17 Lifetime Maintenance

The bells should be ringing, the flags should be flying: You're there! You've arrived at the place where millions of overweight people have never been since they were children-at the weight you were meant to be. And the impact on every part of your life is enormous. Am I right? Take a good long look in the mirror, try on your newly tailored clothes or climb into duds you haven't been able to shoehorn yourself into for years, and then-oh, bliss-listen to the comments people make. I'll bet you've taken center stage. Losing weight sure am'acts attention! And who doesn't want to look his or her best?

Now let me interject a reality check. Have you won the battle of the bulge? Or have you only graduated from boot camp, in shape now for the battle ahead? I can personally attest to the fact that you have achieved the latter. Recidivism among people who have lost considerable weight is such a well-documented phenomenon that many cynical doctors advise their patients not to even bother trying to lose.1 Fortunately with Atkins, such pessimism is unwarranted. This is not to say you don't need a lifetime maintenance plan accompanied by unceasing vigilance. This chapter supplies

you with the former; the determination to succeed is your re, sponsibility.

Before she saw me, Mary Anne Evans had given up. "I said to myself, 'i'm simply going to be fat for the rest of my life.' I weighed 209 pounds when I came to see you, and I had been putting on weight steadily for twenty years especially after the birth of each of my kids.”

At five feet five inches tall and 42 years old, Mary Anne's 200-plus weight load was a health hazard and a half, and I told her so. She had tried countless diets-low-calorie diets, including Weight Watchers, a hospital-based program that measured calories and a liquid-protein diet on which she had lost more than 30 pounds in three months and gained back, with interest, in four.

So what was the use? Besides, she hadn't come to me with weight loss in mind. Her problems were medical. Mary Anne's blood pressure was an abnormally elevated 160/100, she had a number of allergies, and her chief complaint was the extreme fatigue she had endured for the past several years. Add her excess weight to all that, and I knew she was heading into a difficult midlife physical crisis, l recommended and she agreed to do Atkins.

“By the second week doing induction, I realized I felt really good," recalls Mary Anne. "I had a lot more energy than I'd had on my old diet, and I wasn't hungry;'

After five weeks, she'd lost 21 pounds, and her blood pressure was a normal 120/78. It took nine months for her to get to 139 pounds. "I lost weight without any hassle;' she says. "I was eating things I really liked to eat anyway. And the change in my life was incredible. Before, my favorite position had been sitting. Now I go out camping with my youngest son, and last summer I went horseback riding in the Rockies. The people at the lab where I work can't believe the new me. I go out to lunch with sgme of the other women who are on diets, and they can't seem to lose weight, and they're hungry. And I'm sitting there eating a juicy hamburger and a large salad."

Another two years have passed. Mary Anne's weight still hovers around 142. She has a glass of wine before dinner a couple of nights a week, and she eats two potatoes weekly. Her only other carbohydrates are plenty of vegetables and salads. She's on a luxurious regimen that she enjoys. She's full of energy, and her blood pressure is normal.

Is Mary Anne Evans ever going to fall off Atkins? Knowing her intense motivation, I have no doubt that she will enjoy long-term success. You need to have within yourself that same strength of conviction.

At the Finish Line

I would expect that as you traveled along the slow PreMaintenance path, one day you realized you were actually in Lifetime Maintenance: Your weight remained constant within a pound or two for several weeks. The decisions to move from Induction to OWL and from OWL to PreMaintenance were conscious choices on your part. But it is not always easy to define the moment at which you leave Pre-Maintenance and move to Lifetime Maintenance; the former segues naturally into the latter. But from now on, you will have conscious choices to make every day of your life. So, let me remind you of why it is worth making the right choices.

What Lifetime Maintenance Does for You

By now, you should know this by heart, but in this case a little repetition is a good thing. Adhering to Lifetime Maintenance will:

·provide you with a way of eating that allows you to stay slim for the rest of your life.

·allow you to maximize the amount of healthy carbohydrate foods you can eat while staying within 3 to 5

pounds of your goal weight.

·prevent re-addiction to foods that have gotten you in trouble before by helping you to avoid frequent exposure to them.

·teach you how to drop back to an earlier weight loss phase, when needed, to achieve lifetime weight control.

