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South Beach Diet Review: Online Diet Program |
| Sign up for South Beach Diet | |
Rating: |
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| Complete lifestyle change; good for regulating blood sugar, heart problems or diabetes; need to pay extra for fitness plan | |
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The South Beach Diet was created by Dr. Arthur Agatston to help his cardiac patients get their diets under control and engage in a healthy lifestyle. Because the diet is low glycemic in nature, diabetics and pre-diabetics might also find it helpful.
Overview The diet consists of three phases. Phase 1 is the diet's kick start, designed to get your body off bad carbs and geared towards weight loss. Phase 2 is when you reintroduce good carbs and continue to lose weight until you reach your goal. Phase 3 is where you turn the diet into a lifestyle, maintaining your weight and continuing to make responsible food choices. The South Beach Diet offers two types of meal plans - "basic" and "vegetarian." Since the plan is already low glycemic, it should work fine for diabetics too, but as always, you should check with your doctor first. There aren't specific plans for men or women, but the recipes are filling enough that the majority of dieters won't feel deprived. In fact, many of the recipes contain enough food to feed 2-4 people, so if you're still hungry you can eat extra servings. They also provide very clear guidelines on how to adapt your meal plan if you'd like extra food or want to swap out ingredients. Meals A new meal plan is created every week, starting from the day you sign up. You can easily exchange any meals you don't like with alternate meals. So if a light spinach frittata with tomato salsa isn't up your alley, just hit the "Change This Meal" link next to it and switch it to another meal option like artichokes benedict. Along with the meal plans you also have access to a printable shopping list detailing the ingredients you'll need to make your meals. You can select the days and meals you need ingredients for, and remove ingredients you already have. It's a convenient way to make sure you have everything on hand you'll need when it comes time to whip up a meal. Support The South Beach Diet online portion includes a wealth of tools. Along with the previously mentioned recipe database, meal planner and shopping list generator, you also get access to food guides, answers from Dr Agatston, a 'Beach Buddies' program which gives you a dieting support partner, message boards, a private online journal, daily newsletter, calendar tool to help you plan your diet, and a weight tracker to help you track your progress. The online tools are simple to use, and provide a nice at-a-glance dashboard of your progress and helpful tips once you log in. The journal sorts your entries according to phase so you can track your food diary and progress at each stage. They even have registered dietitians to answer your questions. This is a nice perk, but you need to pay an extra $2.99/week if you'd like this particular feature, something we felt was a little off-putting. Other DIY diet plans we reviewed, including eDiets, provide this service free of charge. Fitness The South Beach Diet website also offers a "Fitness Club" with tips, videos, and instruction -- but we were disappointed to learn that this too came at an additional charge ($38.87 quarterly). This online offering would be more well-rounded if the meal planning portions were integrated into the exercise portions. Bottom Line Overall, the diet is a healthy approach to weight loss and eating in general, and provides a solid foundation for continued success. However, the fact that you need to pay extra to talk to a dietitian or even to get an exercise program are definite negatives, especially when other diets plans include those features free of charge. Sign up for South Beach Diet | Compare to Other DIY Diet Programs |
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| Cost: | $16 / month PROMO: 20% discount; one week free |
| Diet Types: | DIY diet with some prepared meals |
| Support Types: | Online forums; tracking tools |
| Fitness Tools: |  |
| Recipes & Meals: | 1,000+ recipes and meals |
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