South Beach Diet

Medically Reviewed by Anthony Dugarte, M.D., C.S.C.S

What Is The South Beach Diet?

Created by cardiologist Arthur Agatston in 2003, the South Beach Diet began is a best-selling book and has since expanded into a commercial weight-loss program. The goal of this plan is to boost your metabolism so that it burns fat more efficiently for lasting weight loss.

It’s possible to follow this plan by cooking your own recipes or by signing up for a subscription service that delivers pre-made snacks and meals to your door each month.

South Beach diet’s central premise is that following a low-carb, high protein diet will keep you satiated without consuming too many calories, which consequently helps you to lose weight without having to count carbs.

This review examines the scientific backing of this diet to help determine if it's the right choice for you.

How Does This Diet Work?

Rather than branding itself as a ticket to fast fat burning, the South Beach Diet emphasizes sustained weight loss that produces results you can maintain for the long term.

“It’s not a ‘get slim quick’ fix,” says Gabriella Mancella, a corporate wellness dietician for Orlando Health. “It is a focused pattern of eating that highlights eating more well-rounded and does not restrict any one food group [after Phase 1].”

Contrary to popular perception, the South Beach Diet isn’t carb-free. Instead, the plan distinguishes between “good” carbs and “bad” and guides you towards ones that are optimal for health and weight loss.

You’ll eat a lot of vegetables, fish, dairy, eggs and other forms of lean protein, and will focus on carbs that are low on the glycemic index, which means they don’t overly affect your blood glucose levels and won’t elevate your blood sugar.

In its classic form, the South Beach Diet is split into three phases:

Phase 1: Reboot Week

For your first seven days on the plan, you will focus on lean protein and healthy fats while avoiding fruit, starches, most carbohydrates, sugar, and alcohol. This is the hardest stage for many people, but it serves as the foundation for losing weight for the rest of the time.

Phase 2: Steady Weight Loss

During this part of the plan, you reintroduce healthy carbs (preferably from whole foods) into your diet. You’ll eat three meals and two snacks per day, either that you make yourself or order via meal subscription. Simple sugars still aren’t recommended, but a serving or two of alcohol a week is permitted.

Phase 3: Maintenance Phase

Designed as the transition from dieting to a lifelong eating plan, this phase allows you to enjoy all foods in moderation, preferably by taking portion control into account when you indulge.

Exercise is also an essential component of the South Beach Diet, and the plan recommends getting at least 30 minutes a day during weight loss (Phase 1 and 2) and 60 minutes during the weight maintenance (Phase 3).

The plan’s website includes a variety of fitness tips and exercises to help you get started.

Meal Shipments

While it’s possible to follow the South Beach Diet with your own food, the plan promotes using their meal subscription plan through Phase 2 to give you support and help you form new eating habits.

Though you can purchase extra food a la carte, each plan provides space for your own cooking with two DIY breakfasts, lunches, and dinners each week.

Below are the membership tiers available:

*Men’s plans cost more per day because they include an extra snack.

When you sign up for a membership tier, you are automatically enrolled in an auto-delivery service.

This provides you with free monthly shipping and 35% off each meal compared to purchasing them a la carte.

You can pause, update or cancel your order at any time, though the company terms and conditions state that you will pay $125 if you cancel your subscription before you receive your second order.

You can also purchase South Beach Diet meals from other retailers such as Amazon or Walmart, though only the plan’s official website offers a membership option.

South Beach’s meal options differentiate between the phases with package coloring, which is teal (Phase 1) and light purple (Phase 2).

Many of the meals will arrive frozen and should be kept that way until you eat them. Ready-to-go foods, such as shakes and bars, don’t need to be refrigerated.

Available Meal Plans

South Beach Diet offers hundreds of premade meals and snacks at the time of writing. Below is a small sampling of some popular options.

Breakfast options:

• Turkey sausage and egg muffin
• High-protein pancake mix
• Beach shack strawberry shake
• Just-add-eggs ham and cheese scramble

Lunch options:

• Chicken with apricot glaze
• Moroccan-inspired chickpea stew with pork
• Tuna salad
• Caribbean-inspired coconut soup with chicken
• Garlic cheese flatbread

Dinner options:

• Mushroom parmesan soup
• Artichoke and spinach stuffed chicken breast
• Chicken fajita bowl
• White bean chicken chili
• Roasted turkey with herb gravy

Snack options:

• Decadent chocolate muffin mix
• White cheddar flavored popcorn
• Salt and vinegar multigrain chips
• Original flavor meat snack stick
• Salted caramel protein puffs

Shake options:

• Vanilla or chocolate shake five-pack

South Beach Diet recommends mixing in fresh vegetables and other plan-approved ingredients into your meals, especially on DIY days, to add balance and variety.

Who Shouldn't Use This Diet

From what we learned on the plan’s website, the South Beach Diet is designed to comply with a variety of different eating approaches and can be modified to be gluten-free and keto-friendly. Due to the nature of how the meals are assembled, it suggests vegans look elsewhere for losing weight.

Some health conditions exclude people from qualifying for their eating plan. The program isn’t suitable for anyone:

• Under the age of 18
• With a history of eating disorders
• With a Body Mass Index under 19
• With peanut, soy or latex allergies
• With heart conditions, celiac disease or who are on dialysis
• Who is breastfeeding an infant under four months old

Regarding pregnancy, following Phase 2 and 3 is considered safe with a few dietary modifications, but pregnant women or those who are trying to become pregnant should avoid Phase 1.