·teach you how to make the healthiest carbohydrate choices, which will allow you to continue to stay in control of your eating habits, feel your best and maintain improved blood-lipid levels, blood pressure and other lab test results, as well as optimize your blood pressure, energy and more.

·teach you how to adjust your carbohydrate consumption when metabolic circumstances change, before you find yourself regaining inches and/or weight.

·reduce your risk factors for cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, and other sugar metabolism disorders.

·give you a sense of accomplishment and confidence that spills over into the rest of your life.

How to Do Lifetime Maintenance-Correctly

Now that you've made it to your goal weight, you can continue to select from a greater range of foods and consume more carbs than you did in the two earlier phases of Atkins. But as I've said at every transition: No way is this a license to return to your old eating patterns. All too often, people win the battle of weight loss only to lose the war of weight control. To maintain your goal weight, you must know your metabolic needs. Your Critical Carbohydrate Level for Maintenance (CCLM) (see page 197), which you found during Pre-Maintenance, lets you know how many carbs you can eat each day to maintain your weight. Stay right at or around that number, and your weight should not fluctuate beyond the perfectly natural range of 2 or 3 pounds. (Hormonal changes and other daily fluctuations in your body account for a small seesaw effect) Later, I'll tell you about why and how you may have to adjust your CCLM at various times in your life.

Carbohydrate Gram Levels and Metabolic Resistance for Maintaining

Metabolic Resistance Approximate CCLM Range

High 25-40 grams of catbs per day

Average 40—60 grams of carbs per day

Low 60—90 grams of carbs per day

Regular exerciser* 90 or more grams of carbs per day *In this context, a regular exerciser is someone who does vigorous exercise five days a week for at least forty-five minutes.

You also must conquer your former bad habits and learn how to cope with real-world challenges. Maintaining weight loss is as much a metital challenge as a physical one. For example, you need to eat right even under stress. How? By realizing that we tend to reach for sugar and starchy foods for comfort, when proper food choices can actually lessen the impact of stress on your body. Similarly, you'll need coping strategies for holidays and special occasions, as well as knowing how to get restaurants to serve you exactly what you know you should be eating.

Perhaps you can plan to "cheat" by cutting back for a few days before an event and then carefully choose a few indulgences. Or go back to a previous level of the plan prior to a vacation or holiday to give yourself some leeway. (For more coping techniques, see Chapter 19, “Fating in the Real World.”)

As you did in the three weight loss phases of Atkins, make weight control a constant priority in your life. Recreate that attitude and you can continue your success. One good tool is to once and for all-get rid of your "fat" wardrobe. When your clothes are getting tight and you don't have the next size in the closet to retreat to, you'll be forced to confront your weight gain sooner. By never letting yomr weight vary more than 3 to 5 pounds, you'll head off trouble and get off the weight miler coaster for good.

If your metabolism can handle it, I'm about to allow you, in moderation, many of the foods you used to enjoy. (The exception is sugar.) I have worked with too many overweight individuals who have reached their goal weight four or more times, only to gain back the pounds every time. Their fatal flaw: always trying to return, as closely as they could without giving up Atkins altogether, to their old way of eating. I hope you have I .em-ned better on this odyssey.

Here's what I recommend to my patients when they begin Lifetime Maintenance: Promise to weigh yourself at least once a week. Choose a lifetime weight range of 5 pounds, the low number being your goal weight. The higher number will be your maximum allowable weight. Whenever you reach the higher number, you must promise that, within a week, you will begin the Induction phase and quickly switch to OWL until you again reach your goal weight Do this and you will never have more than 5 pounds to lose.

The Nitty. Gritty of Maintenance

What you Should be asking yourself is "What level of carbohydrate consumption do I feel best on?" That's a more rational goal than trying to find the hi gbest number of carbs you can get away with. This may mean you actually stay slighfiy below your CCLM. Many people find they feel betlet on a low level of carbsperhaps only 30 or 35 grams a day-than they do on the most liberal version of the plan. That might be two salads and a couple of helpings of other vegetables. Together with satisfying portions of protein and fat, such an approach could provide good nutrition if you were vigilant about opting for nutrient-dense foods.

