If you've reached a point in your life where you realize you need to shed those excess pounds, but are not quite sure which diet plan is best for you, consider taking a little time to explore your options.
Although, the Atkins Diet and South Beach are popular low-glycemic weight-loss programs, and both work well, they each have different approaches to diet and fat loss.
Knowing the differences between South Beach and Atkins can help you make an informed decision as to which plan is best for you.
Atkins Diet Versus South Beach: What's the Same?
Both weight-loss programs were created by cardiologists.
Therefore, both plans can improve your cholesterol levels and lower your risk for cardiovascular disease. Both programs cut out simple carbohydrates, such as sugar, starches, and white flour, so they help you manage your blood glucose levels and lower basal insulin levels that can cause food cravings.
They both can also improve insulin resistance.
For that reason, Atkins and South Beach are often referred to by the media and within the medical community as low-carb diet plans, but Dr. Agatston's South Beach Diet isn't a low-carb diet. It focuses on low-glycemic foods, which can sometimes be quite high in carbs – depending on your food choices.
Neither method is better than the other.
Both are healthy diet programs, and both can help you reverse metabolic syndrome. They just go about it in different ways.
Atkins Induction and South Beach Phase 1 Differ on Carbs
The first 2 weeks of the South Beach Diet and Atkins are the most restrictive phases.
Atkins Induction, also referred to as Phase 1, has 12 rules that you need to follow in order to be successful.
One of those rules is to “Eat no more than 20 grams a day of carbohydrate, most of which must come in the form of salad greens and other vegetables.”
This amounts to about 2 cups of salad vegetables and 1 cup of higher carb vegetables, such as onions, cauliflower, summer squash, and brussels sprouts. But if you pick non-starchy vegetables, you can have more than that.
Counting your carbohydrate grams is a major part of the Atkins Diet. It's one of the things that sets it apart from other low-glycemic plans.
During the first 2 weeks, carbohydrates are severely restricted to 20 carbs, or less.
In comparison, the South Beach Diet doesn't seek to eliminate most carbohydrates, but it attempts to replace "bad carbs" with “good carbs.”
To do that, it recommends you eat at least 4-1/2 cups of vegetables daily, including 1/2 cup of vegetables at breakfast.
Since beans do not raise blood sugar levels, Dr. Agatston also recommends that 1/3 to 1/2 cup beans replace part of your vegetable allowance at both lunch and dinner.
Despite their high-carb content, beans are strongly encouraged for their nutrient value, but Atkins doesn't allow beans for quite some time, if ever.
Black soy beans are the only exception.
Unlike the Atkins Diet, there is no carbohydrate counting on South Beach, so for those who don't enjoy counting or would have trouble giving up beans, the South Beach Diet might be a better fit.
In addition to beans, Dr. Agatston allows milk and low-fat dairy products from the very beginning of the plan. They are not limited. Plain, unsweetened yogurt, low-fat cottage cheese, and nuts are also included in snacks and meals on Phase 1.
Dr. Atkins chooses to return these higher-carb choices later on, during the Ongoing Weight Loss phase (OWL), also referred to as Phase 2.
This makes the carb count much higher for South Beach, Phase 1, than it is for Atkins Induction, unless you don't like beans or nuts, or are allergic to dairy products and plan on doing the first phase of South Beach dairy free.
Despite it's higher carb content, most people who stick with the first phase of South Beach report dramatic weight losses during those first 2 weeks.
Compared to the average American Diet of 300 to 400 carbs per day, even with beans and cottage cheese, South Beach Phase 1 is low enough in carbs to rev up your metabolism and give your weight-loss effects a good head-start.
The same goes for Atkins, so your choice between the two plans will depend on how much you enjoy eating the types of foods allowed on each weight-loss program.
Returning Carbs after Phase 1
Another major difference between Atkins and South Beach is how carbs are returned to the diet after you've completed Phase 1.
