The South Beach Diet is not a cost effective method of weight loss, nor is it particularly easy to follow, but the nutritional theories that they teach are sound.  Followers are encouraged to eat whole grains, cut down or eliminate processed, nutritionally empty carbs, and watch fat intake. 

All good ideas, of course. The plan is broken up into Phases, and for the first two-week phase you won’t eat any bread, potatoes, rice, baked goods, or fruit.  (Similar to Atkins here, and many others.)  This is quite a difficult goal to achieve.  We are reluctant to endorse a plan that leads so many to failure or to giving up so early in the program.  Only after you get past the two week mark will you be able to allow some of the previously prohibited foods back into your diet -- but you have to be very judicious about it.  You are supposed to eat just a bit of the those foods, and monitor your progress for any signs of weight gain.  When you see those signs, you know that you have crossed your “carb safety threshold” and that you need to eat fewer carbs -- not just now, but for the rest of your life. 

The problems with this program are many: (a) It’s too hard to just get through that very restrictive initial two week time period, and then afterwards, regulating yourself, and determining how many and what kind of carbs can be included in your diet.  It’s a very tricky process, as your body needs different things at different times. (b) Like Atkins, the plan depends on keeping you in a carb-deprived state, which is unnatural. Most will be in ketosis, and while that’s ok for a short time, it is certainly neither healthful nor reasonable to expect people to always be in that state. (c) Not much is offered in the area of nutritional support, or nutritional supplements to help you in your weight loss process. (d) Their foods are often too high in fat and sodium. Now that South Beach has partnered with a major manufacturer of processed foods, any claim to naturalness and healthfulness must be considered highly suspect.

Overall, the South Beach Diet offers a reasonable nutritional plan, but with some gaping problems.  A better choice, in our view, would be BioSlim.  For one thing, according to their website, it was on the Super BioSlim Plan that the South Beach Diet was originally based.  For another, BioSlim is far more balanced, reasonable, helpful, educational and healthful.