Differences Between Atkins Diet and the South Beach Diet Articles | Food

By: Darren Williger

Many critics would say that to follow the Atkins Diet will in the long term do more damage to your health than good but the followers of Atkins swear by the fast weight loss and renewed energy.

What exactly is the Atkins Diet? Well in 1972 Dr Robert C Atkins introduced his Diet Revolution to the masses as a low carbohydrate, high protein, and high fat diet. It went against the ideas of much of the medical community but Dr Atkins hadn’t just dreamt up the diet. He based his finding on years of research with his patients following low carb diets.

If we go way back in time what did our ancestors eat? When humans first evolved on the planet what was there for them to eat? Certainly no fast food outlets with their 24/7 drive through or vast supermarkets filled with every kind of food known.

We were hunter-gatherers. Basically we ate what we hunted and gathered. Large mammals would be hunted, killed and eaten along with berries, nuts and some edible herbs. As we had evolved over millennia to be nourished by what was available to eat so our bodies had adapted to handle the foodstuffs of the time.

Our bodies are adapting still to try and get the best nourishment out of today’s diet but this adaptation is a slow, slow process. We were not designed to eat refined carbohydrates or sugars. Our salt intake was never meant to be as high as it is. We are basically omnivorous and were made to eat meat and vegetables. This is the diet from which we find it easiest to gain nourishment. This is close to the Atkins Diet.

Dr Atkins found that his patient’s health improved following his diet. Could it simply be that a return to the diet it was designed for is the best for the human body?

People have a right to choose to be vegetarian or to consume vast quantities of fast food but do they then have the right to complain that they don’t feel well? If we design a road car and then try and take it off road should we be surprised that it gets stuff after a while?

The Atkins Diet works that much is known and as to long term problems well its has been around since 1972, how much longer does it require to be tested for before the medical profession accept it?

South Beach Diet – a phrase that is commonly heard but is seldom understood. This is just another truth behind the emergence of another diet. So what’s the big deal?

Well, the South Beach Diet is considered as the “biggest thing” that the slimming world has ever introduced. But where exactly did the South Beach Diet come from? Here is the answer: the South Beach Diet was actually formulated by a person named Dr. Arthur Agatston after the realization that some of his patients were having little success by using conventional low carb – high fat diet plans like the Atkins diet which is also popular around the globe.

Dr. Arthur Agatston, being a cardiologist and knowing the condition of his patients, had the main concern of finding a diet that will promote a perfectly healthy heart. Finding no such source for that diet existed, he decided to formulate his own diet plan and that was to become known as the South Beach Diet.

According to the testimony of Dr. Agatston, since the introduction of the South Beach Diet, many people who followed the diet actually lost an average of 13.6 pounds almost double the 7.5 pounds lost by those who use the strict “Step II” of the American Heart Association (AHA) diet. Along with that, it was also found that when following the South Beach Diet many people showed greater decreases in their waist-to-hip ration and triglycerides, and their good to bad cholesterol ratio improved even more.

Generally, the South Beach Diet, in a word, is not considered as a low carbohydrate diet as it is commonly associated. It is a fact that the idea behind the South Beach Diet is to lose weight in a way that is healthy for those who follow it.

The South Beach Diet, unlike the low carbohydrate diets usually encourages the dieter to choose between the good and the bad carb foods. As such, the dieter is required to eat more fruits and vegetables and even wholegrain bread in contrast to other low carb diets. So, in the South Beach Diet, there is more of a sense of “yin and yang”, that it is more balanced than any other low carb diets in the whole world.