If you've been looking for general south beach diet information, you'll find it's readily available at a wide variety of places on the internet. The best source of south beach diet information though, is from the south beach diet book itself, and from their website.

You'll find many articles which give an excellent introductory overview of the south beach diet too though, and this is one of those articles.

Many people consider the south beach diet to be a low carb diet. And while that's somewhat true in the beginning of the diet plan, it's technically not the case for long. The south beach diet is more of a moderate carb diet, and in fact it's often called a "smart carb diet" instead. This is because the south beach diet teaches you the difference between good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates. It also gives you an excellent introduction to the glycemic index, and it explains how that index can be used to help with your overall weight loss goals.

The south beach diet is famous though, for helping people to lose a lot of belly fat in very short amounts of time. Since many people who have problems with diabetes, pre-diabetes, insulin resistance and weight loss tend to carry their extra body fat on their belly and stomach areas, this is the area most quickly affected by following the south beach diet. The diet is designed to burn off excess body fat, so if the bulk of your body fat is on your stomach, then you'll see drastic results within a very short period of time.

Unlike other popular low carb diets though, the south beach diet does not advocate eating lots of fat in place of carbohydrates. The south beach diet is not a low fat diet either though. Instead, like with the carbs, it teaches you the difference between good and bad fats.

The south beach diet is broken into three parts, or stages. The first stage is the part of the diet where your carbohydrate intake is the lowest. Generally, the goal is to limit yourself to just thirty grams of carbs or less each day. These should be good carbs though, in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables. The rest of your meals are made up of good quality proteins such as you get with skinless chicken and fresh water fish.

The first part of of the south beach diet will help you kill your daily sugar cravings and start losing weight quickly too. Most people stay on this stage until they've reached or gotten close to a desired body weight or fat loss goal, but you can move on to the second stage after about two weeks.

The second stage of the south beach diet involves adding more carbohydrates to your daily meals. Again though, the importance of good carbs is stressed, and the effects of the glycemic index is introduced as well. Most people continue losing weight at slower rates with stage two of the south beach diet, and once they've reached their goals or gotten very close, they move on to the last stage.

The last stage usually involves increasing the carbohydrate intake again, to levels that will keep your weight balanced. In other words, you won't continue losing but you won't gain at this point either. Since most of the extra body fat is gone at this point, most people aren't overly worried about their actual weight because they look extremely good - even in bikinis!