The New Atkins Made Easy (25 page)

Your snack options expand in Pre-Maintenance (Fine-Tuning), although you can continue to enjoy tasty, convenient Atkins snacks and shakes. If you have the fixings in the fridge and pantry, you can also put together these tasty and portable snacks in minutes.

• Cottage cheese and orange slices

• Apple slices spread with almond or peanut butter

• Half a pear with blue cheese

• Greek yogurt with papaya slices

• Atkins Trail Mix: nuts, seeds, no-sugar-added shredded coconut, and a cut-up Atkins bar

• Prosciutto-wrapped pineapple

• Provolone-wrapped kiwi slices

• Carrot sticks with hummus

• Air-popped popcorn sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese

Okay, here I go again. Now that you're homing in on your goal weight, there's really no excuse not to add physical activity to your weight-control program. It might speed the loss of those last few pounds, and without question it will help you maintain your soon-to-be-achieved new weight. If you've started exercising regularly, you're already on the right track. And if you've been working out all along, it might be time to intensify your efforts.

The Centers for Disease Control recommend that adults get a minimum of two and a half hours of moderate-intensity exercise a week. But any physical activity is better than none, and if you're new to exercise, you can certainly begin with less and gradually increase in intensity and duration. Make sure to include both resistance exercise, also known as strength training, to increase your muscle endurance
and strength, and cardiovascular exercise. You can achieve the former with hand weights or resistance bands, or simply by using your body weight, as you do with push-ups. Brisk walking, jogging, swimming, and bicycling are all great ways to achieve cardiovascular or aerobic exercise. Numerous websites offer videos and guided instruction.

The closer you get to your goal weight, the more your body resists letting go of its excess baggage. Take the following into consideration:

• 
You may want to adjust your goal.
If you feel good about yourself at the weight you've achieved, terrific. You may have reached your natural weight, which is the one you can maintain easily. Or perhaps your original goal was too modest and you've realized that you could actually shave off even more pounds now that you've experienced such success on Atkins. If so, there's no reason not to dial your goal weight down another 10 pounds or so.

• 
Take a break.
Or you may decide to hang out at a certain weight for a few months, get comfortable with it, and then take off the final 10 pounds.

• 
It's not just about pounds.
Another possibility is that although your weight is a bit higher than you'd originally aimed for, you've lost inches and can fit into clothes you haven't worn in years. The point is that there is no magic number, just the right one for you.

• 
You'll need to experiment to find your limits.
Figuring out which food you can or cannot handle is important for long-term weight control. Wouldn't you rather know for a fact that eating potatoes or bananas just isn't worth the price?

• 
Your weight loss may slow to a crawl
, perhaps only a half pound a week. This is both deliberate—so that you can expand your carb
intake and food choices—and natural. Weight loss obviously slows the closer you get to where your body naturally “wants” to be. And losing slowly gives you time to get really comfortable as you transition to a permanent way of eating.

Even though you're almost at your goal, adding carbs and new foods can cause some frustrations. Here's how to handle them—or accept them.

• 
You may experience cravings and uncontrollable hunger
as you add back foods you have not eaten in some time. See
page 131
for how to proceed.

• 
You may wind up on a plateau.
If you've already experienced one or more plateaus in OWL, you know all about that exercise in delayed gratification. If you've been spared this frustrating experience to date, my advice is to first ascertain that it's truly a plateau, meaning you're doing everything correctly. If so, reduce your daily Net Carb intake by 10 grams and wait it out as patiently as you can. For a review, see
page 140
.

• 
You may stumble upon your Net Carb tolerance for weight maintenance
in what initially appears to be a plateau. To see if this is the case, step down 10 grams of Net Carbs daily for at least a week. If weight loss resumes, go up another 5 grams, and so forth.

The day you've dreamed of for months has finally arrived. You've reached your goal weight! Whether you've melted away 20 pounds, shed 50 pounds, or joined the bye-bye-100-pounds club, congratulations on a job well done. Can you sit back and relax? Sure. Can you
pat yourself on the back? Absolutely. Can you celebrate by pigging out on all those foods you've forsaken for the duration? No way! In fact, you aren't even ready to leave Phase 3 yet. How come? As the old saying goes,
losing
weight is easy; the hard part is
maintaining
your new weight. That's exactly what you begin to do in Phase 3, and that's why this phase is considered a dress rehearsal for Phase 4, Lifetime Maintenance. For the next four weeks your job is to maintain your goal weight.

To stay at your new weight, you need to know exactly how many grams of Net Carbs you can eat each day. Hint: it's usually 5 or 10 grams higher than the highest personal carb balance number you achieved while still losing weight. You'll also be assessing the ease or difficulty of keeping your weight constant at that level. The highest level of carb intake you can push yourself to may not be the level at which you're the most comfortable.

