The Atkins Diet
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Phase One

Phase Two
Phase Three
Phase Four
Overcoming Obstacles
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Lifetime Maintenance is Truly for a Lifetime

Stick with the fourth and final phase of the Atkins Nutritional Approach? and your weight problems are history?but digress, and you're headed for trouble.

The bells should be ringing, the flags should be flying: You're there! You've arrived at the place you were meant to be. And the impact on every part of your life is enormous. Take a good long look in the mirror, try on your newly tailored clothes or climb into duds you haven't been able to shoehorn yourself into for years, and then?oh, bliss?listen to the comments people make. Losing weight sure attracts attention. And who doesn't want to look his or her best?

Now for a reality check. Have you won the battle of the bulge? Or have you only graduated from boot camp, in shape now for the battle ahead? The truth is that you have achieved the latter. All too many overweight individuals reach their goal weight four or more times, only to gain back the pounds every time. Their fatal flaw: always trying to return, as closely as they could without giving up Atkins altogether, to their old way of eating. I hope you have learned better on your weight-loss odyssey. Recidivism among people who have lost considerable weight is such a well-documented phenomenon that many cynical doctors advise their patients not to even bother trying to lose1.

Fortunately, with Atkins such pessimism is unwarranted. But this is not to say you don't need an eating plan accompanied by unceasing vigilance. The former is the Lifetime Maintenance phase; the determination to succeed is your responsibility. To enjoy long-term success, you need to have the strength of conviction.

Probably as you traveled along the slow ..Glossary Term pre-maintenance not found.. path, one day you realized you were actually in Maintenance: Your weight remained constant within a pound or two for several weeks. The decisions to move from Induction to Ongoing Weight Loss and from OWL to Pre-Maintenance were conscious choices on your part. But it is not always easy to define the moment at which you leave Pre-Maintenance and move to Maintenance; the former segues naturally into the latter. But from now on, you will have conscious choices to make every day of your life.