Do I need to move to Rung 2 before I add more carbs?

[PinkBikini]

I was going to wait 1 more week on rung 1 because we're vacationing this week and I know it will be enough of a struggle without trying to introduce new foods. I won't have my scale, my regular eating etc... but I'm noticing I need about 5 extra carbs or so to feel satisfied and be able to hit my minimum calorie requirements due to all these extra veggies I’m adding in.

If I understand from the posts I read here correctly I’m only to add 5 carbs of each particular food rung until I get out of OWL/premaintenance. Like, if I were to stay on rung 1 I shouldn’t actually be advancing my carb intake of the veggies to 25 or 30 in the coming weeks. I should only be having my 3 cups of veggies plus 5 net carbs of veggies.

So based on this I think I need to advance to dairy this week. I’ll plan on advancing from 20 to 25 carbs on 3 days this week (5 of the carbs will be from dairy rung foods) and then on the other 3-4 days I’ll do my usual 20 carbs without dairy. If I come back and have lost my weight or inches I’ll advance the week after to 25 carbs with some form of 5 carb dairy every day.

Is that correct?

[mitzimarie]

Re: Do I need to move to Rung 2 before I add more carbs?

Hello, Pink

I'm sure someone who is better at explaining things will come by here and answer your question, but here is my experience:

Keeping up with numbers the way you mentioned makes my head hurt. I took the easy way out... I stayed on Rung 1 for a couple of months, trying tons of new veggies. On the weeks that I didn't introduce a new food, I upped my carbs by 5. I pretty much found my CCLL on the veggie rung... that way, as I advanced up the further rungs, I could easily just swap out 5 carbs for each each new rung because my level of carbs was higher.

Rung 1 is a pretty unique rung, in that it is the rung that you really should get most of your carbs from at any phase of Atkins. So, it made sense to me to get my carb level up higher before I started swapping out veggies for stuff like dairy, nuts, and berries.

As I said, someone who is better at explaining things will probably stop by and comment on doing it the way you mentioned... the increasing carbs a few days a week thing... it's just that it would be hard for me to do it that way... I need things to be as simple as possible.

Good luck!

[not2late]

Re: Do I need to move to Rung 2 before I add more carbs?

I was going to wait 1 more week on rung 1 because we're vacationing this week and I know it will be enough of a struggle without trying to introduce new foods. I won't have my scale, my regular eating etc... but I'm noticing I need about 5 extra carbs or so to feel satisfied and be able to hit my minimum calorie requirements due to all these extra veggies I’m adding in.

If I understand from the posts I read here correctly I’m only to add 5 carbs of each particular food rung until I get out of OWL/premaintenance. Like, if I were to stay on rung 1 I shouldn’t actually be advancing my carb intake of the veggies to 25 or 30 in the coming weeks. I should only be having my 3 cups of veggies plus 5 net carbs of veggies.

So based on this I think I need to advance to dairy this week. I’ll plan on advancing from 20 to 25 carbs on 3 days this week (5 of the carbs will be from dairy rung foods) and then on the other 3-4 days I’ll do my usual 20 carbs without dairy. If I come back and have lost my weight or inches I’ll advance the week after to 25 carbs with some form of 5 carb dairy every day.

Is that correct?

You can stay on a Rung and keep adding 5 net carbs of foods from that rung. For example, you can stay on Rung 1 and add another 5 net carbs of Rung 1 foods to your menu one week, the following week you can add anoher 5 net carbs. I stayed on Rung 1 until I found my CCLL.