By now you should know this by heart, but in this case a little repetition is a good thing.

Adhearing maintenance will:

1. Provide you with a way of eating that allows you to stay slim for the rest of your life.

2. Allow you to maximize the amount of healthy carbohydrate foods you can eat while staying within 3 - 5 pounds of your goal weight.

3. Prevent re addiction to foods that have gotten you in trouble before by helping you to avoid frquent exposure to them.

4. Teach you how to drop back to an earlier weight loss phase, when needed to achieve lifetime weight control.

5. Teach you how to make the healthiest carb choices, which will allow you to continue to stay in control of your eating habits, feel your best and maintain inproved bloodlipid levels. Optimize your blood pressure , energy and more.

6. Teach you how to adjust your carb consumption when metabolic circumstances chamge, before you find yourself regaining inches/weight.

7. Give you a sense of accomplishment and confidence that spills over into the rest of your life how to do lifetime maintenance properly now that you've made it to your goal weight, you can continue to select from a greater range of foods and consume more carbs than you did in the two earlier phases of Atkins. But as I've said at every transition:

No way is this a license to return to your old eating habits.

All too often, people win the battle of weight loss only to lose the war of weight control. To maintain your goal weight, you must know your metabolic needs. Your cclm which you found during pre maintenance, lets you know how many carbs you can eat each day to maintain your weight. Stay right at or around that number, and your weight should not fluctuate beyond the perfectly natural range of 2 - 3 pounds.

Carbohydrate gram levels and metabolic resistance for maintaining metabolic resistance approx cclm range:

High 25 - 40 g of carbs per day.

Average 40 . 60 g of carbs per day.

Low 60 . 90 g of carbs per day.

Regular exerciser 90 or more g of carbs per day.