South Beach Diet & Other Weight Loss

John Hubert asked:


A fad is something that is embraced very enthusiastically for a short period of time. It makes sense that these fad diets are catching on and burning holes in people’s wallets on a daily bases. The problem of weight loss has not vanished for decades and seems to be a gigantic problem, worldwide. Often people become hopeless with their weight issues and embark on a quest for a simple approach to losing weight. Upon searching they discover dieting plans that seem to offer the secret potion to their dieting needs; they discover one of the thousands of fad diets.

Fad diets, why are they bad?

Where do I start to explain the harmful effects of fad dieting? Fad diets devastate millions of people’s lives each and every day. Consequentially, many countless effects on your body are affected, including your heart. However, your emotional state of mind also becomes tremendously altered, often causing you to seek out a cure for your depression. However, depression from a fad diet might sound a little far fetched to many skeptics; I will show how this butterfly effect can impact your life and having you seeking the cure for your depression.

A Common Scenario

Let’s say you explore around the internet and you find the Atkins Diet; it’s so popular it must work, right. This diet appeals to you because it low-carbohydrate diet and carbs equal weight; there are two focal factors affecting the eating habits in today’s society. The more you read about this dieting plan the more you get false impressions, that this will change your life. You will be able to drop the weight, finally. You’re uplifted at your new discovery and you proceed with the Atkins Diet and begin melting away the weight.

You look and feel better for about two weeks; dresses you always wanted to fit in, now effortlessly fit. You’re under the false perception that you have found a truly wonderful dieting plan. However, you get off the dieting plan and discover that you have gained all this repulsive weight back. You mope around the house for a little while only to discover the South Beach Diet, this appeals to you because it explains that your body loses weight by going through phases, just like Atkins did only with much more complicated and refined jargons.

Again, you lose weight and feel great for a diminutive amount of time only to gain the weight back, once more. This is discouraging and you might opt to try another fad diet, only to be burned countless times.

Are you beginning to understand the endless path, in which you keep allowing yourself to go through? Over a period of time you will be left depressed and seeking the cure for your depression. This is the most injurious part to fad diets. They damage your emotional comfort, silently and leave you seeking the cure to your depression.

Find The Cure For Your Depression

The effects that fad dieting has on your emotions is actually depressing. You are provided with a sense of false hope that only leaves you in search of cure for your depression. This butterfly effect is affecting millions of people worldwide. As a result, new diets are manifesting and arriving by the shipload. Did you know that 45 million people have already fallen victim to the Adkins Diet?

I want you to imagine something you believe in whole-heartedly. Now take the time to think how you would feel if you found out your belief was 100% wrong. This is the same as believing in your best friend and then realizing he/she has been stealing money from you. You would then have to reconsider all of your positive memories and reevaluate numerous memories. This would cause a horrifying effect on your emotional well-being. Fad diets are the same and will leave you seeking a cure to your depression.

Mike Lombardy asked:


 

Everyone wants to get rid of unwanted body flab and look beautiful. In order to get a beach-ready body, women are willing to go to any extent. Weight loss treatments, diet pills, and fad diets have become the norm today. Unfortunately, everyone wants to lose weight fast that too without any pains. Fad diets such as Mediterranean diet and GM diet have all become very popular but these are very extreme diets that almost eliminate certain foods from the diet to attain fast weight loss. One such diet is the high protein, low carb diet. Most people are familiar with high protein diets that are nothing but disguised low carb diets. No matter what you call them, their sole aim is to cut down on carbs from your diet and replace them with foods rich in protein. As such, you are required to choose foods in a way that you get 30% to 50% of the total calories from protein alone.

The Atkins diet is a classic example of a high protein low carb diet though this diet has its own set of pros and cons. To understand them, you need to look at the way high protein diets work. In these diets, carbohydrates are restricted to such an extent that they are reduced to a mere fraction of that found in an average American diet. As a result, the body goes into a metabolic state called as ketosis that forces it to burn its own fat for fuel. Under normal circumstances, your body uses carbohydrates for fuel required for your brain, heart and other vital organs. However, when the body is in ketosis, it gets its energy from ketones, which are tiny carbon fragments formed after the breakdown of fat stores. While in this state, you are bound to feel less hungry and thus consume lesser food.

