If you have read the South Beach Diet you might be surprised to find that French fries were eliminated in the above plan as the book clearly and strongly recommends them as an alternative to baked potatoes as they have more fat. It is this type of profound nutritional ignorance that makes it clear the South Beach Diet is relatively clueless when it comes to sound nutritional advice.

I have great respect for Rodale (book's publisher) and how they were able to achieve such phenomenal success with a book that certainly moves the public in the general direction of what to eat. However, the book has some major room for improvement as you will see if you read the article I wrote last year on the 12 Reasons Why People Should Avoid the South Beach Diet.

And while school administrators made a well-intentioned effort to combat the spiraling obesity epidemic that's affecting both children and adults--by replacing "junk" cafeteria food with healthy alternatives--the South Beach Diet is a "one-size-fits-all" program that completely ignores the fact that we have different genetic requirements for optimal health.

Please understand that universal diets simply don't work for everyone. There isn't a one-size fits all diet that is perfect for everyone as we are all quite different. The simple fact is that one third of people actually need a high-carb diet (with limited or no grains) to lose weight, not a low carb diet like South Beach. Many of you know that the principles of nutritional typing expand on this and I believe are a crucial part to sustaining your optimal health and wellness.

Understand Your nutritional type and Eat According to It

Generally speaking, when you eat a meal that is right for your nutritional type you will feel a marked and lasting improvement in your energy, mental capacities and emotional well-being. You will also experience a feeling of being well-satisfied for several hours. A major key to success in nutritional typing is printing the table of 24 questions that you can ask yourself that will help you fine tune your diet so that it is perfect for you. You will be shocked at how much you improve your health by following this plan.

However, if you are already feeling great, eating should, at the very least, help to maintain your energy level; but if you feel worse in one way or another an hour or so after eating, such as:

• You still feel hungry even though you are physically full
• You develop a sweet craving
• Your energy level drops
• You feel hyper, nervous, angry or irritable
• You feel depressed

... then it might be due to an improper combination of proteins, fats and carbohydrates at your last meal. You might be eating the perfect foods for your metabolism, but having too much of one type of food in place of another can easily produce the above listed symptoms.

You can take the free online test to determine your nutritional type. The test gives you a jump start on the process but answering the 24 questions after every meal for a few weeks is really the secret key to succeeding and finding out your exact nutritional type.

Additionally, many people have found that my book, Total Health Program, has been a helpful resource in applying the program, as it is the only book in the world that has recipes based on nutritional typing. The recipes outlined give you the practical tools you need to implement the program.

Related Articles:

Child Obesity Epidemic

Do Genetics Control Whether Your Child Will be Fat?