Is South Beach Diet Keto? – A Few Things To Consider

One of the most popular diet food delivery plans on this site is the South Beach Diet Delivery service.

And as I wrote recently, South Beach diet delivery has added new keto-friendly options.

However this has led many people to ask:

Is the South Beach Diet Keto Friendly?

Well yes – and no. It really depends on what you’re looking for specifically – and how you interpret the ketogenic diet.

Stay with me and I’ll explain.

The Facts You Should Know About South Beach and Keto:

Fact #1 – The South Beach diet has 3 phases to it. The first phase is very low carb and is aimed at resetting your metabolism and basically getting your body off the unhealthy carbs. This is also where most people lose the most weight.

The second phase is still low carb – but you do start to add in healthy carbs slowly so your body can adjust and learn new habits. Most people continue to lose weight on this phase – but at a little slower pace than phase one.

The third phase is where you start to add in even more healthy carbs – and your weight loss stabilizes. This is more of the “maintenance phase” of the diet.

Fact #2 – The South Beach diet delivery plan has over 60 keto-friendly meal and snack options for you to choose from. These options are designed to be included in a keto-friendly meal plan that delivers about 40-50 g of net carbs per day.

Fact #3 – South Beach diet delivery allows you to customize your menu – meaning that you can choose the meals you want to get from a list of options. Therefore you can, in effect, choose these keto-friendly options if you want them, making the diet more ketogenic-friendly.

Fact #4  – The South Beach diet delivery plan also has introduced new keto-friendly shakes to their plan as well. You can even get some Free keto shakes with your first order by clicking here.

So this is another way that you can make the South Beach diet more ketolike.

So is the South Beach Diet Keto?

Well, despite the 4 facts above, according to the South Beach Meal Delivery Plan, these meals are NOT intended to allow you to achieve or maintain nutritional ketosis.

Being in ketosis (where your body burns primarily fat for energy instead of sugar/carbs) is basically what the ketogenic diet is built upon. And (depending on who you listen to) the diet is meant to be followed pretty much for life. Meaning that you go very low carb – and stay low carb forever.

By this definition the South Beach diet is not keto since in Phase 2 and especially Phase 3 of the diet, you start to add in more healthy carbs to your plan.

The first phase of South Beach however could possibly be considered ketogenic since it’s so low carb and relies mostly upon more fat and protein to reset your metabolism and burn fat faster.

So I suppose you could say that South Beach starts out as a ketogenic-friendly diet but that’s only for a very short time. (And because the low carb phase does not last very long, is it REALLY Keto? Most experts would say no.)

So looking at it that way, the South Beach Diet is a lower carb diet – but it’s a lot gentler and could be easier to stick with than a ketogenic diet plan. It has keto-diet-like qualities, but I would have to say, it’s not keto.

Does that mean it won’t work for you? No – lots of people lose weight on the South Beach diet plan.

I personally like the South Beach approach better than the ketogenic approach (for weight loss) because I think it’s more balanced and easier to achieve than expecting people to cut out carbs for the rest of their lives.

Going low carb for life can be an unreasonably high bar for many people.

The question to ask yourself is this – can you honestly see yourself living on very little carbs for the rest of your life? Some people can and others can’t. (I’m talking for weight loss here – not health issues, that’s a different story).

And if you could lose just as much weight with the South Beach diet as a low-carb-for-life diet, would you want to do that? Again, some people would and others wouldn’t.

These are questions only you can answer – and it’s a deeply personal choice. Nobody can tell you what’s best for your body.

Every body is different. I have friends that swear by low carb diets – but I personally can’t do them as they make me too tired.

But I hope that gives you more of a balanced look at whether or not the South Beach diet is keto-friendly or not.

What do you think – do you think the South Beach Diet is keto-friendly? Which diet would you rather try? Leave a comment below!

Want to Learn More?

You can learn more about the keto diet at the Wikipedia page here.

Or for more on the South Beach Diet delivery – click the link below for a special offer.

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