Is There Any Science Backing Their Methods?

In this section, we’ll discuss the available research for the weight-loss methods they offer.

Low Glycemic Index Foods

The South Beach Diet is based on the principle of opting for healthier carbohydrates, those with a low glycemic index (GI). This classification system provides details regarding the quality of the carbohydrates present in a particular food by assigning a number based on their ability to raise your blood sugar levels.

Quality carbs, those that provide a good source of fiber, generally have a scores of 55 or less. Larger numbers on this scale are associated with foods that cause more drastic spikes in your blood sugar and insulin levels.

By including a diet that focus on low GI foods, you can avoid the negative cycle associated with repeated blood sugar spikes – one that places you ate greater risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, depression, and some cancers.

As you can imagine, this area has been a hot topic for research.

An expert panel confirmed a need to offer information to both the general public, as well as healthcare providers, detailing the importance of the GI, as many chronic conditions are linked to poor diets.

Adopting a low GI diet improved blood sugar regulation but did not significantly reduce weight in 210 diabetic patients when compared to a high-cereal fiber diet. In 109 obese patients, a low GI diet did reduce fat mass, however.

A low GI diet did not result in weight loss for 162 diabetic patients, though it did lower post-meal glucose levels. In another study, a low GI diet did not burn fat, preserve muscle, or boost metabolism over 17-weeks.

Overweight and obese subjects that adopted a high-protein, low GI maintenance diet for 26-weeks were more likely to stick to the diet and maintain weight loss.

The big takeaway here is that there is a clear association with high GI foods and many chronic medical conditions. Low GI diets seem to benefit the regulation of blood sugar, though the weight loss benefits are less clear.

Portion Control

Current dietary guidelines provide recommendations for portion control, particularly in relation to calorie-dense foods. Another popular method of weight loss, this strategy has also been well studied.

In a study of weight loss in 186 obese women, the subjects were assigned to either a portion control strategy, a pre-portioned food group, or traditional healthy eating counseling.

While those that were provided pre-portioned foods (a service the South Beach diet offers) lost weight the quickest, they also regained it the quickest. At 6-months, the weight loss achieved did not differ between groups. At 1-year, the average weight loss for all was about a 6% reduction in their body weight.

Keep in mind these patients received professional guidance, a method proven effective in helping people achieve weight loss whether offered in person or over the phone.

This service is available with certain weight loss programs, though it doesn’t seem that the South Beach Diet provides this level of guidance.

The South Beach Diet and Lifestyle Change

In 2007, the weight loss effects of the South Beach Diet were specifically investigated.

Over 12-weeks, 20 overweight and obese patients that adopted the South Beach Diet experienced reductions in body weight, BMI, waist circumference, and body fat.

The levels for insulin and hormones related to appetite were also positively affected, confirming the potential metabolic benefits demonstrated in GI research.

In addition to their low GI food and portion control methods, the South Beach Diet suggests other lifestyle modifications.

Exercise is also recommended throughout each phase of the program. They suggest up to 60-minutes daily while in the maintenance phase. These recommendations are in line with national guidelines.

Safety

Implementing a healthy meal plan and daily physical activity can only improve your health. However, making changes to these factors are not without risk.

Making drastic changes to your diet can have various unwanted effects. It can impact medications you may take regularly. You may consume less energy-dense foods than what you are accustomed to, resulting in fatigue.

These dietary changes can also lead to electrolyte or hormone imbalances that can be unsafe.

Your exercise plan should begin at a level that is appropriate for your current fitness level. A plan that is too rigorous can unsafely stress your heart if you are not accustomed to intense exercise.

For these reasons, it’s important to include your physician in any plans for weight loss as they can track progress and monitor safety.

The Bottom Line

In our opinion, there are plenty of reasons to consider the South Beach Diet—especially if you are intimidated by the idea of planning and preparing your own meals.

This low-carb, low sugar, high protein diet is a balanced way to eat that most likely won’t feel overly restrictive for most people.

“This diet essentially is not a diet,” says Mancella. “It is a focused pattern of eating that highlights eating more well-rounded and does not restrict any one food group. Typically, if a diet requires a restriction of any sort on certain food groups, I am hesitant to recommend it. The South Beach Diet is one that promotes the consumption of healthier food items compared to other diets that focus on restricting and limiting items.”

According to Jason Machowsky, a board-certified sports dietician at Hospital for Special Surgery, there’s a good chance you will lose weight on the South Beach Diet if you follow it correctly.

“There are many approaches to losing weight, of which the South Beach Diet is one of them. There is some research showing that the South Beach Diet promotes weight loss, but the same goes for plenty of other weight loss approaches - the key to all of them is staying consistent with the adopted eating habits. Otherwise, the weight will come back”, he said.

What makes the South Beach Diet stand out from many other plans to us is their subscription meal service. If the idea of paying in advance for a month’s worth of food appeals to you, then the convenience of this plan and how easy it is to stay on track is worth it.

However, sticking to pre-made meals for Phases 1 and 2 can lead to problems if you decide to go on your own for Phase 3.

It takes time to master a new eating style, and if you aren’t cooking many of your own meals from the beginning, you might not develop a realistic sense of portion control and could potentially backside and regain the weight.

For that reason, it’s important to cook for yourself at least two days a week while on the South Beach diet so that you ensure you learn what it takes to follow the plan for the long term.