Ready for Phase 2? Here's How to Do the Real Atkins Diet!

Here's how to do Phase 2 of the Atkins Diet

(Last Updated: March 18, 2021)

The Atkins Diet was never meant to be a 20-carb diet. Instead, the Atkins Nutritional Approach was designed to be progressive. Once you're in the state of ketosis and you have adapted to burning fat effectively, it's time to broaden your diet.

Are you ready to move beyond Atkins Induction to the real honest-to-goodness Atkins Diet?  

Good!

You've made a great decision. 

But first, congratulations on achieving and completing the first phase of the Atkins nutritional approach. I know how hard that was.

Phase 2 builds on the success you experienced during the first 2 to 4 weeks of Induction, but Phase 2 will be much easier. It's the space where you start to create your own personalized low-carb plan.

To do that, you need to know the best way to transition from a very low-carb diet to a plan that fits your special tastes, activity level, and carbohydrate tolerance, yet still allows you to lose body fat at an acceptable pace.

By now, you will be deeply into the state of ketosis and your physical appetite will have drastically changed, making it easier to eat at a calorie deficit. 

You'll also be predominantly burning fatty acids for fuel, so you won't have to eat as much protein as you did during the Induction period. 

While you still need to eat adequate amounts of protein foods on Phase 2 – about 0.8 grams of protein for each pound of lean body mass you have – you will now have additional delicious low-carb food choices that you can slowly add to your plate.

If you want to one day be a former fat person, come along with me and I'll show you how:

Check Your Yo-Yo Dieting Habits at the Door

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to do Phase 2, the Ongoing Weight Loss Phase (OWL) of the Atkins program, we need to talk about those who don't succeed with this phase of the plan. 

Most of the time, failure occurs when you nurse the notion that a diet is something that you are either “on” or “off” of.

You don't get onto the Atkins Diet, ride it for a few miles, and then get back off it again, like a bus, just because you aren't losing weight fast enough. 

The Atkins Diet is Not a bus.

Your body is not misbehaving. Your metabolism isn't broken. The Atkins Nutritional Approach is not an all or nothing plan.

This type of crash-diet mindset is the dieting path that so many dieters take, and when they do, that yo-yo approach to weight loss is the fastest way to fail.

A diet is not a journey.

It is not something that you temporarily put up with, so that you can one day go back to your old way of eating. Thinness isn't a point of arrival. It is an evolutionary process. A transmutation.

If you want to become a former fat person, the changes you make in your diet and lifestyle have to become a literal part of you. You have see the value in what the Atkins Diet asks you to do, and you have to make those changes and lifestyle alterations permanent.

Going back to eating what made you fat in the first place will only return you to who and what you were before you started. Yo-yo dieting is a vicious circle that you don't have to put up with if you don't want to.

The truth?

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. There is no set number of carbs you have to eat to be healthy and thin.

The number of carbohydrates you can eat daily is going to be different for everyone, which is the essential point of Phase 2. Even the foods you choose to eat are entirely up to you.

If you don't like eating at 20 or 25 net carbs per day, you don't have to. Maybe you'll do better and be happier eating at 45 or 60 or 75 grams a day. 

There is no one watching over your shoulder to see what you're doing with the information in this guide except for you, so do yourself a big favor and leave your yo-yo dieting habits at the door.

The whole idea behind the Atkins Diet is to show you how to be a better, healthier, and happier you.

What Phase 2 Can Do For You

Let's be honest.

Most people didn't start the Atkins Nutritional Approach because they wanted to be healthy. 

Most people are in this game for the fat loss. 

You want to be thinner than you are right now. That's why you're here.

However, many people come to the Atkins Diet with a bucket load of false expectations and unrealistic demands. They want to lose weight and they want to lose it today. 

Not tomorrow.

They want to experience the pleasure and attention that they believe being thin will give them. 

They have heard about the weight loss success that others have had on this program, and they want the same thing for themselves.

There's nothing wrong with that.

However, the benefit of turning to a low-carb diet over other nutritional approaches gives you the ability to combine the physical and emotional well-being you experience when burning body fat with the pleasure of being able to eat a luxurious, higher-fat diet than other dietary programs.

If you get mad because your body isn't doing what you want it to do and run off, chasing another dietary approach that will let you lose tons of body fat without having to put in any effort, you're going to be sadly disappointed.

Dieting expectations only lead to disappointment.
Leave your bucket of expectations at the door.

Mindless eating won't get you anywhere.

While there are tricks you can use to help you eat less, without counting carbs or calories, effortless dietary programs will only work for a short period of time. Eventually, if you truly want to be successful, you'll have to take personal responsibility for your own health.

Atkins can help you:

• curb your physical hunger and cravings
• burn and dissolve excess body fat
• learn your personal carbohydrate tolerance level
• eat from a nutrient-rich, low-carb food list

For most people, Phase 2 will also cause your fat loss to slow down.

Dr. Atkins believed that slowing down your fat loss in Phase 2 was a necessary part of the OWL program because it set the foundation for permanent weight-loss management. 

