By now you've probably seen some pretty dramatic changes in your body and are likely feeling euphoric as it begins to dawn on you that it's within your power to achieve the new you I talked about in Chapter 1. You are probably now catching glimpses of that new person on the horizon—if not in your own mirror. That new you is thinner, happier, healthier and more confident.

Now it's time for you to take a serious look at your body and decide what you want to do with it and how you want it to look. Be realistic. In all probability, you don't expect to be an Olympic athlete or a fashion model. On the other hand, you may be selling yourself short by setting goals that are too modest. Are you willing to accept ,pleasingly plump"? Many of my patients come to me thinking that such goals would be quite all fight-or even more than they dare hope for.

Frankly, I think you should set your sights higher' than that. How about a weight target based on your height, age and bone structure? How about excellent health rand vigor that's surprising for someone your age? Trust me, that's not being overly ambitious. That's being truly realistic.

What Is Your Goal Weight?

Ask yourself when in your life did you look and feel your very best? How much did you weigh then? Can you comfortably weigh that again? What size did you wear then? Don't skip over these questions. As I always say, you're the greatest expert on your body. Whatever that wonderful weight—-and size-was, you can almost certainly reach it again. Was it 1207 1407 1707

Most people have a pretty good sense of that number. They held that weight for a good part of their fives and found that they gained weight only after specific events, such as getting married, having kids, quitting cigarettes, starting or stopping medication or experiencing certain hormonal changes. Why not go for it?

On the other hand, is that "perfect" weight unrealistic now that you're couple of decades older? Menopausal women particularly often have a hard time staying as slim as they once were. So perhaps a more realistic approach is to ask what is the weight you would be comfortable with today. The trick is to come up with a figure that is attainable without setting yourself up for disappointment.

Ted Asher set himself a goal weight of 170 pounds when he began Atkins. At five feet eight inches tall, this 34-yearold had reached a modestly prodigious 227 pounds. Could it be his bachelor's breakfast of two Pop-Tarts washed down with a can of soda? And perhaps that nutritional approach was causing his occasional bouts of gastrointestinai distress? One weekend Ted read an earlier edition of this book and started doing Atkins.

He stayed on Induction for a couple of months, and then gradually moved through the stages toward Lifetime Maintenance, stopping well short of 100 grams of carbs. He had lost 47 pounds by that time, taken up golfing and shared his doctor's pleasure at his cholesterol and triglyceride iraprovements. Along the way, he decided he felt pretty good at 180 pounds. He says he'd like to lose 10 more pounds but thinks they'll come off with a bit mom e. xercise. I hope he gets that exercise, but he's fight not to obsess over the last 10 pounds; he looks and feels fine, and his blood work shows the inside of him is now as healthy as the outside.

If you don't recall ever being a weight you were happy with, the Body Mass Index (BM1) chart on the opposite page should give you a ballpark figure to aim for. Be aware that the BMI is just a guideline: If you are very muscular, for example, your BMI will often come out too high.

You'll see that the BMI chart gives you numbers at the top. By checking your height and weight below and running your finger up the column to where the BMI figures are, you will find your BMI number. Based on these figures, the federal government has announced guidelines that create a new definition of a healthy weight—-a BMI of up to 24.9. A BMI of 25 or above is considered overweight If your BMI is 26 or 27, you are approximately twenty percent overweight. Individuals who fall within the BMI range of 25 to 34.9 and have a waist size of over forty inches for men and over thirty-five inches for women are considered to be at especially high health risk. For most people, this chart is helpful as a general guide* line—ranges that are considered the norm—but I can't em* phasize this too strongly: The best weight for you is the one at which you feel comfortable and attractive and can enjoy your life. It also needs to be a weight you can maintain. Say your best friend and you are the same height and gen* emily the same build, but she wants to be mil thin, while you are comfortable .with 10 pounds more on your frame—if it feels good to you, that's what counts. Remember, too, that if you are physically active and have a low BMI, you can weigh more than your sister, whothinks lifting a pencil is exercise. This. isn't climbing Mount Everest; you can reach your goal weight. I know that if you're metabolically similar to the lens of thousands of mm'weight patients I've treated over the last forty years, you have an excellent chance of s/icceeding.

Body Mass Index Chart 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Height Body Weight (pounds)

(inches)

