|  | Diet Nutrition | Atkins Diet

Atkins Thinspiration Diets

Atkins Thinspiration diets are diets developed to help people lose weight at a healthy rate and then maintain their weight goal for the rest of their lives, without having to depend on dietary supplements or other dieting programs. Atkins Thinspiration diets are broken down into four main steps, each of which helps dieters learn more about their body and their limits on food.

  1. Phase One: Induction

    • The first phase of the Atkins Thinspiration diets is induction. During the induction phase, you will be cutting out a lot of your ordinary food to get a big jump on weight loss. In this phase, you switch your body from burning carbohydrates to burning fat by switching to food that is low in carbohydrates and rich in other substances, like vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber. During this phase, dieters are encouraged to eat primarily fish and poultry, while adding 12 to 15 grams of vegetables a day.

    Phase Two: Ongoing Weight Loss

    • During the second phase, called ongoing weight loss, or sometimes abbreviated as OWL in various Atkins Thinspiration books, dieters will begin introducing the foods that they have cut out of their diet during phase one. This phase focuses on teaching your body to accept all kinds of food, while still promoting a healthy weight loss. In this phase, dieters learn about their own body, monitoring and slowly increasing their net carb intake until they find out how many carbs they can consume before they stop losing weight.

    Phase Three: Pre-Maintenence

    • During the third phase, pre-maintenance, dieters slow down their weight loss as they start shifting back into a normal lifestyle. They find a healthy balance by watching the types of food that they eat until they find a stable weight, which is often the goal weight they set for themselves at the beginning of the Atkins Thinspiration diet. During this phase, dieters will discover their Atkins Carbohydrate Equilibrium, or ACE as it's called in most books. This is the number of daily carbs a person can eat before they start losing or gaining weight.

    Phase Four: Lifetime Maintenence

    • Lifetime maintenance marks the end of the Atkins Thinspiration diets. During this phase, you will introduce the last of the food groups that the other phases have restricted from your diet. Dieters will do so in a way that allows them to maintain their figure and current weight, and will learn what foods their body simply cannot handle without gaining weight again. During this phase, you are taught how to take everything you learned in all the other phases and work it into a set routine for your life.

Atkins Diet - Related Articles