What to Expect on a Low Carb Diet
Limiting the amount of carbohydrates that you eat to a minimum is one of the key ingredients in achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. This is what the Atkins diet teaches you. Although the concept of using low carbs to lose weight is not a new approach, doing it the Atkins way shows us how to carry out a plan that is proven effective, easy to use, enables you to still eat great foods, and still satisfies your craving for carbohydrates.
Below is an introductory of the first 2 phases of the Atkins plan and how they work.
Table of Contents
1. First Phase
The first phase is especially important if you have a lot of weight to lose. It is the introductory phase and jump-starts you to the program by limiting your carb intake to about 20 grams of carbohydrates on a daily basis for at least two weeks.
During this phase your diet should include protein rich foods such as all kinds of chicken, whole eggs, cooked beef, and a variety of fish. You also need foods that are high in the ‘good’ fats such as dairy products and olive oil. For your carb meal you may have a green salad with a low carb dressing such as olive oil. You may also have foods such as green beans and broccoli.
2. Second Phase
The second portion of the Atkins program (phase two) is what they call the ongoing weight loss phase, or the OWL. During this phase, you must keep on eating the foods that are high in protein and fat.
3. What’s Different in Phase-2
What is different about this phase is that you start by adding five grams of net carbs to your already twenty grams per day everyday per week, until you stop loosing weight. That means that you can have from 20 – 25 grams a day the first week, 25 – 30 grams a day the next week, 30 – 35 grams a day the following week, etc. until you stop loosing weight.
4. Keep Weight Drop Momentum
Once the weight loss discontinues, you need to drop 5 grams of carbs per week again until you determine how many grams of those carbs that you can consume while continuing to lose weight. This is an average of 40 – 60 grams per day for for the average person. You should stick with this phase until you drop about 5-10 lbs.
