THE NEW ATKINS FOR A NEW YOU
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Whether your ACE is 30 or 100, as you develop new habits, they’ll ultimately become second nature. You’ll probably notice that you will increasingly gravitate to healthy foods and find it easier to stay away from problematic ones. Again, we advise you, as much as possible, to avoid table sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, other forms of sugar, and foods made with them, including fruit juice, energy drinks, and commercial smoothies. Once you get out of the sugar habit, you’ll likely find that such foods lose their hold over you and may taste overly sweet. And now that you know that such foods wreak havoc on your body’s ability to burn fat, sabotaging your efforts at weight control, you have good reason to steer clear of them.
The same goes for foods made with white flour or other refined grains. White bread, pasta, potatoes, grits, and other starchy foods may now not taste as wonderful as you remembered them. In fact, much of the flavor and satisfaction you associated with such foods comes from the herbs, spices, and fats served with them—not the food itself. You can savor olive oil, butter, cream, sour cream, Parmesan cheese, and a myriad of tasty condiments on salads, vegetables, meat, fish, and a variety of other foods without the downside of metabolic interference.
Does this mean you can never again enjoy another piece of Grandma’s pumpkin pie or a bowl of pasta or a stack of pancakes with maple syrup? One should never say “never.” We know as well as you do that it’s darn hard to live on this planet and not be tempted to occasionally eat such foods. If your weight has stabilized and you aren’t experiencing cravings, you might allow yourself an occasional exception to your low-carb diet. Just remember that such empty carbs take you out of fat-burning mode. On the other hand, there’s a thin line between the “just one taste” mentality and carb creep. If you’re regularly having a forkful of problem foods here and a spoonful there, you could be heading for trouble. It’s not that you can’t recover from the temporary metabolic shift away from fat burning given a few days of firm resolve, but you should understand what happens when you do. For many people, it’s the equivalent of playing with fire. You’ve spent a lot of time and effort building your “metabolic house”—it would be a shame to burn it down.
GOOD-BYE TO OLD HABITS
Even as you settle into your new lifestyle, it’s all too common to find yourself caught up short as you find it hard to break habits you’ve had for years, perhaps even decades. Whether it’s having a doughnut with coffee at break time or a jumbo container of popcorn at the multiplex, or eating comfort foods when you’re lonely or depressed, these routines can exert a powerful influence on you. How can you change habits that may seem relatively innocuous in and of themselves but cumulatively can jeopardize all the new habits you’ve carefully developed over the last several months? Here’s a four-step way to come to grips with the situation.
1. Identify the habits that are threatening your commitment to weight maintenance and good health. List them in your diet journal.
2. Check to see if you’ve eaten enough of the right foods in the twelve hours before you were tempted to revert to your old behavior. Habits and cravings can be a way your body says, “You’re not feeding me enough.”
3. Look at both the short- and long-term risks these habits pose. For example, short term might be reawakening cravings that threaten your resolve and long term might be increasing your susceptibility to the type 2 diabetes in your family history.
4. Come up with a replacement habit, and record it in your journal. For example, swap the doughnut for your favorite low-carb bar and make sure to always have a supply at work. Take a small bag of salted nuts and a bottle of water to the movies with you, and don’t go near the snack bar. In fact, your new habit doesn’t have to relate to food. Any eating that’s motivated by anything other than hunger is a prime candidate for radical change. Maybe a short walk after dinner with your spouse can replace dessert. You can practice yoga rather than eat chocolate when you’re feeling blue. Develop a plan of action for each new habit. If you spend too much time alone watching television in the evenings, join a book club or health club, or get involved in community activities. Look at both the long- and short-term benefits these new habits offer. Having a clear vision of how your new habit can help you maintain your healthy lifestyle, feel good about yourself, and increase the prospect of a long, healthy life is a strong motivator.
Finally, don’t beat yourself up if you occasionally fall back into an old habit. It takes a while to break old habits and make new ones.
AVOIDANCE VERSUS EXPERIENCE
We talked about empty carbs above. But you can also all too easily exceed your ACE with carbohydrate foods on the three Acceptable Foods lists. Even with a relatively high ACE, you need to continue to be mindful of what you eat. Your approach may differ from how your best friend or spouse does it. For some people, the solution is to “just say no” to any carbs not on their personal list of suitable foods—basically a behavior pattern of avoidance. These individuals have decided that it just isn’t worth trying out foods that aren’t in their comfort zone. Others adopt this strategy after experimenting with how much and what kinds of carbs they can handle. Through hard-won experience, they’ve identified the line they cannot cross. For some people it’s a distinct line, for others a buffer zone. The “distinct liners” behave the way a person who realizes that she/he can’t handle alcohol does: experience leads to avoidance. People who find that they can be somewhat more flexible around foods with higher carb counts behave much like someone who can handle alcohol in moderation. To a large extent, the thickness of your line is likely to depend on your ACE. If you’ve found you do best at 40 grams of Net Carbs a day, you have a thin line and will probably find it wise to adopt a restrictive mind-set about stepping over it. But if your ACE is 90, you may have learned that your buffer zone can be a bit wider.
