I lost my weight to the target in 3.5 months induction from April 1, 2002. Since then I have been on maintenance for 7.5 months. When I was on induction I wondered how hard it would be to maintain. I had planned to do OWL but was too impatient and wanted to continue the success of induction. Reached my target and then there is this letdown of sorts that people talk about. There is a lot of excitement losing weight in induction and then you stop and the excitement goes away. One person told me when the excitement and attention goes away then you will start getting lazy and gain back weight.

Well that did not happen - I found out quickly that just adding fruit and low carb cereals was enough to maintain and it is remarkably easy. I will say that I use the scale everyday except weekends to check where I am. (For all scale haters ) Today I am 1 lb under my target. So that means if somehow I was passing by my favorite authentic mexican restaurant I could cheat and have a burrito or enchiladas with refried beans. I have been good in those situations and do not have the rice. Also only eat a few chips with salsa - I used to eat the entire bowl of chips before my meal came - it was sort of a challenge and goal. If I am 1 lb heavy I know that I can not cheat and so on.

My observation as a key to maintenance on any diet or just to do any diet is that one must develop an entire new menu with as many choices as one can to make it interesting. Otherwise it is very difficult to maintain if you are truly bored of your choices. For example I first read the Zone and just could not spend the time to calculate for every meal the correct protien to carb ratio and design an entire new Zone menu. With Atkins I found it much easier to just throw out the bread, rice, pasta etc. After induction I had to reach out and try LC products buying over the internet. Many times you hear "I am tired of eggs" Maybe induction you can eat eggs every morning, but can you do it year after year on maintenance? Maybe a few people can. But now I eat eggs maybe twice a week. Almost everyday I eat a low carb cereal and fruit for breakfast - right now clementines and red grapes. Sunday I cook up LC pancakes, eggs and bacon. The other meals are easier - so I am totally adapted to these new choices and look forward to these LC meals. This makes it easy to leave the old menu in the past and truly maintain.

The last thing in my long dissertation is that once I developed the menu choices - the portion sizes are always the same - so this lends it self to steady results on the scale. Good luck to everyone! Please hit your targets and reach maintenance