of the diet.

[Mend]

22. Alternate

Try an Atkins week and a South Beach week. It will break the monotony and you will see which works best for you. There is no reason you couldn't bounce back and forth between the two of them. The best diet is the one you can live with over the long haul.

[gollygee]

26. I've so far lost 15 pounds on Weight Watchers since October

I have another 15 to lose. It's been pretty easy so far and I highly recommend it :)

[Winamericaback]

36. WOOHOO

WW is the best :) I've been doing it for a few months as well and have lost 40 pounds. It sure is a heck of alot better than the subject line in my opinion.

Eat what you want without excluding anything and its a heck of alot cheaper. :) Got to love it.

And good luck on your weight loss journey!

[Gardeaux08]

28. I lost some weight on Atkins.

But I also lost my gallbladder. :(

[GingerSnaps]

30. Because of the Atkins Diet?

:scared:

[Gardeaux08]

38. To be fair

I had a pretty good chance of losing my gallbladder at some point regardless of going on Atkins just because I was born into a family of people who have had bad gallbladders. But the high fat diet Atkins advocates is an accident waiting to happen for the not so good gallbladder! And an inflamed gallbladder is PAINFUL!

I guess we all want to do everything quickly in this country but I had better results with portion control and increasing activity. Weight Watchers is a good system but you still have to make sure you're getting REAL food with your points!

[212demop]

32. Love Atkins

I've been doing it since the article came out in the NY Times magazine a couple of years ago and it just plain works for me. It is so liberating to not count calories. And if I'm hungry at the end of the day I can literally eat as much cheese or other no carb food for as long as I want and not give it a thought and get on the scale the next morning and be exactly where I should be (at this point I'm not trying to lose, just stay where I am).

Now they make just about every food in low carb form. I'm not into cooking so I just make Atkins spagetti or penne with pesto and a load of parmesan a couple of time a week. Also, each Atkins pizza is only $1.19 at my supermarket for some reason so I'll have that for a cheap dinner. Plus, sugar free caramels, jolly ranchers, low carb Ben & Jerry's, etc...Not to mention bread for sandwiches loaded with as much prosciutto or salami or turkey and cheese as I want. It's great.

And now that I weigh what I want to weigh, I can afford to go to town once a week, so usually on a sunday I'll have a big carb treat like risotto or McD's or real NY pizza- and it doesn't affect my weight. But to tell you the truth, I don't crave that stuff. Once you get through the first 2 weeks your sugar stabilizes and you just don't miss that stuff.

Good luck!

[Threedifferentones]

37. Neither.

The only thing that determines weight gain is how many calories you eat and how many you burn. All "diets" work by decreasing appetite by one way or another. Unfortunately, restricted diets almost always result in some sort of nutrient deficiency. Many times this causes very minor harm, harm which many never even be noticed, but sometimes it can be pretty bad for you. The reason for this, of course, is that people inevitably give up their resrticted diets, and so the body recovers from its temporary shortage. Unfortunately, when a more normal diet is resumed the weight lost often comes back as well.

All of the various food groups are necessary, and the majority (50%-60%) of your calories should come from carbohydrates. The reason for this is that your body is very used to getting most of its energy from carbs. When it has to switch over to other sources it will usually draw from lean tissue as well as fat tissue if their is an energy shortage, and as I mentioned earlier the weight can only be lost by burning more calories than you eat. Such diets also tend to be high and meat and dairy products, and these are generally high in saturated fat. This is unhealthy for your heart among other things. Both these problems can be helped by regular weight training and aerobic excercise, but the saturated fat may pose a problem even if one's heart is quite healthy otherwise. In addation your brain use varbs as its primary fuel, and chaning that can hurt your mental capacities while it lasts.

The way diets like these work is by restricting the amount of calories you eat. They do it by making you eat certain kinds of foods. This regidity not only tends to reduce appetite, since many of your facorite foods will probably be forbidden, but it also prevents you from eatting most quick snack foods, which are often high in sugar. Becuase of this many people will simply skip snakcs they used to eat regularily.

The best way to loose weight is just to eat a little less and do a little more. If you need to loose weight fast you need to do eat even less and do even more, but loosing too much weight too fast is unhealthy no matter how you do it. You should never feel sick or weak or overly-tired. If you loose weight using a temporary "diet" it will probably come back. If, however, you loose weight slowly by slowly chainging your liftestyle you will probably be able to keep it off much longer.

[leftofthedial]

39. I've been on the Chet Atkins diet

That's the one where you just pick at your food.