Other people feel best on twice that amount of carbohydrate and have the metabolism to support it. That is why CCLMs can vary so greatly from one person to another. This is your opportunity to individualize n perfect eating plan for yourself. Remember, your best carbohydrate level is the one on which you can be happiest and healthiest without.expericravings and regaining weight.

Rules of Lifetime Maintenance

·Adhere to your Critical Carbohydrate Level for Maintenance (CCLM).

·Continue to eat natural, unprocessed, nutrientdense carbohydrates.

·Exercise regularly.

·Continue to lake nutritional supplements, modifying your regimen to meet your needs.

·Develop a strategy for dealing with temptation.

·Never let yourself get more than 5 pounds above your goal weight.

A Lifetime of Delicious Meals

What most of my patients discover by the time they reach the Lifetime Maintenance phase of Atkins is bow endlessly varied, rich and satisfying this way of eating is.

Donna Miller, who came to see me a couple of years ago drained of all energy, beset with allergies and 30 pounds overweight, had always been a bread, bagels and pizza freak. In four months, she went from being a size 12 (almost bursdng at the seams, as she admitted) to being a size 8. In addition, her energy returned almost as soon as we took her off of wheat, sugar and milk. But what was she going to eat?

She was a resourceful woman, and I hope her eating plan sounds as attractive to you as it does to me. For breakfast now she often eats smoked salmon and a small salad or two scrambled eggs with tofu. For lunch, she'll stir-fry or steam vegetables the way the Japanese do, and with them she'll have corned beef or a lean hamburger patty or some fish. For dinner, along with chicken, rib steakor salmon, she likes zucchini, eggplant or asparagus. She also finds she can have lentils, split peas and kasha (buckwheat groats) without gaining weight. She often has the kasha with cinnamon and a few apple slices.

Donna has been expanding her variety of salads, trying greens such as arugula, watercress and endive, since she started doing Atkins. She told me recently that she particularly appreciates the range of possible food alternatives, compared to the rather repetitive high-starch menu she used to be on. What impresses me the most is that every item in her new eating plan is wholesome, fresh and healthy. Frankly, I defy anyone to propose a tastier and more flexible eating plan on which you can remain trim and healthy for a lifetime—than the Atkins program.

Dealing With Weight Gain

But even with flexibility and great food, you can come upon a patch of trouble. What if you're happily eating away and feeling great, and then suddenly you notice those awful pounds and inches are staging a revival? Since you are in Lifetime Maintenance, I know that you've reached your goal weight. Therefore, you're probably no longer in lipolysis, which, by definition, involves an element of fat loss. Newly slim people are no longer trying to shed pounds, and so they don't bum fat for fuel most of the time because they're above their CCLL.

But here's the catch that many people don't see: There is very little leeway before you break through your CCLM to the level at which you begin to gain. A typical nude of average metabolic resistance may find he has a CCLM of .50 grams. As long as he regularly eats no more than 50 grams of carbs a day he will not lose more weight and become too thin. On the other hand, if he starts consuming 60 grams a day, he'll he above his CCLM and will start to regain weight.

At your goal weight, you are, in fact. pretty finely balanced in your carbohydrate intake. Nothing is exact, of course. Life has a way of changing and your weight will, in fact, constantly shift up and down by small increments. The most convenient way to maintain your best weight now is to not ever let that "up" get too far out of hand. If it does, you may find yourself sliding down an uphill path, to coin a phrase.

I recommend that you know your weight—after all, it's one aspect of your general health that you can easily keep track of. Getting on the scale at least once a week is a must for successful weight maintenance. When you find that you've gone 5 pounds or more over your maintenance weight or that your clothes are getting tight, you must put things back on their proper course. And you must do it without delay!

Protect Your Weight Losses

You have invested a lot of effort and psychic energy in the lessons you learned on your weight loss journey. Since you and I both know you have a tendency to put on the pounds, I want you to keep a sharp eye for any resumption of weight gain. Maybe Thanksgiving is coming up, or Christmas, or your birthday, or your spouse's birthday, or your vacation. By the time you celebrate any one of those with a bout of unrestrained indulgence, you may find that instead of being 5 pounds overweight you're 15 pounds overweight. Instead of waiting, act now!

