At this point, you have reached your goal weight and learnt to select different food groups offering right amount of carbohydrates to maintain the weight loss. Also, Atkins lifetime maintenance teaches you to indulge in some of your favorite foods without worrying about putting the weight back. Maintain the ideal ACE and don’t let your weight fluctuate more than 3 pounds. Weight loss is not just physically tiring but also mentally straining, so take a break also by going for a holiday without counting calories.
It’s important to keep the attitude you possessed in earlier 3 stages to keep weight loss constant as a priority in your life. Always weigh yourself once a week to keep a check on you. If, you see any change towards higher side; go back to reducing carbohydrate intake to reach your ACE.
To maintain your ideal weight for life, assume certain principles as rules of your life:
- Be conscious about what you eat, try to eat only fresh food and not canned.
- Always stay away from sugar, corn syrup, cornstarch and white flour and be a smart buyer by keeping foods, which have these away from you.
- Variety is the spice of life so follow this in your eating plan to keep yourself motivated to be on right path. Try new recipes with food groups you can eat and enjoy.
- Take less of caffeine and alcohol
- Be regular with your vitamins and nutrient supplements.
- Act promptly when you see your weight climbing up.
- Very importantly, exercise should become an integral part of your life.
Follow these principles also with Atkins Nutritional Approach™ to stay slim and fit for life.
Congratulation! You are just one-step far from your goal. By this time, it would be easy to see the results and now there would only be few pounds more left to lose. Though now seeing the final stage so close, you might want to rush to it, but this phase requests you to hold on to your horse cause its important to know the importance of lifetime maintenance rather than just weight loss. Therefore, now it’s the time to go on in a slower pace.
The phase of pre-maintenance focuses on creating the optimal lifetime eating program, one that keeps you fit so perfectly you will want to stay on it for lifelong. The optimal lifetime eating program lets you:
- To look at more food choices without misusing them
- To find out the foods that can result in sloping you from the path of weight loss
- To make a mindful choice for serving you health for the rest of your life
- To find out how flexible Atkins is
- To learn dealing with food addiction
- To discover the ways to defeat the problems created by making unhealthy food choices
This phase will work by increasing carbohydrates intake by 5 grams more to the point until only one pound or so will losing from your weight and not more. This method may sound like complete madness but it’s very important for lifelong weight loss, as it would suggest you to get familiar to future eating habits.
By slowing losing the last few pounds, your body would become used to the change in carbohydrates and would make proper carb intake automatic for you. Third phase of Atkins not only make you slim but also healthy for life. By following pre-maintenance, you would know what’s best for you and what you should do to please yourself and not others.
If by now, goal weight is reached no need to increase carbohydrates further for a month and then increase by 10grams more and see if you gain any weight. If you do then drop 10 grams again from your diet and this would show you, your Atkins Carbohydrate Equilibrium.
If not losing or gaining weights then you would have to move around this Atkins Carbohydrate Equilibrium until it happens. It would take around 3 months to lose finally last few pounds, but with clear ACE, it would be a perfect success.
