The South Beach Diet is a long-term weight loss plan. South Beach is absolutely not a fad diet that necessitates temporary changes in your eating habits. No. It’s for the long haul and it teaches you healthy eating and exercise habits for the rest of your life.

The core of the medical theory that led to the South Beach Diet is that insulin resistance impairs the body’s ability to digest carbohydrates and fats properly. They say that Insulin resistance is caused when the body digests food too quickly and that the South Beach Diet reverses or prevents you from developing insulin resistance syndrome, which can actually lead to diabetes and other diseases.

When you commit to the South Beach Diet, you’re giving up foods like white bread and french fries. All foods that are primarily bad carbohydrates or bad fats are banned. This stops insulin resistance and frees your metabolism to function much more efficiently.

The South Beach Diet is effective because it teaches you to change your lifestyle permanently. And that doesn’t mean that you’ll spend the rest of your life counting calories. You’ll just learn to avoid the foods that are bad for you.

But for many of us that may be easier said than done.

The South Beach Diet is easy to understand, but you must follow it strictly or it won’t help you. You go through three stages:

• Phase One (two weeks): Avoid all foods that appear high on the glycemic index. This means anything made with flour plus starchy vegetables. Baked and broiled meats are just fine, but nothing fried should be consumed. You can also have plenty of non-starchy vegetables.
• Phase Two (no time limit): You follow phase two until you’ve reached your target weight. During this phase you can add fruit and whole grains to your eating plan.
• Phase Three (maintenance – the rest of your life): Maintain the new eating habits that you’ve established during Phase Two. The third phase really never ends, unless you return to unhealthy eating habits.

They offer many online facilities when you sign up. If you have the temperament to participate, you will find these very helpful. Here’s a sample:

1. Weight Tracker: Keep track of your progress online.
2. Meal Planner: Create customized meal plans.
3. Community Message Boards: Keep up your motivation by participating in online communities.
4. Personal Online Journal: Journal your progress and read other inspiring journals.
5. Calendar Tool: Plan your daily activities.
6. Shopping List Generator: Get complete customized shopping lists based on your meal planner.
7. Answers from Dr. Agatston: Ask Dr. Agatston about your own diet, and see what he says to others.
8. Registered Dietitians.
9. Daily Newsletter.
10. Beach Buddies Program.
11. Food guides.
12. Huge Recipe Database.

It really offers a lot of value for the money. You can get a free diet profile, no obligation, by clicking right here.

If you’re comfortable navigating websites, and if you want to use a wide variety of helpful tools for managing your diet and exercise plans, then eDiets is a good fit for your style.

For a weekly subscription fee, eDiets gives you access to all the following:

• Custom tailored diet plan based on your preferences, including menus and shopping lists
• Nutrition tracking tool that lets you keep a complete record of what you eat
• Calculators, charts and graphs
• One-on-one consultations with nutrition specialists
• Custom tailored exercise plan
• One-on-one consultations with fitness specialists
• Online community support groups and chat rooms
• Challenges that are fun and motivational

The only downside here is that there may be too many choices and too much freedom. If you want to be held by the hand and told exactly what to do, this is not your best option. You could spend hours just surfing the eDiets site and never accomplish your goals. On the other hand, if you have the discipline and the motivation, and if you’ll really utilize what eDiets provides, you can really do well here.

Highly recommended for those who have the right temperament.

Get started now with your FREE eDiets Profile.