Once on the high protein, low carb diet, you transform your body from a carbohydrate-burning machine to a fat-burning machine. Thus, instead of consuming lots of carbohydrates and keeping your fat stores on your thighs, hips, and belly intact, you make fat as your primary source of energy. The purported result of such a diet is rapid fat loss and drastic reduction in your size.

Although ketosis does play a major role in weight loss, it also brings along a host of health problems. Your kidney is hugely impacted with a high protein diet. As a result, you may develop kidney disease at a very early age. High protein foods increase the cholesterol levels in your body putting you at a risk of cancer, stroke, and heart disease. You may also develop osteoporosis and kidney stones since the diet causes you to excrete more calcium than usual through the urine. By saying “no” to carbohydrate-containing foods, you also forbid yourself from consuming minerals, fiber, vitamins, and anti-oxidants they contain. This could put you at a risk of developing cancer.

The only way to strike a balance between proteins and carbohydrates and yet attain weight loss is to consume a diet that includes grains, fruits, legumes, and vegetables in the right proportions.

Michael T. Davis asked:


The Atkins diet is still a popular diet, even though it’s been shown time and time again to be unhealthy in several different ways. But when people are desperate to lose weight quickly they often don’t take the time to properly think things out.  Here are four reasons why Fat Loss 4 Idiots is better.

Fat Loss for Idiots is easier on your heart.  A study was recently done–and presented at the annual American Heart Association meeting–about the effect of three different diets on heart health.  (The other two were South Beach and the Ornish diet).  Lead researcher Michael Miller of U Maryland Med Center, stated, “It really is Atkins that’s the worst.”  

It was found to contribute to the likelihood of heart troubles in several ways, not the least of which was raising cholesterol.  And if you’ll just Google “Atkins heart” (you don’t even have to add the word “problems” to your search…but of course you can) you’ll have no problem finding results for heart attacks, blockages, and other problems.

Fat Loss 4 Idiots gives you a wider variety of foods.  Bacon burger with lettuce and no bun.  Expensive breads, wraps, and other carb substitutes that taste like cardboard.  A great big steaming pile of sausage with a little bit of mustard on top.

Sound appetizing?  Just call it “Atkins Fine Dining”.  Wouldn’t you rather try a diet that lets you eat a variety of foods?  Me too.

Fat Loss for Idiots helps you learn healthy eating habits, so you can keep weight off once it’s lost.  None of this protein crash for several weeks or months, and then going back to the old eating habits that got you into trouble in the first place.  The fat loss diet helps you get into healthy and satisfying eating patterns.

You get to eat carbs!  If you’ve tried any low-carb diet before, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.  If you haven’t, then trust me–you don’t want to find out!  No matter how desperate you are to lose weight quickly choose a program thats healthy

Mark Kimathi asked:


It all started when a doctor sparked on a topic within earshot of an ardent low-carb blogger. The doctor, an associate professor, Dr David Katz of Yale University was reported by Forbes to have claimed that the Atkins diet had resulted to the hospitalization of one of his patients. The blogger and also purveyor of low-carb diets Jimmy Moore of Livin La Vida Low-Carb Blog felt his feathers ruffled by this claim.

Moore, author of the weight loss book with a similar title to his blog, and the subtitle ‘My Journey from Flabby Fat to Sensationally Skinny in One Year’ claims to be living proof that low-carbs work. He says he has lost over 180 pound on a low-card diet in a year. In his blog on he posted an article titled ‘Health experts gang up on Atkins Diet’ where he criticized, first the media for a seemingly regular “orchestrated negative splash against low-carb diets”. The article in contention was one appearing in Forbes titled “Atkins diet not safe for everyone” where Dr. Katz was reported to have had a patient that developed serious ketoacidosis which he linked to the Atkins diet the unnamed patient was on.

Secondly, Moore turned on the doctors cited in the article starting with Kartz. Moore went to the extent of calling the co-authored diet book by Dr Katz Flavor Point Diet “one of the biggest fad diet books you’ll ever read”. Disdainfully, but seemingly aggrieved, the good doctor responded to the posting by email. Moore went on to dissect the email in his blog.

Dr. David L. Katz is a clinical professor, division of Health Policy and Administration, Epidemiology and Public Health of Yale University. Even Moore, though sarcastically, thinks of him as a nutritional genius with his string of titles.