Don't get depressed and give up. Even if you do temporarily get off track, continue to exercise and take your supplements. It's crucial that you don't surrender ail control. Start with Induction and stay on OWL until you've reached your goal weight again, at which time you should ease back into Lifetime MaintenanCe. Exercising, more vigorously after going overboard will also help get you back on the straight and narrow.

Remember, going straight back to the Induction phase is as simple as beginning Atkins in the first place. Do not go back to Lifetime Maintenance without first losing ail you have regained. It's simple. A salad a day, a portion of veggies, plenty of protein and fat and, voila!, you've slashed your weight back in as little as six to eight days, or two or three weeks, depending upon your degree of metabolic resistance.

It's no news to anyone that as we get older, our metabolism tends to slow down a bit, making it harder to maintain the slim body many of us were blessed with in our youth. This means that the CCLM you had in your thirties may not be the CCLM you will be dealing with in your forties, and it is almost definitely not the CCLM you'll have in the decades after that. As you age, you may eventully, ally have to control your carb intake a little more or increase your activity level or perhaps even.botE to maintain your goal weight.

Your strategy here shouldbe very much like the base runher who allows himself to take a lead off first base, but never so far that he cannot scurry back to touch the base should the pitcher suddenly mm to pick him off. Your goal weight is the base you must touch between deviations, and the deviation must never be more than five pounds. Going back briefly to Induction allows you to get back to that ntunlber. Experience has taught rite that people who regain weight after reaching their goal by doing Atkins-.and then don't lose the weight-are the ones who don't go back to Induction at a sign of trouble. The Lifetime Maintenance level they stick to isn't enough to get them back on track.

For consistent success, you must interpose the strict Induction phase between your weight gain and the eventual remm to Lifetime Maintenance. This allows you to re-stabilize your blood chemistry and moderate cravings so you can be in control again.

Uses and Abuses of Induction

Induction not only lump-starts your weight loss, it is also a convenient refuge to which you can retreat whenever you need to get off a weight loss plateau or to get back on the program after a lapse. So if you've fallen off your Lifetime Maintenance program for whatever reason, you can return to Induction, and, like the ignition of an automobile, it will get your engine to turn over and start you down the road again.

if you reached your goal weight before slipping off the wagon for a brief period, you won't have to do In.duction for long—just until you get back into Upolysis and the secondary process of ketosis. You'll know that has happened when you once again experience the ability to be in control of your appetitc the feeling that was such a revelation after the first forty-eight hours doing Induction.

These are perfectly appropriate uses of Induction. However, Induction can be abused and that abuse can ultimately,, threaten your ability to maintain a healthy weight. First of ail, if you retreat to Induction every time you stray, you mey begin to reinforce a dangerous pattern of behavior, By knowing Induction is there as a refuge, if may keep you from following the guidalines of the stage you are in.For a minor infraction or even a day of cheating, there is no need to go back to Induo. tion. simply drop down 5 or 10 grams for a coupie of days, or go back to me prevlous phase. It is importan that you learn how to eat properly as a way of life. Zigzagging back and forth between Induction and Lifetime Maintenance means you have not integrated this new, healthy eating pattern into your life. Another more serious concern ! have Is the impact this back-and-forthing can have on your metabolismn. (See 'The Wrong Way t o Do Atkins" on pages 223-225.) I have heard people say, *1 love doing Atkins, because we can cheat on the weekends, then go back to Induction on Monday morning.” While this behavior pattern may work for the short term, it will probably backfire In more ways than one. It's likely that your metabolism wtfi adapt at a certain point-in a sense, developing a tolerance. People who repeatedly regain weight and go back to Induction sometimes ftnd that they do not experlence the dramatic and easy weight loss they initially enjoyed. Add in the fact that none of us is getting any younger and our metaboLism’s natural tendency is to sloe, down with passing years. finally, your body pays a prlce healthwise if you dramatically swttch back and torth repeatedly lmm a fat-buming to a glucose-burntng metabolism.

If you keep retreating to induction form Lifetime Maintenance, it becomes a form of yo-yo dieting, I’m not saying you shouldn't, go I)ack to innduction when you nsedit, I'm simply saytng don't do it regularly, in the belief that it will always work the same way lot you.

You may be in for a nasty surprise.

