Does the South Beach diet actually work?

Question

I am well educated on calorie content and restriction, and the benefits on exercise, but I would like to know if this SPECIFIC diet works.

Has anyone out there tried it?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

No faddy diets like this work. They provide a quick weight loss, then when you resume to normal eating the weight is regained just as rapidly. There's a reason for this....

1) Most of what you are loosing is your body's store of water, NOT fat.
You should aim to lose about 1kg (2lb) a week. Losing more than this means you are only losing water, which will quickly go back on when you stop dieting. Everyone has a store of sugar (glycogen) in their muscles and liver, and one molecule of glycogen attaches 4 molecules of water. This is our bodies' sugar and water store. When there's not enough carbs in the diet, which are essential for energy, the body uses up this sugar reserve... And with that you shed all the water that comes with it. As soon as you eat normally again, the first thing your body will do is replenish its glycogen and water reserve.

2) Eating less than 1200 calories though, it causes your body to go into starvation mode - it will think it's starving and thus the metabolism will slow down, in order to hold to calories. So you're likely to regain all if not more of the weight you lost once you resume to normal eating.

Also, your body needs 1300 calories just to live, without doing any physical activity what so ever, some of which come from carbs for energy. Without this, once our glycogen reseve is all gone, our bodies
start to use muscle mass as energy... You're not burning body fat. In diets like this, fat is the last thing your body wants to burn because it's in starvation mode.
Having muscle keeps the metabolism burning more calories, so if you're loosing muscle you're storing more of what you eat.
This is why the Atkins diet doesn't work, and all the weight is put back on after coming off it.

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

Cheers, I'm not gonna bother with it now :)