58 91 96 100 10S 110 115 119 124 129 134 138 143 148 153 158 162 167

59 94 99 104 109 114 119 124 128 133 138 143 148 153 158 163 168 173

60 97 102 107 112 118 123 128 133 138 143 148 153 I58 163 168 174 179

61 100 106 111 116 122 127 132 137 143 148 153 158 164 169 174 180 185

62 104 109 115 120 126 131 136 142 147 153 158 164 169 175 180 186 191

63 107 113 118 124 130 135 141 146 152 158 163 169 175 180186 191 197

64 110 116 122 128 134 140 145 151 157 163 169 174 180 186 192 197 204

65 114 120 126 132 138 144 150 156 162 168 174 180 186 192 198 204 210

66 118 124 130 136 142 148 155 161 167 173 179 186 192 198 204 210 216

67 121 127 134 140 146 153 159 166 172 178 185 191 I96 204 211 217 223

68 125 131 138 144 151 158 164 171 177 184 190 197 203 210 216 223 230

69 128 135 142 149 155 162 169 176 182 189 196 203 209 216 223 230 236

70 132 139 146 153 160 167 174 181 188 195 202 209 216 222 229 236 243

71 136 143 150 157 165 172 179 186 193 200 208 215 222 229 236 243 250

72 140 147 154 162 169 177 184 191 199 206 213 221 228 235 242 250 258

73 144 151 159 166 174 182 189 197 204 212 219 227 235 242 250 257 265

74 148 155 163 171 179 186 194 202 210 218 225 233 241 249 256 264 272

75 152 160 168 176 184 192 200 208 216 224 232 240 248 256 264 272 279

76 156 164 172 1 B0 189 197 205 213 221 230 238 246 254 263 271 279 287 Source: Clinical GuMelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatmont of Overweight and Obesity in Adults, National Instftftutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, June 1998.

How to Keep It Going

Now, let's talk about sustaining that weight loss, which you've so happily begun, You undoubtedly know exactly how much weight you lost during the first fourteen days of lnduc-tion. That number will help give you a general understanding of your personal degree of metabolic resistance. As you can see on the metabolic resistance table on page 158, a woman who has 40 pounds to lose and sheds 3 pounds in two weeks during Induction has a high degree of metabolic resistance as compared to a woman with similar weight loss goals who drops 8 pounds. For a complete discussion of metabolic resistance, please turn to Chapter 20.

weight Loss Dining the First Two Weeks on a Fat-Buming Program for Patients at Three Loeb of Obesity

Degree of Metabolic Resistance for Men

Pounds Lost in First 14 Days When Metabolic Resistance is high, average or low:

Pounds to Lose

High Average Low

Less than 20

4

6 8

20-50 6 9 12

Over 50

8 12 16

Degree of Metabolic Resistance for Women

Pounds Lost in First 14 Days When Metabolic Resistance is

high, average or low:

Pounds to Lose

High Average Low

Less than 20 2 4 6

20-50 3 6 9

Over 50 4 8 12

As I'm sure you've guessed, the degree of resistance to weight loss that your body shows to your degree of difficulty in getting well into llpolysis. By definition, resistance to weight loss is to lipolysis.

During Induction you were consuming about 20 gramsof carbs per day. The carbohydrate level was extremely low because I wanted to demonstrate that it is possible for virtually everybody to experience lipolysis, or fat tainting, from the person who can lose weight quite easily on almost any program to the hardest case—the person who, until doing Atkins, thought that losing weight was almost impossible.

I am sure that almost all of you found that you were losing weight. Those who didn't should look at Chapter 20 and work with the special weight loss plan I've devised for patients with extreme metabolic resistance. Many of you, however, are now looking forward to liberalizing your menu.

More Induction?

Before you even think about stepping up from Induction, consider the possibility of staying with it for a while longer. A lot of people think of Induction as only two weeks, but it can be followed for a longer time. If you have a lot of weight to lose or have difficulty losing weight, you might want to do Induction for quite a while. That way you'll see dramatic progress before moving on to the more moderate phases of the program.

Although Induction offers plenty of advantages, there are lots of valid reasons for progressing: boredom with the food choices, modestweight loss goals (say 20 or 30 pounds) and perhaps the chance to avoid becoming dependent on a "crash diet" mentality. When people learn that they can lose weight quickly, as they do during Induction, they sometimes take their ability to lose weight for granted. They don't think in terms of a lifetime commitment to the Atkins lifestyle-just a quick fix for overindulgence. The result of this faulty thinking is yo-yo dieting and metabolic resistance to weight loss. While the next phase: Ongoing Weight Loss or OWL—may likely slow your rate of weight loss, this is not a bad thing. The slower the progress, the more chance you have to permanently change bad habits over the long term.

In order to decide if this is the right time for you to move on, I suggest you answer the following four questions:

1. Are you bored with Induction?

2. How much weight do you have to lose?

3. How metabolically resistant are you to weight loss?

4. Are you willing to slow down the pace of weight loss in exchange for more food choices?

If you are bored, and this boredom could lead to not complying with the Rules of Induction, by all means move on to OWL after two weeks. However, if you are comfortable staying in this phase, and you still have a lot of weight to lose, you can do Induction safely for six months or more. If you do not have much more weight to lose, it is advisable for you to advance to OWL so you can cycle through all the phases of the program.

If you are metabolically resistant to weight loss, which you will know by how much weight you lost in the first two weeks and by comparing your results with the categories in the metabolic resistance tables on page 158, you will lose weight relatively slowly. People with high metabolic resistance can benefit from doing Induction longer because it gives them time to correct metabolic imbalances they may have developed over time. These include insulin resistance, blood-sugar imbalances, carbohydrate addictions and allergies. Once the metabolic imbalances ave corrected, Weight loss may speed up.

