There are three phases in the South Beach Diet. Each phase has different types of food you can eat and some foods that are forbidden. Generally in the first phase of the South Beach Diet, your meal will contain protein, beans, vegetables, nuts, and dairy. For protein, you can have all types of seafood, lean ground beef, chicken or turkey breasts, basically meat that is low in fat. Beans include black eyed peas, great northern beans, chickpeas, and pinto beans. For the vegetables category, there is a wide variety that you can choose from but pay particular attention to tomatoes, okras, squash, lettuce, spinach and the like. You are allowed to eat low fat cheese during the first phase. You are also allowed to have only one serving of nuts. Generally, your treats for this phase have to be sugarless.

During the second phase you will be eating the foods that you've been eating in the first phase including low-GI fruits, low-fat dairy and whole grain pasta and bread. By low-GI fruits, this means you can eat from the following choices of apples, bananas, cantaloupe, grapes, oranges, or pears. In this phase you can eat semi-sweet chocolate and drink about 1-2 glasses of wine.

In the third and last phase, the South Beach Diet should already have helped you discipline yourself in terms of picking the right food for you. You can basically eat anything that you want during this phase making sure that you are making the right choices and eating in the right portions. Remember that when you reach the third phase, you will be on this phase for life. If you want to maintain the weight goal that you’ve achieved during this phase, then apply all the skills you’ve learned in the previous phases. However, if you find that you are gaining weight, you can choose to go back to the previous phases yourself.

What exactly are the skills that the South Beach Diet can teach or remind you? Basically, this diet teaches you to eat to lose. Is this possible with food? Yes, because with the South Beach diet, you will be made aware as to which food choices are better and which are not. Don’t get the South Beach Diet the wrong way. This is not solely a calorie or carbohydrate counting type of diet. There is more to the lessons in the South Beach Diet than meets the eye. You will realize why because the first phase of the diet teaches you which foods contain the right carbohydrates and the right fats. You may be limiting yourself with one type of carbohydrate and fat but you still get to enjoy other and healthier carbohydrates and fats.

As earlier mentioned, the South Beach Diet doesn't focus on carbohydrates alone, it also tackles fats. Most diets don’t emphasize which fat is right in their regimen. In the South Beach Diet, you will learn that you should be eating foods that have low saturated fats only or are sources of unsaturated fats. The foods you can eat and should be eating in this category include nuts and the use of olive oil.

One lesson you will be grateful for with this diet is learning how to read and value nutrition labels. When you are nutrition label savvy, rest assured you can eat whatever you want as long as you are keeping the nutrition and ingredients of your chosen food in mind. With the South Beach Diet you will learn how to read serving sizes and which size you should be eating. This lesson includes reading the calorie, carbohydrate, fat, sugar and sodium content of your food.

Once you're adept at reading nutrition labels you will then be able to realize that you can eat carbohydrates still. What type of carbohydrates exactly and what are you looking for in a low-carbohydrate food? Most low-carbohydrate foods in the market are not encouraged by the South Beach Diet. You will know why because the diet teaches you to read between the labels. Though the food is presented as low-carbohydrate, it is packed full of sugar and fats. Real low carbohydrate foods can be found in whole grain products. Look for these products and look at the added ingredients as well. Make sure there are no refined products added to the ingredients.

In the South Beach Diet, you will find that you won’t be suffering from diet boredom. You won’t even suffer from guilt when you turn to sweets and treats at times. The good thing about this diet is that it converts eating sweets to treating rather than cheating. You can eat sweets whichever phase you may be in the diet. As long as you are eating the right sweets, you are good to go. The South Beach Diet doesn’t restrict you to avoiding sweets at all. You can even eat sweets loaded with fats and carbohydrates in special occasions if you have to. Just remember not to abuse the privilege this diet has given you. You should always exercise discipline and make informed choices when you choose what you want to eat.