South Beach vs Atkins Diets

1160 Words5 Pages
There are a lot of diets on the market today so it can be very confusing on which one is right for you. Below I will discuss two of the more popular weight loss programs on the market today. They are similar in many ways, but they also have a large number of subtle differences. The South Beach and Atkins diet are both very similar, low carbohydrate diets, but they differ in their phases, carbohydrate intake, and convenience of what people can and cannot eat. The two diets differ in the phases used to lose the weight. The Atkins diet has four different phases. Phase one is the Induction phase. The goal of this phase is to induce Benign Dietary Ketosis, a situation where fat metabolites show up in the urine. Atkins likes ketosis (People eat fewer carbohydrates, their bodies turn to fat for energy, so it makes sense that more ketones are generated. The ketosis will have varying effects on people. During ketosis, a person’s appetite will diminish. There may also be a change in the breathing rhythm they used as extra ketones are expelled from the lungs. In Phase two (the OWL phase), carbohydrates are slowly introduced to the person’s diet. Weight loss will gradually slow to approximately one or two pounds per week during the second phase. During this phase dieters will also determine approximately how many carbohydrate they can eat per day and still lose the weight they are looking for. This phase continues until the dieter has shed approximately five and ten pounds. In Phase three (Pre-maintenance phase) weight loss decreases even more than it did in stage 2. Dieters will introduce even more carbohydrates to the diet. During stage 2 dieters will determine how many carbohydrates they can consume without gaining back any of the weight they have lost in the last 2 stages. Scientists call this the Atkins Carbohydrate Equilibrium also known as ACE for short. Phase three

More about South Beach vs Atkins Diets

Open Document