But after all is said and done,to a large degree, your decision to continue Induction or move to OWL will depend on your personslity and lifestyle, if you are the type to just go for it and can easily make your life work around the Induction eating program, you may decide to stick with it until you drop some more weighL Another person, who perhaps is under a lot of stress and wants To relax a bit about food choices, might choose to move to: the more liberal phase of OWL. This brings us to the last, and ultimately the only, answer that matters. Is a longer period of time until you get to your goal weight the tradeoff you're willing to make to have more food choices? It's up to you.

The Choice Was Theirs

The two people I am about to introduce you to are good examples of how much individualization is possible in the transition process from Induction to OWL. A high school principal,Dan Wilson was uP to 323 Pounds on a five-foot ten-inch frame, when he stumbled upon his mother-in-law's copy of a previous edition of this book.

In his first two weeks doing Induction—-abandoning his usual breakfast of M & M's washed down with Mountain Dew—Dan lost 18 pounds. Pleased with his progress, he went immediately to OWL, and within a few weeks he was consuming between 30 and 40 grams of curbs a day.

A former gym teacher, Dan resumed a high level of physic. al activity and continued to lose weight so easily that after a month he moved into Pre-Maintenance, where he ascertained his Critical Carbohydrate Level for Losing (CCLL) was 80 grams a day, on which he managed to lose 95 pounds in only four months.

If Dan represented the proverbial hare in the old fable, Carol Kitchener could be the tortoise. She held to the 20 grams of curbs permitted during Induction for almost two years. Carol is a nightclub performer, but as she puts it, feathers and sequins notwithstanding, there is nothing beautiful about a size 24 dress. Standing five feet five inches tall, her weight was 274 pounds before she began, and her blood pressdre was edging into the danger zone. By her reckoning, she must have tried Weight Watchers twentyfive times. She had never found a weight loss plan that worked for long.

Atkins did. She skimmed off 129 pounds over twentyfour months—approximately 5 pounds a month. Slow but steady. There were a few tortoiselike patches in there, but Carol noticed that even when the scale wasn't budging, her dress size kept dropping. Besides, once she realized that she enjoyed the food and was no longer plagued v,ith cravings, she was perfectly willing to let success come at its own pace.

It's easy to see how much less metabolic resistance Dan had than Carol, and even easier to understand why they took the paths they did. If Dan had continued Induction, he would have lost his weight so quickly that it would probably have been harder for him to convert to a Lifetime Maintenance plan. If Carol had moved on to OWL, her, weight loss would have slowed so radically that she might have given up in despair. It sounds to me like Dan and Carol made the right choices. Certainly they both reached their goal weight and felt enormous satisfaction in doing so.

Proceed With Caution!

If you have decided to move to phase two, I want to remind you not to regard it a time to cut loose and undo all the good work you have just completed. Ongoing Weight Loss has a couple of fundamental differences from Induction, which I will explain in Chapter 14, but it is also very similar to Induction in that you will continue to derive the majority of your carbohydrates from vegetables low in carbs. You will add more portions of vegetables, and most people are later able to add nuts, seeds and even some berries. It's important to understand that you will not be shifting significantly away from protein and fat and to carbs, although you will be gradually changing the ratio of carbs to that of fat and protein.

But the one thing we don't want to do is get you out of lipolysis and halt your forward momentum. If that happened, we would have to resume Induction, or, as I chide so many of my patients, "It's back to square one." On the other hand, know that if you get into trouble, you can always return to induction for a few days to get your metabolism fired up again.

Look at the Big Pjcture

In one sense, doing Induction is the easiest part of Atkins. You're following a strict regimen that almost always works. Now, as you learn in the next few chapters how to liberalize that regimen, you will be re-entering the "real" world. That doesn't have to be the bad world of junk food and uncontrollable cravings. But it is a world of greater choice, and certniniy one in which you will be closer to the place where weight gain is a possibility.

If being overweight has been a big problem in your life, I don't want you to muff this opportunity. Over the course of the next few months, you can teach yourself a whole new way of life that will keep you healthy for decades. That is what doing Atkins is really all about.

When you begin OWL, you will be at a crucial stage for learning the parameters of your lifetime program. You'H find out what's the most liberal level of carbohydrate consumption your metabolism can handle while continuing to take off excess pounds. Pay close attention: This important number is your Critical Carbohydrate Level for Losing (CCLL).

KEY POINTS!

·Be realistic and determine for yourself the weight you would be comfortable with today.

·Knowing exactly how much weight you lost during the first fourteen days of Induction will help give you a general understanding of your personal degree of metabolic resistance and help you set goals and determine your pace of weight loss.

·The key question in the decision to stay on Induction or move on is "Am I willing to trade slower weight loss for more food choices?"

TIPS:

·Be aware that the Body Mass Index is just a guideline.

·People with high metabolic resistance can benefit from doing Induction longer than two weeks because it gives them time to correct the metabolic imbalances they may have developed over time.