South Beach Diet Phase 1 Recipes

What is the South Beach diet and will it work for me?

Basically, the diet is a phased regimen, going through 3 different stages. The first stage or Phase 1 requires you to start on a program of shedding your weight. Here you go for more proteins in fish and meat but you'll go easy on fat. You go for vegetables more.

The South Beach diet Phase 1 recipes will not require you to starve, of course. You still get to eat three square meals, highly balanced ones, that is. And snacks are allowed and actually required so that you are consistently "full" or satiated and will not have you succumbing to the urge to gorge yourself because you feel hungrier with the changed diet regimen. This strict regimen will enable you to lose some of that unwanted weight and bulges.

After about two weeks, you can continue on to the next level, Phase 2, where the regimen to lose weight will proceed. This time around, though, you take on fruits and whole grains and some carbohydrates that you've foregone in the first phase of the diet.

But don't fret, you're not about to regain those pounds you've already shed. The intention is to allow your body to get used to the regimen, as the South Beach diet is a diet for life.

You cannot go around flip-flopping from protein-less to protein-rich, from carb-less to carb-rich. The secret is to let these be taken in by your system in phases to acclimatize the system without the attendant weight gain. It will be up to you to monitor as you slowly but regularly take in these carbs again making sure the progress you've made in weight loss before is not compromised.

You would have set up your target weight during Phase 1, and you will have to get this at Phase 2, so you have all the time in the second stage to hit that targeted weight loss level. So what use is there for the third and final phase? Can you eat as easily and freely after you've hit your weight target? Phase 3 is actually maintaining the discipline and keeping to the healthier regimen of the diet that you've learned in the first 2 phases. Phase 3 is not about to let you lose all your accomplishments.

South Beat Diet Phase 1 Recipes

The secret to staying with the diet is the foundations you'll set for yourself in Phase 1. Don't starve yourself or you won't last until the final phase. Eat as heartily as you want to but check out the intakes. Take three square meals balancing the right nutrients for each, and put in snacks in-between. The principle is simple actually: satiate yourself and you won't get tempted to gorge, read overeat, in the next meal or snack.

In Phase 1, you will have to forego rice and bread, cakes and pastries, mashed potatoes and spaghetti, and fruits. You just have to substitute them with leaner meat, chicken and fish, vegetables, nuts and beans.

This is one example Phase 1 recipe: flank steak, herb crusted, with fat removed, broiled in mustard, and sliced thin. This goes low on salt and spices, and substitutes wheat bread crumbs for the rice.

Other South Beach diet Phase 1 recipes are mostly grilled wonders with complete details available on the South Beach Diet Online site - grilled steak, grilled shrimps, mulled apple cider, turkey gravy, non-alcoholic punch. The secret to these Phase 1 recipes is your ability to muster and substitute them for high-carb and weight-gaining foods.