3. Individualize your personal eating plan. Try new foods. Increase the variety of foods that you like and enjoy. It will help to prevent you from going back to eating foods that you have enjoyed in the past, but which simply aren ' t good for you. Use controlled carb alternatives as well as the recipes provided in the recipes section of this book, or on our website at www. atkinscenter. com, or in my companion cookbook. I most strongly recommend that you develop a menu that ' s appealing, tasty and satisfying to you. Once you ' re happy with eating healthy foods, your nutritional future is almost assuredly going to be a healthy one.
4. Continue your already established and effective program of vitanutrient supplementation.
I ' ve told you some of what you need to know. Chapter 23 provides further details. 5. Consume caffeine and alcohol only in moderation. 6. Remember that addictions can be managed only through abstinence. 7. Take care of weight regain promptly and effectively by returning to the Induction and OWL phases for as long as it takes to get back to your goal weight. Swear that you will never allow yourself to be more than 5 pounds and two weeks worth of Induction away from your goal weight. 8. Make exercise a regular part of your life.
One final word. It is well known that virtually all individuals regain all or most of their hardlost pounds within five years. 2 But when a program changes the composition of the diet, not the quantity, and when pre-maintenance teaching and the 5-pound rule are consistently applied, recidivism is a rare phenomenon, indeed. My experience resoundingly confirms this fact.
Instead of bouncing you back into the land of the fat, the four phases of Atkins welcome you permanently into the home of the slim.
===================================================================== The Wrong Way to Do Atkins
Over the years, I have been amazed at the way people ignore the advice in this book and devise ways to abuse the Atkins Nutritional Approach by doing it their own way. Here are nine of the most common misconceptions among Atkins abusers:
1. Misconception: Atkins can be used as a short-term or crash diet. Reality: If you do Induction for two weeks to drop 10 pounds and then go back to your old way of eating, you will be treating it as a crash diet. But that goes against everything I recommend, and will lead to problems in the long run.
2. Misconception: You can lose weight doing Atkins, then return to your old way of eating. Reality: Do this, and as with your past attempts, you will neglect to change those eating habits that ensure you always regain lost weight.
3. Misconception: You can focus solely on losing weight and minimize the maintenance aspects. Reality: Any weight loss program that does not segue into weight maintenance is doomed to failure. The eating plan you will follow during Lifetime Maintenance is likely to be somewhere between your menu during the Induction phase and the way you ate before you started Atkins.
4. Misconception: You can eat any food so long a: you do not exceed 20 grams of carbs a day. Reality: If you eat junk foods or other nutrient deficient carbohydrate foods instead of vegetables and other nutrient-dense foods, you will miss most of the benefits I write about and you certainly will not be fostering long-term health.
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