3 Worst Weight Loss Mistakes You Can Make on the South Beach Diet

Nice work! You chose the South Beach Diet to help you lose weight and get in the best shape of your life. But before you hit cruise control and enjoy the road to a healthier, leaner bod, be sure you aren’t making simple weight loss mistakes that can get between you and your weight loss goal.

While the South Beach Diet is simple to follow, small reoccurring slip-ups can slow down your results and throw you off track. To avoid encountering these weight loss mistakes, you can take simple precautions to ensure you are sticking to the guidelines of your weight loss plan.

Here are three of the worst weight loss mistakes you can make while on South Beach Diet and how to avoid them:

1. Skipping Meals

A rookie mistake: You think that if you eat only your meals and skip out on the recommended three snacks and veggie servings, you’ll lose weight faster.

While we applaud your enthusiasm (and we know just how excited you are to see those great results), hear us out: This is one big mistake you’ll want to avoid at all costs, even if you’re not feeling hungry when snack time rolls around. A study, published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, found that women who reported skipping meals lost less weight—almost eight pounds less!—than women who didn’t.

If you find that you’re just not hungry at a certain time of the day, you can adjust your meal and snack times. Shift things out so that you’re getting all the food your plan calls for, at a time that works best for your schedule. Just be mindful of timing between meals so you don’t get too hungry at any one point in the day and end up overeating to compensate for it.

Your South Beach Diet plan is designed to provide the right nutrition for weight loss. So, skipping meals or snacks means you’ll miss out on some of the vital nutrients—Proteins, Healthy Fats and Vegetables—that are essential to the South Beach Diet plan. Missing a serving or two of Proteins or Healthy Fats messes with that winning combination of nutrients that’s responsible for getting your body into fat-burning mode, which is where the magic of the South Beach plan happens. Invest in the program and don’t let skipping meals and snacks be one of your biggest weight loss mistakes.

Follow the meal plan. Eat all the snacks. Trust the process!

2. Overdoing it Unknowingly

On the opposite end of the spectrum, it’s also possible to add in too many Extras without realizing it. What exactly are Extras? On the South Beach Diet, they’re all those little things that might not be on your radar yet—the pinch or dash of an ingredient that’s been part of your normal routine for so long that you don’t even give it a second thought—like that splash of creamer in your coffee, or that swirl of oil in the pan before you start cooking.

Before you panic, know this: There’s a place for these items in your South Beach Diet plan. We call them Extras because they add a little something “extra” to your foods—but they are limited to three per day, every day. So choose wisely! Plan your day around the Extras that really make a food or beverage that much more enjoyable to you, and ditch the ones you can live happily without.

Here’s the rule of thumb to avoid adding this to your weight loss mistakes list: Anything with between 10 to 35 calories and less than 3 grams of net carbs per serving counts as an Extra. When you start the diet, it’s helpful to have a measuring spoon handy to measure out and get a sense for what a teaspoon and tablespoon actually look like. Some of our faves include:

• Balsamic vinegar, 1 Tbsp.
• Cream, whole milk or half-and-half, 1 Tbsp.
• Salsa, 2 Tbsp.
• Sour cream, 1 Tbsp.
• Unsweetened almond milk, 1 cup

3. Taking an all-or-nothing approach

We’ve been there: When it comes to getting healthy you’re either all in—or nothing at all. You start off at 100%, pedal-to-the-metal, perfectly following your meal plan to a “T”. Then you have one slip or make one mistake and you call it off for the rest of the day/weekend/week. Because none of it counts if you don’t do it right from the start, right? Wrong!

If this sounds like you, letting go of that black-and-white, all-or-nothing attitude can really help. Life happens and when it does, it does not mean that all bets are off. Practice getting right back to your plan immediately after a slip-up or missed workout—drink a full glass of water, go for a walk, get in an extra serving of veggies—and see what happens to your mindset and how you feel by the end of the day. Don’t let one of the most common weight loss mistakes hinder your results!

Chances are, you’ll be happier that you chose to get back on track, instead of letting the rest of the day snowball into something much worse. So don’t let one mistake ruin your otherwise healthy day—you’ve got this!