How to OWL

[Elleth Faewen]

Thank you, 2big4mysize, for this helpful informative post and for graciously agreeing to allow me to post it in the OWL forum as a sticky.

Originally Posted by 2big4mysize

You never have to do anything on Atkins. You should do a lot of the recommended stuff in the order it is recommended to do as that will give you the best chance for overall success. If you had called the Atkins Med center folks back when he was still alive they would have told you after your 14 days were up if you wanted to stay under 20 net carbs and do induction you could add more of those induction veggies to your foods.
There was no magic in those under 20 net carbs limits. Dr Atkins used to have a quote in about it saying he picked 15-20 net carbs because 95% of us who picked his plan would lose weight on that amount in 14 days. Seeing that lose we would be encouraged to stick with our plan. SOunded good to me as I was a tester of his plan during my induction as were many of us.
You can do what we called a modified OWLand keep you carbs as low as you are comfortable with and climb the ladder or you can just add back a few rungs and keep your carbs low until you are ready to move to full OWL. OWl is about learning what foods effect your metabolism and craving controls in what ways. Some folks can't handle whole food groups while others can't handle certain foods in those food groups. Some just don't like the food groups and skip it entirely.
I had a very long talk with the Atkins folks before I moved to OWL in June 2002 back when Dr Atkins was still alive. they said you could turn your ladder into more like a net and go sideways on a rung adding more of that food group if your weight loss and craving control could handle it, you could skip whole rungs if you didn't like the food or couldn't handle it at this point in your program and come back and retry it later on. You could sub a lower rung for a higher rung you didn't like or couldn't handle too.
Like you can go 1,1,1,2,3,4,1,6,7,etc or 1,1,1,1,2,3,3,3,4,4,5,6,6,6, etc or even 1,2,3,4,1,6,7,8,9, whatever you likw and your body can handle. They strongly cautioned against adding a higher level rung and then jumping back down the ladder like 1,9,2,3,4, etc bwcause the higher rungs werre higher GI and could effect your craving controls and sabatage your efforts.

if you discover your CCLL is 30 and you want the higher rung foods you can sub them out too for some of your lower rung foods already in your WOE like remove a few carbs of cheese or nuts or veggies to get to the next level the berries and so on. But it will depend on your individual metabolism as to what you can handle and whay you can't.
I ended up with adding rungs 1 and 3 and staying under 20 net carbs for the first 100 pounds and then climbed cause i thought wanted to add low carb breads to my WOE. Turned out when I could have them i didn't want them as much.

Pick and chose and enjoy your foods if your weight loss or craving control is effected dump the food group and try a different one. You do not want to have to lose the weight twice so you don't want to wait for GOAL to find out the info.

Happy OWLing to you

[redfoxglove]

So if I choose to go on to OWL, the two choices are OWL or modified OWL?
OWL would be as directed in the order of the book.
Modified OWL would be a custom-designed plan that would access levels of OWL that are the most desired? For example, I'm getting plenty of veg but I would like to add some nuts? So my modified OWL would be add 5 grams of nuts 3x/wk and check for cravings or other negative symptoms?

[Sunny_0ne]

How wonderful to "hear" from Dr. Atkins 7 years after his death!!!

This WOE is so much more flexible and adaptable than I thought.

I can't thank you enough for this post!

[NoDef]

Glad you posted this. When on the diet I've always kept it "modified low carb" and always had success with it. I always would feel kind of guilty because I didn't like many of the items on some of the levels. After induction, I have always substituted other low carb items (such as low carb tortillas used for my bread) and continued to lose weight.

[not2late]

Originally Posted by NoDef

Glad you posted this. When on the diet I've always kept it "modified low carb" and always had success with it. I always would feel kind of guilty because I didn't like many of the items on some of the levels. After induction, I have always substituted other low carb items (such as low carb tortillas used for my bread) and continued to lose weight.

What you were doing was essentially OWL phase.

Alot of people think that Induction Phase is the entire Atkins diet. It's not. In fact, it's partly the reason why ADBB has a specific On-Going WEight Loss Phase forum.

[ViviSP]

I am New here and you guys make me so happy i can see the results...i am glad to be here ! God Bless you all!!