I lost 10 pounds in 5 days on the South Beach Diet

by Erich
(Boston, MA)

Hello All:

Now that it is the New Year, I thought I would share my last years success with this diet. I had to lose a few pounds, go figure. I decided to buy the South Beach Diet book, the "supercharged" version.
After being on the diet less than a week, I had already lost 10 pounds.

BUT, I would mention a couple of things. First, it was a huge transition to reconfigure the foods I ate. Going to the grocery store was hard, because I had no idea where some of the specialty food was, like 75% reduced fat cheese or nonfat greek yogurt. Second, many of the recipes had 15 or 20 ingredients. This was a bit challenging to put together.

HOWEVER, I still follow the diet, but I look for simpler recipes. I also can eat the leftovers that I make for a day or so, as my wife doesn't follow the diet. Also, I am now used to some of the food that was initially foreign to me. In fact, it is hard to eat regular cheese, it tastes a little heavy. Same with regular yogurt. I like the fat free greek stuff a lot.

The only other thing I would add is that if you follow the principles, like making sure you eat the snacks, etc., my carb (sugar and pasta) cravings (which were massive) dissapeared entirely. I didn't think it would happen the way it said in the book, but it did.

Sorry, one last thing. During phase 1 I did feel a little light headed and irritable. This went away as I increased the food intake a bit. I am a male and was over 200 pounds. My wife weighed under 140pounds and tried the diet for the first week or so. She had no problem with being light headed (although sometimes she is irritable, but this has nothing to do with the diet! :)). I think my issue was that the diet tends not to distinguish, at least in the book, between larger or smaller people.

I would recomend the diet to everyone, because even if tyou do not like the recipes they give you, the book teaches you the basic principles for good eating and you can creat simpler recipes. Also, there are simpler recipes out there, as well.