The New Atkins Made Easy (22 page)

• Reintroduce new food groups one by one, following the Carb Ladder. Depending on your metabolism and weight-loss goal, this may be at weekly, biweekly, or even longer intervals.

• Add back carbohydrate foods within each rung of the Carb Ladder one by one. For example, reintroduce apples but gauge their impact, if any, for a couple of days before adding oranges.

• Increase your overall Net Carb intake in 10-gram increments (if you've been losing weight relatively easily) or 5-gram increments (if weight loss has slowed). Make these increases no more frequently than once a week; you can also do so every two weeks, or even less frequently.

• Continue to log your daily Net Carb intake in your journal, also noting any “new” foods so that you can ascertain if any of them are stalling your progress.

• Once you reach your goal weight, remain at that level of Net Carb intake for one month to ensure you can maintain it.

• Continue to weigh and measure yourself weekly.

Now let's review the acceptable Phase 3 foods, understanding that you may not be able to reintroduce all of them.

OTHER FRUITS

Although legumes are acceptable in OWL, you may not have added them back yet. If so, do that before moving to fruit. (See
page 113
for suggestions.) On the other hand, if you're not big on lentils and other beans, simply skip them. As with the earlier lists of acceptable foods, the following include just a few representative foods on each rung of the Carb Ladder. Refer to the Atkins Carb Counter for more complete lists with serving sizes and Net Carb counts. Use the printed version available from Atkins, download it from
atkins.com
, or use the Atkins mobile app.

As with the berries, cherries, and melon that you reintroduced in OWL, have these higher-carb fruits in small quantities, starting with one at a time and only once a day. Have fresh or frozen (unsweetened) fruit or fruit canned in water or juice rather than syrup. Avoid fruit juice and sweetened applesauce. Tropical fruits such as banana, mango, and plantain are considerably higher in carbs than other fruits, so wait on them until you see how you tolerate other fruits. As long as they're made without added sugar, small portions of jelly, jam, preserves, and fruit preserves made from Phase 3 fruits are also acceptable. (See “Low-Carb Resources” on page 212 for sources.)

• Apples

• Apricots

• Grapes

• Grapefruit

• Kiwis

• Oranges

• Papayas

• Peaches or nectarines

• Pears

• Plums

• Pomegranates

• Watermelon

MAKE IT EASY

Reintroduce fruit slowly and in small amounts, particularly if you've been craving it until now. To stay in control:

• Swap one serving of berries or melon for a serving of higher-carb fruits.

• Have no more than two fruit servings (including berries) a day.

• Always accompany fruit with some fat or protein.

• Start with the lower-carb fruits in this category, such as papayas, peaches, plums, or tangerines.

• Go “halfsies” by sharing an apple, pear, grapefruit, or papaya with a family member, or save the other half for tomorrow.

• Garnish your breakfast eggs with
¹
/
₂
cup grapes or orange sections, or add them to a salad.

• Eat fruits such as bananas, pears, papayas, and mangos
before
they're very ripe, to minimize the impact on blood sugar.

• Combine higher-carb fruits in a fruit salad with lower-carb berries and/or melon.

STARCHY VEGETABLES

You've been eating plenty of foundation vegetables in the first two phases of the New Atkins Diet. After reintroducing other fruits, it's time to try to reintroduce the rest of the vegetable family. Like foundation veggies, these roots, tubers, and other veggies are high in fiber and antioxidants; however, they're higher in carbs. A half cup of baked acorn squash, for example, tallies 7.8 grams of Net Carbs; half a sweet potato and half a baked white potato contain 12.1 and 10.5 grams, respectively. Comparable servings of some tropical vegetables such as cassava (yuca), taro, and yautia are significantly higher in carbs. Among the choices are:

• Beets

• Carrots

• Corn on (or off) the cob

• Jerusalem artichokes

• Peas

• Parsnips

• Potatoes, sweet and white

• Rutabagas

• Winter squash

• Yams

To enjoy some new veggies without going overboard, try these ideas on for size:

• Have carrots raw instead of cooked, as cooking raises the carb count.