If experience tells you that you can handle it, knowing you can have a small portion of dessert at a dinner party or an occasional half bagel without endangering your hard-won goal weight is empowering. It’s equally empowering to know that strict avoidance of anything on the other side of the “line” best protects your sense of control and physical well-being. In either case, you have to explore where you fit into this spectrum by carefully testing your response to different foods and backing away when you find that you’ve gone too far.
STRATEGIZING YOUR SOCIAL LIFE
Advance planning is also key to not exceeding your limits. If you’re going to be, say, at a wedding or holiday celebration that could prove to be a minefield of problematic foods, consider these survival tactics:
• Have a substantial snack or even a meal before the event to temper your appetite.
• Look at the various offerings, decide what you’re going to have, and stick with them. If you do choose to eat a high-carb food, pick your poison. If you are going to splurge on pasta salad, pass on the dessert.
• Make only one trip to the buffet table.
• Eat only until you’re satisfied but not stuffed.
• Drink alcohol in moderation, both because your body burns it before carbs and fat and so as not to let down your inhibitions and eat inappropriate foods. Pass on any drinks that contain fruit juice or sugar.
• If your host or hostess pressures you to have just one piece of pie or cake, politely say that you’re too full. Or take a small taste, say it is delicious, and then claim that you’re so full you can’t eat any more.
What about when you’re on vacation or a business trip to a dining mecca? After all, it would be a shame to go to New Orleans, San Francisco, or New York and not sample some of the local delicacies. Here are some ideas of how to enjoy the cuisine without overdoing it.
• Have eggs or a low-carb shake for breakfast and a salad with protein for lunch. That should leave a bit of a margin to enjoy the local specialty—in moderation, of course. (Also see the sidebar “Thumbs Down, Thumbs Up.”)
• Explore the range of local foods. The seafood in San Francisco and New Orleans is justly famo
us. Choose a local specialty that’s prepared without breading or starchy sauces.
• The moment you get home, return to your ACE if you’ve not gained weight.
• If you’ve put on a couple of pounds, drop back 10 to 20 grams of Net Carbs until you restore your goal weight.
THUMBS DOWN, THUMBS UP
Your long-term success in maintaining your healthy new weight will depend in large part on the small choices you make every day. Here are just a few alternatives to foods that can get you into trouble.
Thumbs Down
Thumbs up
Tortilla chips
Salted nuts or seeds
Crackers
Bran crispbread
Potato chips
Soy chips
Glazed/honey-cured ham
Regular ham
Turkey loaf
Turkey breast
Tuna sandwich
Tuna salad plate
Meat loaf
Roast beef
Breaded shrimp
Sautéed or grilled shrimp
Stuffed clams
Steamed clams
Crab cakes
Steamed or sautéed crabs
Chicken nuggets
Grilled chicken
Smoothie
Atkins Advantage shake
Fruit juice
Berries or other fruit
Muffin
Atkins Day Break bar
Chocolate bar
Atkins Endulge bar
Brownie
Atkins Advantage bar
Flavored yogurt
Whole milk yogurt with fresh berries
Almost any dessert
Berries and cream
THE MIND GAME
In addition to developing new habits and eating filling foods in the form of protein, fat, and fiber, there’s a third component that comes into play in order to stay in charge of your intake. We’re talking about the relationship between your emotions and food. Find a time when you know you won’t be disturbed and record in your journal your feelings about your accomplishments, your new looks, and your sense of what’s possible. We know, we’ve said it before, but please pay special attention this time. If you’re like many people who’ve recently transformed themselves, you may be on an emotional high, with all sorts of plans for the future. Now that you know you can take charge of your eating habits, your health, and your physical self, you realize that there are many other changes you can make as well. Consider how this empowering experience may help you open other doors in your life—if it hasn’t already. List them as possible goals. Certainly, several of our Success Stories demonstrate that changing one’s appearance or making health improvements often leads to major life shifts. What have you dreamed of doing but put aside because you didn’t think you could achieve it? Now is the time to dust off those dreams and go for them.
