Review of South Beach Diet Vs. Atkins Diet

South Beach Diet vs. Atkins

There are two diets which have been extremely popular in the past year or two, and both seem to be low carb solutions to losing weight. The Atkins New Diet Revolution, and The South Beach Diet. Some people believe these diets are similar, while others believe they’re completely different. And in many ways, both groups are right.

From a general perspective, both of these diet plans involve cutting down on your carbohydrate intake. They can both be considered low carb diets in fact, but there are differences and similarities with both.

The Atkins diet starts you out with drastically cut carbs. In fact, during the first stage of this diet, you’re supposed to limit yourself to just 20 grams of carbs each day. And this is not always easy to do. You can drastically cut your carb intake simply by cutting out regular sugar and sweets. If you use sugar in your morning coffee or tea for instance, you can switch to artifical sweeteners and this alone will drastically reduce your carb intake.

Other food items aren’t so obvious though, and they can add up quickly. Cheese for instance, has about half a carb per ounce. We’re talking about real cheese here too, not processed stuff. Eating ten ounces of real cheese each day though, will give you a total of 5 grams of carbs… one fourth of your daily allotment with this diet plan.

You can accidentally go over the day’s total carb allowance easily, so watching what you eat carefully is really important. Now, because of the tight restrictions, many people assume you’re not supposed to eat vegetables while in the Atkins induction stage. This is not true though. In reality, you can eat vegetables, you just have to be careful with how much of them you eat. A standard serving of spinach or broccoli for instance, only gives you 3-5 grams of carbs. But many people have double the standard serving size without knowing it, thus they’ve doubled the amount of carbs taken in.

The South Beach Diet takes a similar approach. You lose weight in stages, and most of that weight loss comes from restricting carbohydrate intake. One key difference though, is that during the first stage of South Beach, you’re allowed up to 30 grams of carbs in a day. Now this doesn’t look like much on paper, but in reality it makes a huge difference. Those additional 10 grams allow for eating more things such as broccoli, cauliflower and strawberries without as much risk of exceeding your daily limits.

Another difference between these two diet plans is that South Beach teaches you to avoid certain types of carbs instead of all carbs in general. South Beach even explains the glycemic index, and how that affects your body’s fat losses and gains. Atkins also explains the effects carbs have on your body, but it does not touch on the different types of carbs as much, and it does not cover how the glycemic index works into things.

Both of these diets work extremely well. I prefer the South Beach Diet because it’s just easier to stick within the initial limits while still losing weight quickly, plus when you join online you get 1000′s of recipes, support and more.