South Beach Diet Plan

The South Beach Diet Plan kind of sounds like a reality TV show or something, but it actually is a bona fide diet that millions swear by. The South Beach Diet is one of those new breed of diets that sees carbohydrates as the key to weight loss and increased health.

Where the South Beach Diet Plan veers from the similar path taken by the Atkins Diet is in recommending that your servings of meat are leaner. The first two weeks or so require a severe reduction in the amount of carbs, but over time you are increase it gradually.

In addition, the South Beach Diet Plan divides carbohydrates into good and evil, rather than recommending an across the board cutting back. According to the South Beach Diet Plan, the good carbs are those that contain high fiber as being high in the good kind of fat, as well as having a low glycemic index. This basically just means that these carbs more easily digested and absorbed by the body.

The South Beach Diet Plan is separated into three distinct phases, though it is recommended throughout all three that ingesting the bad kind of fat be limited.

Phase I lasts two weeks, during which dieters avoid high-glycemic carbohydrates. These include such favorites as candies, bread, and sugar as well as those foods typically much easier to avoid such as potatoes, cereals and grains.

The idea of this two week phase is for the body to reduce its insulin resistance and start using its excess fat. But more on Phase I later.

The question often asked is whether the South Beach Diet Plan qualifies as just another fad diet or does it really have merit. Lets look at the facts. The recommended caloric intake for the average person is from 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day. On the other hand, the caloric ceiling of South Beach Diet Plan is a mere 1500 calories per day. Thats not a whole lot of food, in case you werent aware. Cutting that many calories out of your diet per day is almost a guaranteed way of losing weight. But at what price?

One problem faced by many people who try it out is the tendency to go right back to their normal eating patterns once the desired weight is lost. Sensing this, the creators have actually done something rather ingenious. They have built the idea of falling off the wagon into the diet. The South Beach Diet Plan creator came up with this idea from personal experience.

He himself fell off the wagon and realized that a diet system needed to be established that dealt with that whole part of the psychology of dieting. Hence, the South Beach Diet Plan is easy enough to get right back into even after falling off track for a few days. Because there are three distinct phases to the diet, at any time things go all wacky, the dieter simply starts over again from phase one, which only lasts two weeks.

DVT Awareness Survey Findings For Respondents In High-Risk Groups: Obese Individuals
Up to two million Americans are affected each year by DVT, with up to 600,000 hospitalized. Its primary complication, pulmonary embolism (PE), claims up to 300,000 lives annually -- more than breast cancer and AIDS combined. The Coalition to Prevent Deep-Vein Thrombosis (DVT) recently sponsored an online survey of a nationally representative sample of consumers and physicians. [click link for full article]

High BMI Associated With Lower Likelihood Of Being Discharged Home After Hospitalization For Stroke
Individuals with a higher body mass index (BMI) tend are less likely to be discharged directly home after hospitalization for an ischemic stroke, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. An ischemic stroke occurs when the flow of blood to a part of the brain is blocked or reduced and sufficient amounts of oxygen cannot be delivered to brain tissue. [click link for full article]

Potential Link Between Obesity And Environmental Chemicals
A team of researchers at the University of New Hampshire is investigating whether the increasing ubiquity of chemical flame retardants found in foam furniture, carpeting, microwaves and computers might be related to the climbing rate of obesity in the United States. [click link for full article]

Singapore To Cancel Anti-Obesity Program
Singapore plans to end a 15-year-old anti-obesity program in schools after complaints from parents that overweight children, in particular, were being singled out and teased by classmates....

Fruit Juice: Making Kids Fat?
Research from Australia has concluded that children who drink 2 cups of fruit juice or fruit drinks per day were more likely to be overweight or obese than those who did not. It seems that the more fruit juice consumed, the more chance of being overweight: "Children who drank more than three glasses of soft drink - three quarters...

Obesity At The Time Of Prostate-Cancer Diagnosis Dramatically Increases The Risk Of Dying From The Disease
Obese men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer have more than two-and-a-half times the risk of dying from the disease as compared to men of normal weight at the time of diagnosis, according to a study by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The findings by senior author Alan Kristal, Dr.P.H., and colleagues appear online and will be published in the March 15 print edition of the journal Cancer. [click link for full article]

Red Pepper: Hot Stuff For Fighting Fat?
Food scientists in Taiwan are reporting new evidence from laboratory experiments that capsaicin - the natural compound that gives red pepper that spicy hot kick - can reduce the growth of fat cells. The study is scheduled for the March 21 issue of the ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication. [click link for full article]

Obesity High Among Baltimore's Homeless, Johns Hopkins Researchers Say
A small but telling study from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center reveals an ominous trend: more than expected, obesity shadows Baltimore's homeless children and their caregivers, putting them at high risk for heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, among other conditions."Not long ago, homeless people were undernourished. [click link for full article]

Obesity Surgery Can Lead To Memory Loss, Other Problems
Weight loss surgery, such as gastric bypass surgery, can lead to a vitamin deficiency that can cause memory loss and confusion, inability to coordinate movement, and other problems, according to a study published in the March 13, 2007, issue of Neurology®, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The syndrome, called Wernicke encephalopathy, affects the brain and nervous system when the body doesn't get enough vitamin B1, or thiamine. [click link for full article]