Well, actually call it a meal off.
Here is the deal. One of the things about Ketotis is that there many opinions that say that staying solidly in this mode for a long period of time is not good at all for your body. It is one of the reasons that Atkins only has a two week induction period, rather than locking you into that mode for a long time. They say you can stay longer, but they certainly don’t encourage it.
On the Atkins diet, when you leave that mode, you are suppose to add 5g of carbs per week until your weight loss slows down and then stops. The point at which it stops is your CCLL (critical carb level for losing). Stay below your CCLL (which I suspect is the line of ketotis or normal sugar / fat storage processing) and you will continue to lose weight slowly. If you go above that line, you will either stay stable or slowly increase your weight. NOTE: This only works providing you are still following the no sugars no trans fats no high sugar modified whatevers, etc.
Well, I am all fine with that, but yesterday was my two weeks into induction, the numbers are VERY good (a little too good I think) so I allowed myself to enjoy a decent “carbs don’t count” meal of one of my favorite things, pizza. Please note: I removed all the crust area outside the slice, so the only bread coming in was that under the contents. It was a montreal style pizza, so the crust isn’t very thick or anything. I had a pretty low carb day otherwise, so it isn’t a really big thing – and most of what is on the pizza (cheese, pepperoni, some green pepper, some mushrooms) is mostly stuff that is allowed in the diet anyway, so there you go. I might have blown the portion counts out a little, but basically it is about the healthiest junk food that I would regularly eat. I ate until I was satisified and not stuffed, and then stopped.
That explains the most of what I have learned about Atkins going forward: I controlled the portion (all good diets should teach you this), I avoided or limited the carb bomb part of the meal (the crust areas), and ate a type of pizza that was mostly stuff I could have (I avoided high carb toppings). So even what some people would consider a “blowout” was in fact a controlled demolition experience.
This is what most diet books are loath to tell you: You can follow our plan exactly and it will work, or you can LEARN our plan, play with it for your personal comfort and progress, and still do very well. I think taking off as much percentage weight as I have since I started overall is very good indeed (More than 5% body weight on atkins, about 7% overall since I started). More importantly, these drops have brought me MUCH closer to my goal weight (call it 170 for shits and giggles) – so from the original 193 to 170 (23 pounds) I have lost 15 of them, or about 65% of my total goal. I cannot complain too much about this.
I am back in the saddle today, going to stay with it for another week, while adding in some extra carbs this week once everything settles back down. We will see how this all goes 🙂