they had added on. Keeping a food diary is an indispensable tool for keeping an eye on your food intake and connecting it with patterns that may hinder progress.
Is it possible that you may have forgotten some of the rules of Atkins? Let ' s run down the list of possible errors:
• Did you go to the supermarket and pick up low fat foods? Always remember that manufacturers make up for the flavor missing in these foods by adding highcarb fillers and sugar. Not only do such dreadful artificial foods have no place when doing Atkins but most of them are spectacularly unhealthy. Pry open the lid on the garbage can and stuff them in. That ' s where they belong.
• Check for the hidden carbs in prepared foods. Many canned and dried soups, salad dressings, sauces and gravies and frozen vegetables in sauce contain thickeners such as cornstarch, fillers such as milk solids and even sugar.
• Watch out for condiments. Barbecue sauce, ketchup and sandwich spreads often have added sugar in one form or another. Teriyaki sauce? Three grams of carbohydrate in one tablespoon. If it ' s your passion, you need to count the carbs. A tablespoon of skim milk or lemon juice each has 1 gram of carbohydrate, a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar more than 2 grams. The numbers add up, especially if your " tablespoon " is more like a quarter-cup splash.
• Avoid aspartame. Although the cause is as yet unknown, clinical observations show that certain individuals find weight loss slows with excessive intake of aspartame, the artificial sweetener sold as NutraSweet, and Equal ®.
• Stay out of the java jungle. Excessive caffeine( found not only in coffee but in tea, chocolate and many soft drinks) has been shown to cause a hypoglycemic( low blood sugar) reaction, which will provoke cravings and cause you to overeat. Omitting caffeine may be a big sacrifice for you, but, in my experience, weight loss often starts up again as soon as people remove aspartame and caffeine from their regimen.
• Don ' t go whole hog on the cheese and nuts. These are acceptable foods, but they do contain some carbohydrates. If you ' ve been munching without mercy, scale back the cheese and nuts. Then see what happens. Not much? Cut them out altogether for a week or two and see if that has an effect.
Breaking Free
If you ' ve looked through all the suggestions I ' ve just offered and found precious few clues to explain why your weight loss efforts are stalled, you may indeed be on a plateau. If you ' ve been on many diets in your lifetime, you may be surprised to discover that you ' ve plateaued at the same point in the past. These are the weights at which your body naturally starts to resist weight loss. It may be that your perception of what you should weigh is inappropriate and unhealthy. It ' s unlikely that at 45 you can be quite as slim as you were at 18. It may be that if you are unable to lose, it ' s because you are already where you should be.
And if that definitely isn ' t the case, you really should lose more. Don ' t panic-the fat-burning engine usually starts up again.
I recommend spending a week in close examination of what you ' re eating. You might want to keep that food diary I mentioned earlier. It ' s easy to forget one or two spots of indulgence. Try
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