The South Beach Diet: What It Is

What It Is

They may seem similar, but the South Beach diet is more than just a heart-friendly version of the Atkins diet. All the same, they have a lot in common.

Both South Beach and Atkins diets are the creation of medical doctors. The father of the South Beach diet is cardiologist Arthur Agatston, MD, director of the Mount Sinai Cardiac Prevention Center in Miami Beach, Fla.

Both the South Beach and Atkins diets are best-selling diet books. Only someone living in a cave hasn't, by now, heard of Agatston's The South Beach Diet: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan for Fast and Healthy Weight Loss.

Both South Beach and Atkins diets restrict carbohydrates -- carbs, as diet dilettantes like to say. True, "good carbs" are allowed. But South Beach dieters must say goodbye to potatoes, fruit, bread, cereal, rice, pasta, beets, carrots, and corn for the first two weeks. After that, most of these foods remain strongly discouraged.

Both South Beach and Atkins diets have a more severe induction phase, followed by a long-term eating plan.

The difference, really, boils down to two things:

• Fats. The South Beach diet bans unhealthy fats but strongly promotes healthy ones.
• Carbs. The South Beach diet doesn't count grams of carbs. The Atkins diet seeks to change a person from a sugar-burning machine into a fat-burning machine. The South Beach diet looks at how much sugar is in a carb. Low-sugar carbs -- those with a low glycemic index (they don't cause the blood sugar levels to rise and fall as quickly) -- are good (this point may sound very familiar to fans of the Sugar Busters diet)

As Agatston says, this means his diet is not -- exactly -- a low-carb diet or a low-fat diet.

What You Can Eat

You won't go hungry. In fact, like the Body-For-Life diet, the South Beach diet promotes strategic snacking. You're not doing it right if you don't snack.

There's no counting calories or strict portion sizes. But there's no gorging, either. The idea is to eat normal portions. To many of us, normal portions will seem small at first. They are enough to satisfy hunger, but no more.

As noted above, sugar-rich carbs are off the menu. These include rice and potatoes, and vegetables -- such as beets and corn -- with high sugar content. Also, there are no pastries or other sugar-filled desserts. And alcohol is forbidden in the induction phase and limited in the long-term diet.

What's on the menu? There are three phases.

The 14-day induction phase bans bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, baked goods, and fruit. And you can't have even a drop of beer, wine, or other alcohol. The diet promises that after a couple of days, you really won't miss this stuff. As for dairy, two servings of low-fat or non-fat milk, yogurt, or buttermilk are now allowed during this phase.