However, in my own experience, the rate at which your body fat comes off is more about how much fat and calories you eat, rather than carbohydrates.

And here's why:

What is the Purpose of Phase 2 (OWL)?

There is a direct relationship between the number of carbohydrates you eat and your level of physical hunger. 

The more carbs you eat, the more likely it is that those carbs will trigger cravings for more carbs. The fewer carbs you eat, the less likely it is that those carbs will trigger cravings.

That relationship between carbs and cravings doesn't happen with everyone, but it happens with enough people that most of you will be able to dial in the number of carbohydrates you eat to sit just below the level where cravings for sugars and non-nutritious starches will be ignited.

At that personalized level, eating at a calorie deficit is easy-peasy because you won't experience excessive hunger like you do when your carbohydrate intake is higher. This lack of hunger is one of the major benefits for being in the state of ketosis.

While ketosis isn't magic and doesn't guarantee that you'll lose body fat, the state of ketosis does a tremendous job of squashing excess hunger and cravings for unnecessary carbohydrate foods. For that reason, your Critical Carbohydrate Level for Losing (CCLL) can be easily set below the point where your hunger runs away with you.

This is the major purpose and aim of Phase 2.

How to Do Phase 2 of the Atkins Diet Correctly

In a nutshell, the way to determine your personal CCLL is to slowly raise up the number of carbohydrates you eat, each week, above the 2 cups of salad and 1 cup of vegetables allowed on Induction, until you find the level of carbohydrate where your cravings begin to kick in.

If you do this slowly enough, you can stay on top of your cravings and feel when you're getting close to your maximum threshold.

Dr. Atkins recommended that you do this using 5 grams of carbohydrate at a time. In his personal experience, 5 grams was the fastest he could go and keep his body fat coming off at a good pace. He saw the same thing with his personal patients.

The average person can eat at 50 grams of carbohydrate per day and still stay in the state of ketosis. 

For that reason, ketosis is often defined as 50 grams of carbohydrate per day, or less. Some people are able to eat 60 or even 65 grams of carb and still stay in ketosis. I can, so the less-than-50 isn't a rule. It's just an average.

The perfect carbohydrate level for you might not be the highest level that will keep you in ketosis.

What you've been eating on Atkins Induction is a very low-carb diet, so now your job is to figure out the best carbohydrate level for you. That level is going to be different for everyone.

While one person might need to stay at 20 net carbs per day or less for most of their weight loss phase, and just return additional low-carb foods to their plan, others might be able to raise their carbohydrates to 35 or even 45 grams a day and still lose 1 to 2 pounds a week.

The average low-carb dieter eats about 35 carbs a day for weight loss.

If you're young and your metabolism is still in good shape, numbers as high as 60 or even 75 grams a day are not unheard of. A lot depends on your:

• sensitivity to carbohydrate foods
• the type of low-carb foods you prefer
• and the amount of your calorie deficit

While the Atkins Diet doesn't place a huge emphasis on counting calories, if you are used to reaching for higher calorie foods, even with the lower appetite, mindless eating might not work for you.

This is particularly true if you are simply adding and adding and adding additional low-carb foods to your current menu without subtracting a bit of protein or dietary fat in return. 

The idea of Phase 2 isn't to eat more calories. The idea of Phase 2 is to give you a larger variety diet.

You're going to stall out fairly quickly if your calorie level reaches your maintenance level of calories. If you try to pile those carbohydrate additions on top of a super high-fat diet, your calories will be too high to see much fat loss.

Weight loss occurs when you don't eat enough to fulfill your body's needs and the body has to make a withdrawal from your fat stores, so keep that in mind as you return carbohydrates to your diet.

You always have to eat at a calorie deficit, even if your diet is super low in carbs.

How to Use the Carbohydrate Ladder Wisely

During the first week of Phase 2, your carbohydrate allotment will grow from 20-net carbs per day to 25. In the 2002 version of the Atkins Diet, Dr. Atkins recommended that you spend those extra 5 grams on one of the following:

• another salad
• half of an avocado
• a cup of cauliflower
• 6 to 8 stalks of asparagus

Or whatever other vegetable you like and enjoy eating.  

At 25 net grams of carbohydrates per day, you continue eating that way for the rest of the week.

If you lose weight that week, on week 2 of Phase 2, you can increase your carbohydrate level to 30-net carbs per day. If you're a vegetable lover, you can stay on rung 1 of the carbohydrate ladder and just add 5 more carbs of vegetables per day, or you could choose to have:

• half-cup of cottage cheese
• dozen macadamia nuts
• ounce of sunflower seeds

David Jumbo Sunflower Seeds

(Available at Amazon)

If all is going well, you're not craving carbohydrate foods, and you're still losing weight, on week 3 of Phase 2, you can increase your carbohydrate level to 35 net carbs per day. If you've been feeling fruit deprived, this is when you can return berries to your diet.

Thirteen average-sized strawberries are 5-net carbs.

