by Don Swayze
Limiting the amount of carbohydrates that you consume to a minimum is one of the key elements in achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. This is what the Atkins diet approach teaches you. Although the idea of using low carbs for weight loss is not a new approach, dieting the Atkins way shows us how to carry out a plan which has been proven effective, easy to use, enabling you to still eat great food, and still satisfying your craving for carbohydrates.
Below is an introduction to the first 2 phases of the Atkins plan and how these phases work
The first phase is even more important if you have a lot of weight to lose. It is the introductory phase and will jump-start you to the program through limiting your carb intake to about 20 grams of carbohydrates every day for at least two weeks.
During this phase your diet will include protein rich foods such as all kinds of chicken, whole eggs, cooked beef, and a wide variety of fish. You will also need food which is high in 'good' fat such as dairy products and olive oil. For your carb meal you can have a green salad with a low carb dressing such as olive oil for example. You may also have vegetables such as green beans and broccoli.
The second phase of the Atkins program (phase two) is what is called 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.
What is different about this phase is that you start to add five grams of net carbs to your already twenty daily grams everyday per week, until you stop loosing weight. This means that you may 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.
Once the weight loss stops, you will need to drop 5 grams of carbs per week again until you determine how many grams of those carbs you can consume whilst still losing weight. This average is of 40 – 60 grams per day for the average person. You should stick with this phase until you drop between 5-10 lbs.
Don Swayze is contributing weight loss editor at http://www.LowCarb300.com. This article may be reproduced provided that its complete content, links and author byline are kept intact and unchanged. No additional links permitted. Hyperlinks and/or URLs must remain both human clickable and search engine spiderable.