With the Atkins Diet, you can add a total of 5 grams of carbohydrates to your daily meals, per day, and then review the results at the end of the week. If you've lost weight that week, and aren't having any problems, you can add another 5 grams per day.
The Atkins Diet recommends that you continue adding carbs very slowly, 5 grams at a time, in a particular order, provided you are losing weight every week.
This helps you individualize the plan to match your personal carbohydrate sensitivity.
Eventually, you'll reach a point where your weight loss stops.
For some people, that might be as low as 20 to 30 carbs, while others can handle as many as 80 carbs and still lose.
When the weight stops coming off, that's defines where your carbohydrate sensitivity is, so you lower your carbs until you start to lose again. The highest number of carbohydrates that allows you to continue to lose weight is your individual tolerance number for the rest of the diet phase.
With the South Beach plan, you return individual servings to your menus and snacks instead of counting carbohydrate grams.
The first recommendation that Dr. Agatston makes in his South Beach Diet book is to add a piece of fruit and 1 serving of whole grains, and then evaluate how that goes in a week or two.
If you're still losing weight at a good pace, then you're allowed to add a serving of something else. Like Atkins, once you reach a point where your weight loss stalls, you remove the last thing you added.
This becomes your basic diet for the rest of the plan.
However, for many dieters, adding back fruit and grains that quickly can cause you to stall with the very first addition. For many people, a slower approach, such as a single piece of fruit, or even less, is best.
Keep in mind that most people who turn to weight-loss programs are suffering from various metabolic disorders. Repairing metabolic syndrome or improving insulin sensitivity doesn't happen over night.
It takes time for the body to heal.
Sometimes, that healing requires you to stay on Atkins Induction or South Beach Phase 1 for several weeks.
Don't rush the carbs on either plan!
South Beach and Atkins Differ on Fats
The basic eating plan for the South Beach Diet is:
- eggs
- fish
- lean meats
- skinless poultry
- non-starchy vegetables
- low-fat dairy products
- good fats, such as olive oil, nuts, margarine
He encourages you to eat “good fats,” which consists of fatty fish like salmon and tuna instead.
To help control calories, the daily amount of added fats is 7 teaspoons. The program recommends 1 teaspoon at breakfast and 1 tablespoon at lunch and dinner.
In comparison, Dr. Atkins didn't limit dietary fats, including saturated fats, and recommended:
- fatty fish and meats
- poultry with skin
- mayonnaise, nut oils, olive oil
- full-fat dairy products
- real butter
To help control calories, there are limits placed on cheese, heavy cream, and sour cream. Avocados are also limited to 1/2 per day.
Dr. Atkins believed that dieters should not try to do a low-fat version of Atkins. He thought that would interfere with weight loss and hurt a dieter's efforts.
However, he also emphasized that fats should be used intelligently, and reasonably, and that the purpose of using extra fat on Induction was to help control your cravings for carby foods, especially sweets.
Because there is no restriction on fats, some low carbers have implemented a high-fat diet, but that style of eating doesn't work for everyone. In fact, if you take a close look at the recipes that Dr. Atkins used in his diet books, they are made with ground turkey, chicken cutlets, round steak, London broil, and other lean meats, as well as fatty cuts.
Atkins Diet and South Beach Differ on Ketosis
Dr. Atkins believed that the state of dietary ketosis was necessary for hunger-free weight loss.
With normal metabolism, glucose and fatty acids convert to fuel, as needed, but elevated insulin levels can create a situation where the body is more inclined to store fats, rather than mobilize them.
When you lower your dietary intake of carbohydrates, the liver mobilizes fats for fuel to keep your blood sugar levels normal.
Ketones are a by-product of that process.
When you are in the state of dietary ketosis, fatty acids are predominantly burned for energy, rather than glucose. However, the body still burns glucose when it's available because, despite the adverse publicity, the Atkins Diet is not a Zero Carb Diet.