The Bountiful World. of Maininance

Lifetime Maintenance not be much different from. OWL for people with high metabolic resistance.If you are one of the lucky folks with low metabolic resistance, you may be able to eat most vegetables—including starchy vegetables, fruit, legumes and whole grains such as oats, barley, millet, wild rice, couscous or buckwheat. You may even be able to handle an occasional potato. But, and this is a significant distinction, that does not mean you can eat all these things in one day. You still have to count carbs to stay at your CCLM. You can begin to use recipes, such as breaded veal chops, that contain some carbohydratc ingredients.

But the last choice, the truly hazardous indulgence, is sweets. Frankly, my suggestion to you is that you restrict your consumption of sweets made with real sugars to the occasional slice of birthday or wedding cake for really special celebrations. Those of you who have had a sizable chunk of your life made miserable by sugar may even decide, after graciously accepting them, to quietly deposit those pieces on somebody else's plate.

While you probably cannot convince your best friend to have her baker make a controlled carl) wedding cake just to satisfy your needs, you can create your own personal world of sweets in yom' kitchen. In recent years, there have been more artificial sweeteners approved for use by the Federal Drug Administration. (See "Artifical Sweeteners" on pages 128-129 for mom on sugar substitutes.) The reeipe seetion at the end of this book will also introduce you to sugarless versions of many classic sweet treats.

Your Metoholic Tendencies Are Never Cured

They never are, you know. The fat you just sent to kingdom come was one symptom of a chrtmic metabolic condition. You do have and always will have a metabolic tendency to be overweight. The blood-sugar imbalance that I identified for you in Chapters will not go away permanently because you have'taken a nutritional path that circumvents it. All you have to do is go back to eating the way you once did, or even partially so, and you will arouse tho sleeping demon. In very short order, your pancreas will once again secrete large quantities of insulin, and you'll suffer the symptoms of unstable blood sugar-jitters, brain fog, afternoon fatigue and the like. Then your insulin resistance will lead inevitably to the production of more insulin and that, in turn, to weight gain if your carts intake exceeds your tolerance. '

Need I remind you thatyou don't want to go tbere?

But What About My Bad Habits?

If you want to be healthy and free of surplus body fat, then you cannot return to a perfectly random and careless pattern of eating. That's why one of the chief purposes of this book has been to build good habits into your lifestyle. Of course, we all have bad habits. Food is so confusing, so delicious, so psychologically essential even at times when it's not physiologically necessnary. We all eat for pleasure and for reassurance, as well as for nutrition.

It may have been a hard week,at work, and come the week,md you definitely intend to engage in some modest pigging out. I, too, enjoy the occasional binge;The question really is what type of binge. People usually binge on chocolates, desserts, cookies, ice cream and candy. Today there is a world of controlled carb products in all these tastetempting categories, and I strongly recommend that they become part of your Lifetime Maintenance program so that you will enjoy the maximum eating pleasure. But even with these remarkable inventions, you could, by overdoing, still get into trouble. A controlled carb chocolate bar may have only 2 grams of carbohydratesthat impact on your blood sugar oompaned to 17 to 20 cerb grams in the sugar-filled variety of comparable size. But eat five ofthem and you could well be back to the same kind of destructive behavior that got you in tronble in the first plac.

So you have two choices:' You can use some of these.delicious treats in moderation, the way they are meant to be used. Or, if your absolutely must binge, binge on foods. I say that not because you an't gain a pound or two if you put away too many lamb chops, but because protein are fundamentally serf-limiting. Most everyone has eaten thirty cookies at one sitting at some time in their life, and many carbohydrate addicts have done it hundreds of 6roes, but how many people have eaten ten hard-boeled eggs at one sitting? Protein nnd fat foods satiate appetite quite quickly. It really isn't possible to go on munching them endlessly, and hardly anyone desires to. (Nuts and seeds may be the exception, but they are still better than cookies.) That doesn't mean a chicken breast doesn't make a delicious snack, and that, combined with a few other things, it couldn't constitute a delicious minor binge.

The crucial fact about protein foods is that they don't unleash a metabolic tidal wave in your body. Very few people get addicted to protein. Your blood-giucose level doesn't sharply rise and fall when you sit down to eat a Cobb salad. But it does just that when you chow down a slice of pie. That leads to the "need" for another slice and then another.