• Add
¹
/
₄
cup grated carrot to tuna or chicken salad.

• Add grated carrots to cabbage slaw.

• Steam potatoes and cauliflower and mash together to mute the carb impact of potatoes.

• Make succotash with equal portions of frozen corn and edamame (instead of higher-carb lima beans).

• Roast a single cut-up potato or sweet potato with several foundation vegetables.

• Instead of squash soup, combine one part squash with twice as much pumpkin, which is actually a foundation veggie.

• Sauté
¹
/
₄
cup peas with sliced scallions and thinly sliced lettuce.

WHOLE GRAINS

Occupying the top rung of the Carb Ladder, grains are the last whole-food group to reintroduce. Not everyone can tolerate grains and products made with them, so proceed with caution. And don't confuse refined grains such as white flour and white rice with whole grains. Baked goods, including bread, pita, tortillas, crackers, and cereals, made with refined grains remain on the “avoid” list indefinitely (with the exception of low-carb products). Such products made with whole grains are acceptable, but the Net Carb counts may vary greatly from one product to another. Here are some of the more common whole grains:

• Barley

• Cornmeal and hominy

• Couscous, whole-wheat

• Kasha (buckwheat groats)

• Whole-wheat flour, wheat berries, bulgur, and cracked wheat

• Millet

• Oat bran and old-fashioned or steel-cut oatmeal (not instant)

• Quinoa

• Rice, brown, red, or wild

In Phase 3 you can also increase your daily intake of whole milk to
¹
/
₂
cup, but continue to steer clear of low-fat milk and other low-fat dairy products. You also can experiment with low-carb products that have up to 9 grams of Net Carbs per serving. For an extended list of foods in these three rungs of the Carb Ladder, along with serving sizes and Net Carb gram counts, see the Atkins Carb Counter.

When adding grains back into your diet, the best approach is to use very small portions, treating them as a garnish or a small component of a dish, rather than the star attraction. Instead of a conventional serving of a grain:

• Top a tossed salad with a little cooked wild rice, wheat berries, or other whole grain.

• Combine equal proportions of cooked oatmeal, oat bran, and chopped nuts for a relatively low-carb hot breakfast.

• Swap the proportions of a grain salad by using a small amount of cracked wheat, quinoa, or kasha and plenty of chopped parsley, mint, scallions, cucumber, and tomatoes.

• Mix a little cooked brown or wild rice into a stir-fry with zucchini, red bell peppers, and leftover chicken or beef.

As in the second phase, how individuals navigate the increase in food choices and grams of Net Carbs varies greatly. If you're still losing reliably each week, you may be able to move up in 10-gram increments and reintroduce all the food groups, one after another. Or you may need to use 5-gram increments some weeks and hang back at other times. If your tolerance for carbs is low and your weight loss has proceeded
slowly or in fits and starts, it may take you considerably longer to introduce new foods. Someone with a high metabolism might have reached his or her goal weight and been able to reintroduce all rungs of the Carb Ladder after a month in Phase 3. Someone with a slow metabolism, in contrast, might take three months or more to get there and never reach the top of the Carb Ladder. Don't move to a higher carb count or add a new food group if you stop losing. Again, not everyone will be able to reintroduce all Phase 3 foods, or it could take several months to do so without stalling weight loss or provoking cravings and undue hunger.

The following three plans continue to progressively build upon one of the original meal plans, making it easy to reintroduce foods from the final three rungs of the Carb Ladder (see
page 151
). If you have reached these Net Carb daily levels but not reintroduced all the rungs of the Carb Ladder, your carb intake may differ from these sample meal plans. However, the three plans do illustrate how to gradually and progressively modify your intake as you climb the Carb Ladder and approach your goal weight.