ATKINS DIET Lifetime Maintenance of this Low Carb Weight Loss Plan

ATKINS DIET Lifetime Maintenance

The bells should be ringing and the flags flying, you are 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?

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! Fortunately with Atkins, such pessimism is unwarranted. This is not to say you don’t need a lifetime maintenance plan accompanied by unceasing vigilance. The former is the lifetime maintenance phase; the determination to succeed is your responsibility. I would expect that as you traveled along the slow pre maintenance path, one day you realized you were actually in life 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 pre maintenance were conscious 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.

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 maintenance will:

Provide you with a way of eating that allow 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 3-5 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 carb choices, which will allow you to continue to stay in control of your eating habits, feel you’re best and maintain improved blood lipid levels. Optimize you’re blood pressure, energy and more.
Teach you how to adjust your carb consumption when metabolic circumstances change, before you find yourself regaining inches/weight.
Give you a sense of accomplishment and confidence that spills over into the rest of you’re life.

How to Do Lifetime Maintenance Properly

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 habits. 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 CCLM 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 2-3 pounds.

Carbohydrate Gram Levels and Metabolic Resistance for Maintenance

Metabolic resistance approx. CCLM range:

High 25-40 g of carbs per day
Average 40-60 g of carbs per day
Low 60-90 g of carbs per day
Regular exerciser 90 or more g of carbs per day

The Nitty Gritty of Maintenance

What you should be asking yourself is: “What level of carbs consumption do I feel best on?” That’s a more rational goal than trying to find the highest number of carbs you can get away with. This may mean you actually stay slightly below your CCLM. Many people find they feel better on a low level of carbs, perhaps only 30-35 grams a day, than they do on the most liberal version of the plan. Other people feel best on twice that amount of carbs and have the metabolism to support it that is why CCLM can vary so greatly from one person to another. Remember your best carb level is the one on which you can be happiest and healthiest without experiencing cravings and regaining weight.

Dealing with Weight Gain

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 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 burn 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 male of average age 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 be above his CCLM and will start to regain weight.

At your goal weight you are in fact pretty balanced in your carb 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, its one aspect of your general health that you can easily keep track of getting on the scales at least once a week is a must for successful weight maintenance. When you find that you’ve gone 5 pounds or more over you’re 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!

Don’t get depressed and give up. Even if you do temporarily get off track, continue to exercise. It’s crucial that you don’t surrender all 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.
Remember going straight back to the induction phase is as simple as beginning Atkins in the first place. Do not go back to life maintenance without losing all 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 6-8 days or two or three weeks depending upon you’re degree of metabolic resistance.

Next: ATKINS DIET Some Parting Recommendations > > >

Atkins Diet Lifetime Maintenance of the Atkins Diet Low Carb Weight Loss Plan. The bells should be ringing and the flags flying, you are there!!! You’ve arrived at the place where millions of overweight people have never been since they were children . . .