South Beach Diet

[emmasmama]

Thanks Maureen!... I'm down another lb today for a total of 4!... I'm telling you this is unbelievable! I am not a person who loses weight easily and since I put on 50 lbs while I was pregnant, I was pretty upset. If the cure to my lifelong problem is just cutting carbs I am ready to do it for the rest of my life!

[emmasmama]

Just a little update...

At the end of week 1, I can report back that I LOVE this diet! I'm not hungry, the food is great, and I can even go out to eat and find something that works! I'm also less tired and don't have these crazy "I gotta eat right now" food cravings.

I am also down 5 lbs... in one week!

If anyone has any questions about this diet, ask away!

[MelissaTC]

I was so happy to see your posts. I am thinking about doing this. I have PCOS and need to low carb. Sounds like it is very doable. Thanks!

[emmasmama]

Melissa, let me know if you have any questions about it... I've made a bunch of the recipes in the book and while I would say everything so far has been pretty good, some are better than others. What does PCOS stand for?

Good luck!

[MelissaTC]

PCOS - Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome.
Symptoms can be mild or severe, and can vary widely from woman to woman. This is part of the reason doctors often miss the diagnosis. Someone with PCOS may have one or all of the following symptoms in varying degrees:

- irregular periods: abnormal, irregular, heavy or scanty (oligomenorrhea)
- absent periods (amenorrhea)
- ovarian cysts
- hirsutism (excess facial and/or body hair)
- alopecia (male-pattern hair loss)
- obesity
- acne
- skin tags
- acanthosis nigricans (brown skin patches, often found on the nape of the neck)
- high cholesterol levels
- high blood pressure
- exhaustion and/or lack of mental alertness
- decreased sex drive
- excess "male" hormones, such as androgens, DHEAS, or testosterone
- infertility
- decreased breast size
- enlarged clitoris(rare)
- enlarged ovaries
- enlarged uterus

Note that symptoms can worsen over time or with weight gain.

from www.pcos.net

Weight loss can acutally make the symptoms go away. All of this revolves around the body's ability to deal with insulin. I am not diabetic but can become diabetic if I am not careful. They actually suggest Atkins, etc.. but South Beach really appealed to me. I don't Atkins is that healthy.

I know this is a lot of info...hope it helps! Not that I love to talk about it, but I do like making people aware of it. It affects a lot of women but no one knows about it. :(

[emmasmama]

Melissa,

Thanks for sharing that with me, I'm actually pretty interested in this stuff (I finished a year of nursing school before I got pregnant, and have a strong interest in women's health)... I was not aware of PCOS.

It is great that you are able to control it somewhat through diet. I think you would find this diet to be very doable and the doctor who wrote this actually talks quite a bit in his book about diabetes and adult-onset diabetes and how it can often be controlled through a low-carb diet. I find this diet to be very healthy - in fact I'm probably eating way more healthfully now than when I was eating mostly whole grain carbs because I am eating much more of a variety of vegetables and fish.

I did do Atkins once for about a week a few years ago and not that I'm anti-Atkins at all, it just wasn't for me I think. Too much saturated fat and it actually made me feel really horrible... terrible headaches and constipation. I have felt absolutely fine on phase 1 of South Beach, great in fact, and I like that it includes most of what I would otherwise eat anyway - lean meats and veggies and unsaturated oils.

Good luck!

[liya]

I have PCOS as well and am having a tough time loosing weight.....Would you mind telling me if i have to eliminate carbs completely for the rest of my life. Or if you add it in slowly...Im dying to try out this diet...And am a tad scared..My brother is doing it though and LOOOOOOOOOOOOSING some mayor baggage he has aquired during the last 20plus years..LOL I would love to get this book but im scared to do this..Please help me not be scared i need to be back to my normal clothes my body is killing me and loosing 3pds every month or so does nothing for me...

[MelissaTC]

Linda:

Don't be scared to do this. I know it is hard but in the end, you will be thankful. You eliminate carbs for 2 weeks but then slowly add complex carbs back into your diet. You need to low carb for the rest of your life to avoid becoming diabetic. With PCOS, it is a great possibility.

Some good resources on-line for PCOS include www.soulcysters.com and www.pcos.net . Soul Cysters is run by someone who lost a lot of weight low carbing and has excellent resources available on-line for free. Check them out.

I am in the same boat as you. I am a Boriqua too and not ready to give up my rice and beans yet. But I think about Matthew and how he needs a healthy Mom and I am all ready for it. Buy the book. It is 30% off at Borders and B&N. The receipes in the book sound delicious and nothing is really off the wall.

If you need a buddy, I will be your buddy. E-mail privately if you want :) We can do this...so let's do it!! We can even meet when you come up to NC...I live in the Raleigh area...

[emmasmama]

Linda, you can do this! I have now lost 7 lbs in the first week and a half and I have a terrible time losing weight!! And this is not some wacko diet... trust me, my whole life was about beans and rice and loads of pasta up until a few weeks ago when I read this book. DH and I are both vegetarian except for eating seafood, so it made it even harder to consider doing something like this, but I was so tired of being a pudge, but more importantly, I felt like the extra weight I was carrying around was really bad for me.

I've always been a little on the "soft" side, but never really overweight where anyone would notice until I was put on bedrest during my pregnancy. Well, I felt like total crap after Emma was born... at first just for the normal reasons of having a new baby, etc, but then after a few months had passed and I still felt really lethargic and my legs hurt, etc, from carrying around my big booty, I realized I was committed to doing something serious to change things. Don't get me wrong, going to low-carb is a lifestyle change, but I was surprised at what a doable change it was! I have to say that I have even cheated some already in phase I, (just a couple of glasses of wine) and I've still lost all that weight! I've even got my mom doing it because she has such a hard time losing weight and she's a big cheater, LOL! (no willpower :), and she's still lost a few lbs in the first week. This is a woman who has been struggling along with Weight Watchers for about a year and lost ~14 lbs, only to gain a few lbs back here and there because she just had a hard time "being good".

I promise you that this really isn't something weird. I am a super healthy eater, but just never lost weight very consistently with my lowfat and high carb way of eating. This way of eating forces your body to use food more efficiently and help you to feel more full. You will not go hungry and you can eat out no problem - you just have to follow the rules. I have eaten out about 3 times in the past two weeks and had a serious meal and I'm still losing.

Let me know if you have any questions about this!

[emmasmama]

This is an article from CNN.com the other day that my DH saw and it's very interesting... Harvard School of Public Health just did a research study on low-carb diet and they found that the people doing low-carb in the study actually lost the same/more weight than the people eating low fat, even though the low-carbers were actually eating 300 calories MORE per day! It was a controlled study where the food was prepared for the people instead of them just making their own food, so it should be pretty accurate.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/diet.....ap/index.html