In addition to monitoring your weight for the next month, stay alert to those old familiar indicators that you know all too well from when you began Atkins: low energy, carb cravings, and unreasonable hunger. If you're dragging around, feeling jittery, lusting after certain foods, or ravenous by the time your next meal or snack rolls around, chances are you've pushed yourself too high. It's likely you're also having a hard time maintaining your new weight at this unsustainable level, although a swing of 2 or 3 pounds from day to day is normal. Continue to use weight averaging instead of a single day's weight as an indicator.

If you're struggling to maintain your weight at this level, simply back down by 5 grams of Net Carbs daily and see if that's easier to handle. If that doesn't do the job, go down another 5 grams. This process may involve some trial and error, during which you may also find that
you've reintroduced certain foods that are giving you problems, perhaps by stimulating cravings or uncontrollable hunger. If you suspect that particular foods are sabotaging your progress, eliminate them for several days to see whether things improve before trying to introduce them again.

Once you find the number of grams of Net Carbs that's sustainable in terms of weight maintenance and the other indicators discussed above, remain at that level for four weeks before moving to Phase 4. Just to be clear, don't leave Phase 3 until your weight has remained constant for four weeks! This back-and-forth business may seem like a drag now that you've reached your goal weight. But knowing exactly what you can and cannot handle enables you to stay in control in the coming months—and years.

Q.
How do I know when I've reached the right weight for me?

A.
There is no single right or wrong weight. Your body type, age, hormonal status, activity level, and genetics all play a role. As we've discussed, you may be able to achieve a lower weight, but if it's a struggle to maintain it, you may want to accept that being 5 or even 10 pounds heavier is where your body naturally wants to be. Again, inches count as much as pounds. As you tone your abdominals and other muscles with regular physical activity, your body will appear slimmer. When you come to a point where you're comfortable with your weight at this time in your life, that's the place to remain.

Q.
Can I eat any low-carb product when I'm in Phase 3?

A.
In Phase 1, you can have low-carb foods with Net Carb counts of 3 grams per serving; that increases to 6 grams per serving in OWL, and to 9 grams in this phase. In Lifetime Maintenance, the number rises to 10 grams or more, assuming your carb tolerance allows.

Q.
Can I have more than one or two glasses of wine now that I have reached my goal weight?

A.
Yes, if it doesn't cause weight gain or leave you vulnerable to overeating the snack foods that often accompany alcohol. I generally recommend a single glass for women and up to two for men, but you know your own tolerance. If you regain weight or lose control, drop back to a single glass or none. Also continue to avoid high-carb beer and mixers made with added sugar.

Q.
Why am I experiencing cravings I haven't had for months?

A.
There are two possible explanations. Either you're simply eating too many carbs and not burning primarily fat for energy anymore (remember, fat burning suppresses your appetite) or you've reintroduced a food or food group that's spiking your blood sugar. Fruit may be the culprit, particularly if you're not accompanying it with fat or protein to moderate the impact on your blood sugar. Cut back by 10 grams of Net Carbs a day and eliminate the foods you're added recently. Then reintroduce them slowly, one by one, to find out which ones are creating cravings.

Q.
How can I tame my sweet tooth?

A.
There are two approaches: satisfy it or eliminate it. Satisfy your sweet tooth with acceptable substitutes, such as an Atkins Endulge bar. If you're able to have such treats without overdoing them and without causing cravings, fine. If not, eliminate any foods that may be triggering cravings for sweets until you get the situation under control.

Q.
What desserts can I have in this phase?

A.
In addition to Endulge bars, plus the berries, cherries, and melon you started to eat in Phase 2, you can have almost any other fruit, as well as other desserts with no added sugar and no more than 9 grams of Net Carbs.

The big question, of course, is how to know when to transition to Phase 4, Lifetime Maintenance. If you can answer all the following questions in the affirmative, go ahead. Otherwise, hold off until you have three yeses.

• Are you at your goal or adjusted goal weight?

• Has your weight remained constant for the last four weeks?

• Are cravings and undue hunger no longer a problem?

Before you get to Chapter 8, where you'll learn how to transition from a weight-loss program to a weight-maintenance program—that means the rest of your slim, energized, healthy life!—meet Gretchen M. Her ongoing weight-loss journey on Atkins is nothing less than amazing. She has already lost an unbelievable 300 pounds and still has another 100 to go. When you read her story you'll be as convinced as I am that she'll reach her goal weight—and stay there! Gretchen knows for a fact that she will never fall back into her old life. “I've been through it all and nothing will make me go back to the bad old days,” she declares.