OWL Question - Upping carbs

[DebbieY]

I'm not moving to OWL yet, I just wanted to make sure I had all of the information when I did go up. I have read the book, but for some reason when I reached the OWL section, I seemed to skim it and have to reread.

I know when you start off with OWL, you are allowed 5 more grams of carbs. My question is, after waiting a minimum of 2 weeks or so, when the person is ready to go to the next stage of OWL, do they now add an additional 5 grams of fresh cheeses, and so on up the ladder until you have a total of 65 grams of carbs when you get to whole grains (if every step of the ladder is added.)

It just doesn't seem right to me, but what do I know. I know that I've read that you need to know your CCLL, which could be as low as 25 or as high as 50.

So, with that said, the next question would be if the above question is incorrect, which I'm leaning towards, does that mean that once you get the extra 5 grams of veggies, when you move the the next step of the ladder, do you take away that extra 5 grams of veggies and add the 5 grams on the nex step of the ladder for OWL?

I hope this post makes sense. I thought that once I got to 60-70 pounds lost, I would start OWL, I just wanted to make sure I had all of the facts in front of me before I began.

[not2late]

Re: OWL Question - Upping carbs

I'm not moving to OWL yet, I just wanted to make sure I had all of the information when I did go up. I have read the book, but for some reason when I reached the OWL section, I seemed to skim it and have to reread.

I know when you start off with OWL, you are allowed 5 more grams of carbs. My question is, after waiting a minimum of 2 weeks or so, when the person is ready to go to the next stage of OWL, do they now add an additional 5 grams of fresh cheeses, and so on up the ladder until you have a total of 65 grams of carbs when you get to whole grains (if every step of the ladder is added.)

You can do this a number of ways. If you want to add another 5 net carbs of the veggie rung you can. 2Big has a stickie above that the Atkins Center (when Dr. Atkins was still alive) used to describe the OWL Ladder as an OWL Net. So you can move sideways and up.

By the way, you don't keep eating until you reach 65. You keep adding until you stop losing weight. Then you back off by 5 net carbs to see if your weight loss resumes---it's at that point you know what your CCLL is. (See the CCLL stickie too).

It just doesn't seem right to me, but what do I know. I know that I've read that you need to know your CCLL, which could be as low as 25 or as high as 50.

So, with that said, the next question would be if the above question is incorrect, which I'm leaning towards, does that mean that once you get the extra 5 grams of veggies, when you move the the next step of the ladder, do you take away that extra 5 grams of veggies and add the 5 grams on the nex step of the ladder for OWL?

It depends. If you are doing the Modified OWL, where you keep Induction level carbs while going up the OWL carb ladder, you swap 5 net carbs of one rung for another.

If you are doing regular OWL and trying to find your CCLL, you don't drop the 5 net carbs you've added before. You eat the Induction menu + the OWL food.