Katz asserted that Moore has no academic ground to differ with him. And on the doctor’s bashing of the Atkins diet, Katz says he wasn’t starting on bashing the diet rather he’s “been beating up on Atkins for years, never wavered never will”.

He further criticized the diet as lacking in fundamentals of healthful eating and sustainable weight loss. Moore on the other hand defended it on grounds that he’s 180 pounds lighter.

Atkins diet is a low-carb ketogenic diet designed for weight loss using significant changes in your dietary macro-nutrients. It recommends you eat fat and more proteins to replace the highly restricted carbohydrates. This is unconventional as carbohydrates are considered to be the primary source of calories for the body. Often this drastic change of dietary requirement is viewed with great suspicion. But the underlying question and continued basis of feuds such as this is how do we explain outstanding results by people like Jimmy Moore?

Lyn Steffan of the University of Minnesota school of Public Health was reported in the contentious Forbes article as saying that low-carb diets are not diets for life. She went on to recommend a healthy diet that results to weight loss and that can be used for life. But the question still remains unanswered. How do Moore and others who swear by low-carbs mange to shed off pound of body fat, improve their cholesterol and claim to be healthy.

Steffan seems to think it’s not sustainable long-term. Then one wonders what she thinks of the massai diet that is low-carb, high fat and high protein like Atkins. Yet the East African massai, who are extremely lean, have lived with the diet for centuries.

So would this comparison vindicate Atkins diet?

It is best to view weight loss in the environment in which it occurs. A particular lifestyle is associated with obesity. Naturally, to deal conclusively with the menace one has to deal with the environment in which it occurs. Permanent weight loss is possible; it is also possible that it can be achieved relatively fast, safely as well as healthy. But this requires a holistic and long-term approach. Such a weight loss plan should deal with most of the reasons that result to weight gain.

Bob Janeway asked:


With slim people filling the catwalks and the red carpet premieres in boob tubes and magazine features, it is hard not to feel the urge to also lose those pounds and be able to wear the same dress or outfit as your favorite celebrities. These kinds of media coverages are perhaps the instigators for young America to shape up and slim down.

Because of the recent emphasis on slimness and thinness, a slew of diet programs have started to saturate the market. From nowhere, diet plans such as the Atkins Diet, the South Beach diet, the Macrobiotic, the cabbage soup, the Weight Watcher’s Program and a lot more, have materialized.

Despite some of the criticisms hurled at these diet programs, most of them actually work. In fact, a lot of celebrities are faithful to some of these diet plans. Some even endorse the programs. Among the most popular and the most controversial are the low carbohydrate diets because of their positive and negative aspects.

Some criticize the diet plans as something that can lead to starvation. The lessening of carbohydrates in the diet and emphasis on proteins can hurt the liver in the long run. Some also do not like the fact that most of these diet plans have prepared and pre-packed foods given to the dieters, something which people find really dubious.

Still, compared to other diets, especially those that are unstructured, low carbohydrate diets are already pretty advantageous. In fact, among the kinds of diets in the market, low carb diets are the most successful perhaps because of their rate of effectiveness. Here are some of the advantages of these low carb diets.

No starvation

Compared to other kinds of diets, especially the unofficial self-made kind, low carbohydrate diets do not starve you. You will still eat three times a day. Sometimes, you can even eat some snacks. These diets do not believe in allowing their dieters not to eat several days in a row. They do not even countenance skipping of meals, something that most dieters do thinking that it will make them lose weight faster.

With low carbohydrate diets, dieters are asked to forego with carbohydrate-laded foods. Examples of these are rice, corn, bread, dairy products, egg, etc. For the first part of the diet, they are only allowed to eat proteins, meat, fish and of course vegetables.

Exercise

Some low-carb diets also incorporate a little bit of an exercise component. Although too much activity is also not good because of the low concentration of carbohydrates in the body, which supplies the energy, some form of exercise is also needed to improve blood circulation.

Support group

Another great thing about these low-carb diet programs is the fact that it provides its dieters a support group that will help them through their diet program. Some even provide counseling sessions especially to those who have to lose a lot of weight.

Pre-packed and balance meals

Most of these low carbohydrate diet programs have already prepared foods and meals that are supervised by dieticians and nutritionists. Because of this, you can be sure that what you are eating is nutritious.

Change in Lifestyle

By signing up with the program, little by little, your eating lifestyle will also change. Because you have gotten used to eating veggies, you will be craving for it even after the program.