I don't want to scare you with the prospect of never eating another piece of Grandma's pumpkin pie. If you weren't an uncontrolled carbohydrate addict with an obesity problem that only this program has been able to cure, then you might cautiously see if you can indulge occasionally without causing noticeable aftereffects.

Trigger foods-..ones to which you ate addicted-are the ones you can't stop eating, and they are the very foods you should not add back, It might be peanuts, chocolate, potato chips or something else. If you find you are always planning when you an have your next portion of that food, cut it out aitogetber,'or be sure to have it just once a week, perhaps as a Friday night treat. Only you know whether the first or the second strategy will work better for you. Remember, it's about what works! (For more on bingeing and strategies to minimize its damage, see Chapter 19.)

If you aren't addicted, then you have room to maneuver. The occasional slice of pizza or the ice cream cone just might be permissible. I don't recommend such compromises, I simply recognize that human nature demands them now and then. But be careful: Remember 5 pounds above your goal weight is the maximum; then take yourself firmly in hand and get back on plan. A firm resolution to deal with weight regain immediately will serve you well. An even better idea is to hold out for sugarless, full-fat ice cream.

And, don't forget, the way you're eating now is healthful. Junk food isn't, and it isn't going to make you feel good. After you've been off it for a while, the ice cr·.m or the pizza go down nicely, but once you've eaten them, you may notice a temporary return of some familiar old symptoms. Many of my patients tell me that after not eating junk food for months while doing Atkins, the distress they experience when they do eat it has cured them of these urges once and for all.

Influences Beyond Your Control

As you have learned, a proper lifetime eating plan involvas utilizing ail four phases of Atkins. That's because, much as you may not want to hear it, maintaining your goal weight can provide a challenge or two. Factors independent of your appetite can influence it. No one's weight is constant. There will be times in your life when you gain some weight back. A change in activity levela mom sedentary job, for example-hormonal changes, the addition of certain medications and simply the passage of years can slow your metabolism.

Fortunately, you'll have developed the confidence to know that those smail weight gains can be easily controlled. But such changes also mean that you may need to adjust your CCLM Imm time to lime, in effect going back to 'OWL or to Pre-Maintenance or to Induetion for a week or so. If you are eating just as you al. ways have on Lifetime Maintenance and you suddenly begin to gain weight, try reducing your carb intake by 5 grams and see if your weight stabilizes. If so, that number is your new CCLM. Of course, you will then also want to trim off those extra pounds by temporarily dropping below that number.

Some Porting Recommendations

For those of you who have been successful, your nutritional voyage with me seems to be almost over. It will continue-indefinitely, I hope-but now you're driving the car. I want to leave you with eight basic principles for your lifetime doing Atkins:

1. Be food aware—remember that fresh meat, fish, fowl, vegetables, nuts, seeds and occasional fruits and stsrcbes are the foods nature intended you to eat. That packaged refined carbohydrate stuff in the supcrmarket puts money in somebody's pocket. And it puts garbage into your stomach. This is the only body you've got. Notice how good it feels now! Notice how much better it looks! Keep it that way!

2. Be wary endlessly wary—of sugar and corn syrup, and white flour and cornstarch. Look at the labels of any packaged food you are considering and avoid (like the plague) those that contain sugar, corn syrup and honey. Apd read those labels for the carbohydrate content of the foods you want to cat

3. Individualize your personal eating plan. Try new foods. the variety of foods that you like and enjoy. It will help to pm, vent you from going back to eating foods that you have enjoyed in the past, but which simply aren't good for you. Usc controlled carb alternatives as Well as the recipes provided in the recipes section of this book, or on our website at www.atkinscenter, com, or in my companion cookbook. I most strongly recommend that you develop a menu that's appealing, tasty and satisfying to you. Once you're happy with eating healthy foods, your nutritional future is almost assuredly going to be a healthy one.

4. Continue your already established and effective program of vitanutrient supplementation. I've told you some of what you need to know. Chapter 23 provides further details.

5. Consume caffeine and alcohol only in moderation.

6. Remember that addictions can be managed only through abstinence.

7. Take care of weight regain promptly and effectively by returning to the Induction and OWL phases for as long as it takes to get back to your goal weight. Swear that you will never allow yourself to be more than 5 pounds and two weeks worth of Induction away from your goal weight.

