How to Succeed with Your New Lifestyle
You successfully made it through a month without sugar or grains. That is certainly a big accomplishment in and of itself. However, now the real challenge begins. And the challenge becomes how to strike the perfect balance as we move into the maintenance phase of succeeding with your new lifestyle.
Are you Ready to Move to Maintenance?
Thirty days is a good chunk of time but you have to think about how much time you’ve spent outside of these new habits. Some of us have spent years and years overeating carbohydrates and sugar. Some have been making small shifts for some time.
Undoing the damage takes time and that amount of time varies from person to person.
The move from where you are now in your health journey to a lifelong maintenance phase is not necessarily best marked by time. To really make this decision you need to ask yourself a few questions first.
- Are my cravings gone?
- Am I hungry between meals?
- Have I reached my goal weight?
- Do I still have fat in my midsection?
- Am I postmenopausal?
The answers to these questions can help guide you in your decision to either stay the course, adjusting and tweaking as necessary, or move to the next phase which we will call pre-maintenance.
Adjusting and Tweaking
If you haven’t reached your goals just yet or have answered no to any of the above questions, you need to evaluate the current make up of your meals before moving into the pre-maintenance phase.
Fat is the macro that I look at first. This is a limit to stay under. You want enough fat to help make you feel satisfied but not so much that you are only burning dietary fat and not your own body fat.
Always concentrate on healthy fats like avocados, olive oil, etc. Avoid adding in additional fat such as keto coffee, fat bombs, and keto desserts.
You can also adjust protein up or down. Zeroing in on your personalized requirement needs to take into account your activity level and muscle mass.
Remember that this is a journey and it will take time and effort to find the right path for you!
Caution Ahead
To continue to heal your metabolic pathways and improve your health some foods may not ever make it back into your regular rotation. Pre-maintenance is the period of time where you will be experimenting to find out what your maintenance program will look like.
Realize that the maintenance phase must still be somewhat restrictive.
It has to be. If you jump right back into your old way of eating you will return to your original weight and any physical or emotional symptoms you had will return as well.
Secondly, it can be quite startling to realize that when you begin falling out of fat burning mode your appetite increases as well.
Pre-maintenance
As you move towards what your new way of eating will look like, there will be ups and downs. Each person is different and responds differently to different foods.
ADD CARBS BACK SLOWLY
Increasing carbohydrates means that you must also decrease your fat intake.
The more carbs you consume the less fat you can eat.
This is super important to incorporate into your pre and maintenance phases.
One of the typical problems with the standard Western Diet is that people consume a high amount of carbs paired with high fat. This is usually in the form of high sugar carbs and not based in real, whole food choices.
Which carbohydrates to add?
I strongly recommend not bringing back anything with added sugar or grains which start converting to glucose as soon as your saliva starts breaking them down.
Increasing your leafy green vegetable intake or increasing any of the low carb vegetables is a good place to start.
Be very aware of reintroducing trigger foods.
You may find that if you add fruit, bread or other higher carb options that you now feel as though you must have these foods every day or you just don’t feel right. This is definitely a sign that these foods are trigger foods for you. Hello slippery slope!
The reaction you experience is real. It is physical, emotional and diabolic…I mean metabolic. 🙂
Find your personal level of carbohydrate
How do you find the right level for you?
There isn’t a shortcut for this process. You need to gradually add carbohydrates into your meals in increments of 5-10 grams at a time. With this small amount, it is easier to see when you hit your threshold.
You will know you hit your threshold when your cravings return, hunger is back or you start gaining weight.
It is hard to believe but if you tune in to your body and emotions you will know what amount of carbs makes you feel good without weight gain.
You might find you feel best at the 25-30 gram limit. This might mean 2 salads and a large helping of low carb vegetable.
Who knows. You might be closer to 50 grams.
Those of us that are postmenopausal will more than likely fall in this 50 gram and under crowd. Activity level will definitely play a part in whether you can go higher or not.
Sticking with the addition of low starch vegetables, nuts (watch quantity), and small amounts of berries and other low carb fruit are the best options.
Add in higher carbohydrates sparingly until you know how they affect your body’s metabolic balance.
Plan for Ongoing Success
*Weight Gain
Dr. Robert Atkins recommends that you never let your weight gain exceed 5 lbs. This small range allows you to drop the weight quickly by returning to a strict low carbohydrate limit for a matter of days not weeks.
Do not wait. Once you see the weight creeping back, you know you have to go back to a stricter carb limit immediately.
Most people wait until all the weight they lost returns or worst yet until all their old symptoms return.
This goes back to your Why statement. Make sure that that statement reflects your health goals so that it truly reminds you of why these changes are necessary for a happy, healthy life.
Deviating from the Plan
There is no doubt that all of us fall off the wagon from time to time for various reasons. Don’t beat yourself up. Just get right back on the path to good health as soon as possible.
Realize that it can take up to 3 days to reignite the fat burning process and to feel the burst of energy that this fat burning state give us.
If you go off track on Saturday night and jump right back to low carb on Sunday, you may feel sluggish on Monday and Tuesday. The important thing to remember is that this is a consequence of Saturday and not a result of returning to a low carb way of eating.
Always remember that your metabolic tendencies are never cured!
Cheers to your health!
Melissa
DISCLAIMER: This website is for informational purposes. I am not a health practitioner and no information should be construed as personal medical advice or diagnosis.