Also record in your journal any disappointments that you may have experienced in the last few weeks. It’s not uncommon to feel a complex mix of emotions upon reaching your goal weight. Among other things, you no longer have the ongoing reduction in your weight and measurements to reinforce your motivation. Also, it’s all too easy to have blamed all your problems in the past on being overweight and then feel let down when certain issues remain after the pounds depart. For example, you may have assumed that once you subtracted all those pounds and inches, you’d see your career blossom. Or you may have thought that your social life would improve once you slimmed down. Guess what? You still have to work at making changes. If you were always shy because of your size, it’s unrealistic to assume that you’ll promptly become an extrovert as you shrink. After all, you’ve changed your body, not had a personality transplant! It may take you some time to achieve the confidence that goes with that terrific-looking person you see in the mirror.
Sometimes, however, it isn’t just a matter of becoming comfortable with that changed person. All too often, formerly heavy people find that they have a hard time letting go of their old self-image. It’s not that they don’t want to, but they are so used to seeing themselves as unattractive, overweight, and unworthy that they continue to think of themselves that way. Some of this can be dealt with at the conscious level. For example, simply taping before and after photos of yourself to your mirror can provide a constant reminder of how much you’ve changed for the better.
PERCEPTION AND REALITY
The part of your brain that enables you to touch your finger to your nose with your eyes closed also tells you, for example, how much space you occupy. Try this exercise if you’ve lost more than 30 pounds:
• Put two straight-back chairs back-to-back in the middle of the room.
• Stand by one chair and pull it out just far enough that your eye tells you there’s enough space to pass between them with your hips barely brushing the chair backs.
• Now step between the chairs to see how good your eye was at judging your width.
We’ve found that most people who’ve recently lost a significant amount of weight pull the chair out too far, often by several inches. People who’ve been the same weight for more than two years, however, usually nail it to within an inch. This how-wide-am-I instinct apparently takes between six and twelve months to adjust after major weight loss. And this is only one sense-of-self instinct out of many, all of which take time to realign after you lose weight. In the meantime, you need to consciously tell yourself, “I’m doing great, and I’m proud of myself.”
LIFE GOES ON
The real risk here is that if you continue to hang on to your old image of yourself, sooner or later you may revert to that reality because it’s familiar territory. The other image, the one expressed by your new physique, is still filled with uncertainty. And life goes on, with all its messiness. You may be looking and feeling great, but your kids will still get sick, talk back, break things, and bicker with their siblings. Your significant other will not always be a model of understanding and support. You may lose your job. Your car won’t promise to never break down. You get the picture: you’ve made a major change in a big part of your life, but in case you haven’t noticed, the world doesn’t revolve around you.
It’s important to find a way to air such concerns, whether in the Atkins online community or with your friends or family members. Don’t let setbacks (whether real or perceived) in your personal and work life drive you back to your old way of eating. In our Success Stories, you’ve already met nine people like you who confronted their weight and their inner demons. Reread some of their stories, and you’ll see that they often struggled not just with their new weight but with their sense of self. It may take some time before you feel completely comfortable with the new you, the permanently slim you.
TO EXERCISE OR NOT: THAT IS THE QUESTION
If you’ve reached Lifetime Maintenance, you’ve already made great strides in achieving a healthy body. If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to consider incorporating some enjoyable forms of physical activity into your lifestyle. More often than not, they’ll enrich your Atkins experience and offer additional health benefits. Studies indicate that people who are physically active have a better chance of maintaining their weight loss than do sedentary folks.1 For some of you, the role of exercise in controlling your weight may be small—genetics play a major role—but there are other reasons to consider adopting an exercise routine. For example, bone health and minimizing the risk of osteoporosis are closely linked to activity, especially resistance, or weight-bearing, exercise. Whether you’re in your twenties and want to improve your athletic performance or in your eighties and want to maintain normal daily activities, resistance exercises are also the most efficient way to increase your muscle endurance, strength, and power.
Such sustained rhythmic exercises as swimming, cycling, and running are great ways to improve your heart and circulatory and respiratory systems. These endurance forms of exercise also complement many of the metabolic adaptations induced by the Atkins Diet, such as increa
sed fat burning. Do you have to exercise two hours a day to keep your weight under control and maintain appetite control, lack of food cravings, and other benefits? Absolutely not! Remember, if you continue to follow the program’s principles you’ll have the Atkins Edge, so you don’t need to overdo the exercise to control the metabolic bully. But to optimize mental and physical health and well-being, most of us benefit from regularly finding time to exercise.
THINGS CHANGE
Now that you’re getting comfortable with your new lifestyle and feeling that the struggle you’ve had with your weight is finally history, don’t forget this important point. The only constant in life is change. Imagine one or more of these situations:
• You join a swim team and start competing in meets.
• You leave your desk job for one that involves more physical labor.
• You start bicycling three miles to and from work instead of taking the bus.
• You move from the suburbs to the city and walking becomes your usual mode of transportation.
It’s possible that any of these changes will increase your daily energy use, enabling you to eat a bit more, either as whole food carbohydrates or as healthy, natural fats, to stay at your goal weight.
Now consider these situations: