Learn Your Low-Carb Options

Not all low-carb diets are created equal. The Atkins Diet (now known as Atkins Nutritional Advantage) and the Sugar Busters diet are quite restrictive, but many dieters have found that the South Beach diet is more flexible and therefore easier to follow for the long-term as a way to maintain weight loss.

The South Beach Diet does feature a reduced percentage of carbs in proportion to proteins and fats, but it doesn’t eliminate food groups and the low-carb recipes include healthy fats such as olive oil and canola oil, lean protein sources, and nutritious (not junk) carbs from sources such as fruits and whole grains.

When it comes to choosing low-carb foods, lower-carb diet plans such as the South Beach Diet or the How the Rich Get Thin Diet offer suggestions for low-carb meals that you can make at home. If you’re too busy to cook or worry about which foods are allowed in what phase of the diet, you can still buy “low-carb” prepackaged food products, although the waning of the low-carb diet craze has left fewer prepared low-carb foods and snacks available in most grocery stores. You can order Atkins and South Beach Diet-branded low-carb foods by searching for these diet names online, and low-carb diet plans include specific meal ideas to follow during different phases of the diets.

The take-home message is that a calorie is a calorie no matter when or how you eat it, so there’s nothing magical about a low-carb diet. And remember that many carbohydrate-containing foods that are restricting or eliminated from some low-carb plans, such as fruits and whole grains, contain nutrients that are important for overall good health. So even if you go low-carb to lose some weight before your cousin’s wedding, you may want to adopt a less restrictive healthy eating plan for long-term weight management.