Atkins Maintenance

 

The final phase of the Atkins diet plan is lifetime maintenance. This is the time to continue your new eating plan at a maintenance level and stay at your ideal weight. The habits you have created now will become a permanent way of life. 

During the third phase, before maintenance, you learned exactly how many grams of carbohydrates your body can tolerate and still maintain your ideal weight. In this phase, you will put this approach into practice and learn to live with your ideal carbohydrate count on a daily basis.

During lifetime maintenance, you will continue to expand your food selections and consume more grams of carbohydrate than before. 

Depending on your specific metabolic needs, you may be able to eat some of the foods you enjoyed before starting your weight loss program. If you decide to eat these foods, you should moderate them and consume them in moderation.

Keeping your daily carbohydrate count around your ideal carbohydrate count is the easiest way to maintain your weight loss.

Your weight may fluctuate by two to three pounds from time to time, but this is perfectly normal. This weight fluctuation is due to hormonal changes in your body.

During maintenance, you will also learn to overcome your previous bad habits. Losing weight and keeping it off means dealing with real-world situations. 

You will develop coping strategies for stress eating, emotional eating, and holiday eating. You will also develop plans for dealing with eating out at restaurants. The challenges during the maintenance phase are many, but they can be overcome.

It's about preparation. When you have followed the Atkins diet plan for a long time, you have learned exactly how many grams of carbohydrates you can handle. 

You have also learned which foods trigger carbohydrate cravings and which foods trigger binge eating. You have developed coping strategies over the course of your OWL and the pre-maintenance phases that you will need to use during lifetime maintenance.

To prepare for lifelong maintenance, make a promise to never return to your previous weight. Make a commitment by donating all your “fat” clothes. This way, if you start to gain more than five pounds, you know that you need to buckle up and eat better.

Also, write in a journal or list format all the benefits of getting your new slimmer size. Write about how much better you feel and how healthy you are. This will nurture your new way of life in your mind and heart.

Choose your target lifetime maintenance weight range. This is an acceptable weight range for you. For example, if your initial weight loss goal was 165 pounds, your lifetime maintenance goal will be 160-170 pounds. 

If your weight starts to climb all the way to 170 pounds, then you know that you are being too lenient with your carb grams. Never allow your weight to vary more than 3 to 5 pounds in any direction.

Commit to weighing yourself at least once a week.

This weekly weigh-in will give you a good idea of ​​how you are doing on your maintenance schedule. Use that weekly weight as a guide for your eating approach for the following week.

In addition to these guidelines, be sure to continue with an exercise program. Your metabolism completely depends on the amount of exercise you are doing.

The commitment to exercise goes hand in hand with the commitment to continue eating correctly.

By following these guidelines, you can make lifetime maintenance simple and easy.