While the South Beach Diet also works on the principle of reduced carbohydrate intake, Dr. Agatston doesn't believe you need to restrict carbohydrates as drastically as Dr. Atkins did.
Some people may enter ketosis while following the South Beach Diet principles, but it isn't required to lose the weight. A lot depends on your degree of insulin resistance, how active you are, and the foods you choose to return to the basic diet plan.
Rather than ketosis, South Beach focuses on foods that are low on the glycemic index. Dr. Agatston believes that foods, such as beans, vegetables, and low-fat dairy help to lower your insulin levels because they don't cause your blood sugar to rise after you eat them.
These types of foods enable your metabolism to function normally.
However, dairy products are inflammatory. They also secret extra insulin. In fact, according to Dr. Terry Shintani, “Most dairy products raise insulin levels 90 to 98 percent as high as white bread does.”
If you happen to be sensitive to dairy, you'll need to restrict the amount you eat and maybe, even, completely eliminate it in order to ditch the weight.
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How to Choose Which Weight-Loss Program is Best
The ultimate question is how to decide which weight-loss program will give you the best results. The answer will depend on your sensitivity to insulin, as well as how you choose to implement each weight-loss program.
Those with insulin resistance tend to have higher insulin levels overall because the body has to release additional insulin in order to overcome the resistance.
Sometimes, insulin reactions are hereditary and sometimes they result from lifestyle choices and diet. However, few physicians will test their patients insulin level to find out.
Today, the focus is more on diabetes, and if you test normal for that, or are prediabetic, the topic of elevated insulin levels is dropped. This is because insulin testing is expensive and complex.
It's easier to just treat the diabetes.
However, Lyle McDonald, a well-experienced physical trainer and bodybuilder, has a few questions that you can ask yourself to help you figure out which type of diet is best for you:
When you eat a high amount of carbohydrates (starches, sugars, and grains):
- Do you feel good and energetic?
- Or do you feel tired, bloated, and washed out?
- Can you maintain your energy levels throughout the day?
- Or do you experience what some people refer to as a crash?
- Do you get sleepy and hungry a short time after eating?
- Or do you feel satisfied and happy for long periods of time?
Those who crash and get hungry quickly after a high-carb meal are probably over-secreting insulin because higher levels of insulin make you feel tired and hungry.
While both Atkins and South Beach claim to correct insulin resistance, the bottom line is still the absolute number of carbohydrates you take in, and your body's reaction to them.
The degree of insulin resistance and over production of insulin required to compensate will vary greatly among individuals, so the best diet for you will depend on how you answer the above questions.
Those who can handle a higher amount of carbohydrate will do very well on the South Beach Diet. And those who can't will do better on Atkins.
If you fall somewhere in the middle, or don't want to bother with counting carbohydrates, you'll find success by modifying your weight-loss diet to include some of the principles found in both plans.
In addition, your body's reaction to dietary fats is also an important factor to consider.
If you lean toward being a sugar-burner, rather than a fat-burner, you'll feel terrible and remain hungry when you enter into the state of ketosis, and you won't completely adapt to that condition – even after several weeks.
How you feel in ketosis depends on your ability to turn the body's excess fat stores into energy, as needed. Some people have a harder time than others. You might have difficulty getting into ketosis and staying there.
The same thing will happen if you are very insulin sensitive, rather than insulin resistant.
Regardless of what many within the low-carb community believe, overweight is not always a sign of insulin resistance. You can actually be insulin sensitive or you may have problems secreting enough insulin to handle the amount of carbs you're eating.
In addition, an Atkins-type diet can cause your insulin level to plunge too low.
Atkins is also problematic for those who have fat malabsorption issues.
In that case, the South Beach Diet or a higher-carb lower-fat version of Atkins might be a better fit.
However, you won't be able to make that kind of determination until after you give a standard Atkins Diet an honest-to-goodness try.
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