By now the regular grind of daily life is catching up as we get back into routine after the holidays. If one of your resolutions is to lose weight, or get healthier, many diets are hard to maintain as they are either restrictive in some way, too complicated, or involve too many changes in habits.
If you've been in my counseling sessions, you've probably heard me mention the South Beach Diet. While I'm not a nutritionist, I feel confident in recommending this diet for almost everyone. If you're on a special diet, I leave it up to you to know what foods you need to avoid. With the South Beach Diet, there are enough different ingredients allowed that there should be a way to adapt this diet to any nutritional needs. The South Beach Diet is basically the Mediterranean Diet, which you've probably heard a lot about. It includes lean meats, fruits, vegetables, healthy oils and whole grains. South Beach goes a step further and capitalizes on flavor with use of herbs and spices. Incidentally, many of these contain their own classes of nutrients that enhance our health in ways we might not even know about. Psychologically, South Beach wins out, at least for me, because of this immediate reward factor (the flavor) that makes you want to select these foods. The diet is flexible enough that you should never feel deprived. You can even cheat and splurge on "forbidden" foods; you just might want to go back to Phase I for a day or two afterwards. I find this diet easy to manage, provided you are willing to do some home cooking-from scratch-and throw away the packaged meals and processed foods. I have a collection of easy, few-ingredient, inexpensive recipes to hand out to clients as a way to get people to make small changes in their eating habits. It really only involves switching out a few ingredients, and you can adapt almost any recipe. So if one of your resolutions for the new year is to lose weight or get healthier, this might be the diet for you. Bonus; check out any thrift store that sells books and you're likely to find a copy for cheap! Also, if you look on my webpage on nutrition http://renaissancecounselor.wixsite.com/perrysburgcounselor/be-all-that-you-can-eat you'll find some of my favorite recipes there.