8. Make exercise a regular part of your life.

One final word. It is well known that virtually all individuals regain ail or most of their hard-lost pounds within five years.2 But when a program changes the composition of the diet, not the quantity, .and when pre-maintenance teaching and the 5-pound rule are consistently applied, recidivism is a rare phenomenon, indeed. My experience resoundingly confirms this fact.

Instead of bouncing you back into the land of the fat, the four phases of Atkins welcome you permanently into the home of the slim.

The Wrong Way to Do Atkins

Over the years, I have been amazed at the way people ignore the advice in this book and devise ways to abuse the Atkins Nutritional Approach by doing It their own way. Here are nine of the most common misconceptions among Atkins abusers:

1. MisconcepUon: Atkins can be used as a shortterm or crash diet.

Really: If you do Induction for two weeks to drop 10 pounds and then go back to your old way of eating, you will be treating it as a crash diet. But that goes against everything I recommend, and will lead to problems in the long run.

2. Misconcepfion: You can lose weight doing Atkins, then return to your old way of eating. Reality: Do this, and as with your past attempts, you will neglect to change those eating habits that ensure you always regain lost weight.

3. Misconception: You can focus solely on losing weight and minimize the maintenance aspects.

Reality: Any weight loss program that does not segue into weight maintenance is doomed to failure. The eating plan you will follow during Ufe

time Maintenance ts likely to be somewhere between your menu during the Induction phase and the way you ate before you started Alkins.

4. Mlsconoeptlon: You can eat any fo(xl so long as you do not exceed 20 grame of catbe a day.

Reality: If you eat junk foods or other nutrient

deficient carbohydrate foods instead of vegetables and other nutrient-dense foods, you win miss most of the benefits i write about and you certainly will not be tostering long-term health.

5. Misconception: You can use Atkins for weight loss, but you don't have to bother wtth exercise and supplements if you don't have any health problems.

Reality: If you don't supplement with vitanulfients and exercise regularly, you may take off pounds, but you will miss out on important health benefits. And everyone needs exercise: It is not related solely to weight loss.

6.Misconception: You can just continue to do Induction until you lose all of your weight.

Rsellty: You will lose weight more qutcldy if you continue doing Induction, but you won't learn how to keep that weight off permanently if you don't move through the four phases. More important, you will miss out on the benefits of the phytochemicals present in health-promoting carbohy. drate foods.

7.Misconception: You can go back to eating your favorite foods 'after you lose weight.

Reality: Your favorite foods may well be your problem foods. Unless you acknowledge and learn how to deal with your addiclions, you are doomed to regain your weight and fall back into the dangerous cycle of high blood sugar and overproduction of insulin.

Misconception: Ypu can do Induction during the week and binge 'on weekends and still lose or maintain weight.

Reallty: When you do Atkins during the week arid then cheat on the weekends, for several days after your binge, you are no longer buming fat. At most, you could be in the fat-burning state for only three days each .week. In addition, you may have oversttrnulated your insulln response, increasing the metabolic risk factors underlying your weight problem. Remember that when you bum fat, dietary fat is also being burned. However, if you combine high om'be with 'hiGh lat. the typical American diet—-you can be increasing your cardiovascular risks.

9. Misconception: You can do Atkins while following a Low-fat regimen.

Reality: To encourage your body to burn its own stores of fat, you nsed to reduce the amount of carbohydrates you eat, meaning you need to eat primarily foods rich in protein and Hat. Remember that essential fatty acids play a role In normal metabolic function. Fat also plays a role in stabilizing blood sugar and increasing satiety. If fat intake is too Low, you will not burn fat aggresively. Moreover, excess protein converts to glucose and can keep Hat from becoming the primary fuel.

KEY POINTS!

·Lifetime Maintenance provides you with a way of eating that allows you to stay slim for the rest of your life.

·To maintain your goal weight you must know your metabolic needs.

·Don't stray more than 5 pounds from your goal weight.

·Don't be afraid to rem to Induction, or OWL, for a few days if you need to restart your fat-burning engine.

TIPS:

·Stay away from foods containing sugar.

·If you feel the need to binge try eating a few hardboiled eggs instead of chips or candy, or use many of the controlled carbohydratc products.

·Variety is the spice of life; try new foods.