Dr. Atkins recommended that readers use the Carbohydrate Ladder as a guidance, along with an additional list he called the Power of 5. In 2002, the Carbohydrate Ladder was not mandatory to use, as you can see from the above examples he gave in the 2002 version of the diet.

What he did say, was that “Most people find it best to add back foods in a certain order.”

Notice he said most people and not all people.

If you don't want to use the following Carbohydrate Ladder or his Power of 5 list, you don't have to. 

In 1972, he felt it was extremely important to the diet's success for readers to return to their diet what they missed the most.

At this time in the Atkins Diet evolution, Dr. Atkins was experimenting with the glycemic index, which is why the ladder appears in a certain order. Foods at the bottom of the ladder are lower on the glycemic index.

Today, the glycemic index isn't considered a valid method of controlling your glucose tolerance.

It was originally created using healthy people with healthy insulin reactions to carbohydrate foods. It was not created using diabetics, nor even pre-diabetics. And even if it was, it still wouldn't apply because your glucose and insulin response to individual foods is going to be different than the response someone else gets.

For example:

My daughter-in-law is a diabetic. Common recommendation for diabetics is to eat brown rice over white. Yet, brown rice sends her blood glucose level through the roof, while plain white rice does not.

Blood glucose and insulin levels are not as mechanical and predictable as the originators of the glycemic index first hypothesized.

Carbohydrate Ladder

If you want to use the following low-glycemic ladder to guide your food choices, each week you go up another level on the ladder, adding 5 grams of carbohydrate back into your diet, per day, from that particular food group.

If you don't lose weight that week, you simply stay at the same level until you do.

If you gained weight that week, then you go down one level on the ladder to make a fast correction, subtracting 5 grams of carbohydrate from your diet each day.

To make it easier for you, I have added the carb amount that Dr. Atkins attached to each level on the ladder:

1. 25 net carbs per day: 

More salad and other vegetables from the acceptable foods list for Atkins Induction.

2. 30 net carbs per day: 

Fresh cheeses, such as cottage cheese or ricotta. You can also add more aged cheese than the 4 ounce limit given in Induction if you'd prefer that type of cheese instead. This doesn't take into account any dairy sensitivity you might have, so be careful if you choose to go over 4 ounces of hard cheese per day.

3. 35 net carbs per day: 

Seeds and nuts. Nuts are super high in calories, so you'll definitely need to control the fats and calories in your diet when you start to eat nuts or use almond flour for baked goods. (Amazon link) It is super easy to overeat.

4. 40 net carbs per day: 

Berries. No other fruits were allowed at this rung of the ladder in 2002.

5. 45 net carbs per day: 

Wine and other spirits that are low in carbs. Alcohol doesn't kick you out of ketosis, but it does put ketosis on hold. Although this ladder reserves alcoholic drinks for the fifth level of Phase 2, in earlier versions of the diet where wine or other low-carb spirits were very important to the dieter, alcohol was allowed as early as the second week on Phase 2.

6. 50 net carbs per day: 

Legumes. The average low-carb dieter never makes it this far. However, this rung pertains to standard beans, lentils, and other legume choices.

In 2002, black soy beans (Amazon link) were hard to find, available only in a few health food stores that chose to carry them. Today, they are available at Amazon and other online sources.

Black soy beans taste exactly like standard black beans, but they only have 5 net carbs per half-cup serving, due to their high fiber content. You can add them back into your diet much earlier than rung 6 if you enjoy them.

7. 55 net carbs per day: 

Fruits other than berries and melon. In 2002, Dr. Atkins didn't officially state here that you can only have low-glycemic fruits. For that reason, our post on low-carb fruits goes by carbohydrates rather than the glycemic index.

8. 60 net carbs per day: 

Starchy vegetables. This is talking about peas, carrots, and possibly corn, although corn is officially a grain and not a vegetable. Some types of winter squash would also fall into this category.

This seems to be an odd choice that Dr. Atkins made, to put starchy vegetables so high on the ladder. I ate starchy vegetables, including frozen mixed vegetables with lima beans and corn, at a much lower carbohydrate level and never had it interfere with my appetite or weight loss.

9. 65 net carbs per day: 

Whole grains. There is a huge misunderstanding within the low-carb community about how whole grains fit into the Atkins Diet. In fact, Dr. Atkins did not shun whole grains at all. 

If a patient was not overweight, he was immediately put on the Meat and Millet Diet, rather than a more traditional low-carb diet, which allowed whole grains. (Link goes to our Super Sensitive Celiac blog)

This is the carbohydrate level where low-carb breads, tortillas, flatbreads, pasta, and most low-carb high-gluten flours like Carbquick fit in. Traditional whole-grain breads would also be allowed at this point.

Carbquick Low-Carb Baking Mix

(Available at Amazon)

Most low-carb dieters totally ignore the carbohydrate ladder when it comes to whole grains and switch to low-carb whole-grain products as soon as they enter Phase 2. 

There is nothing wrong with doing it that way. 

I ate Carbquick myself before going gluten free and it did not affect my weight loss. 

The carbohydrate ladder is merely a suggestion for success, but there is one warning about wheat-based low-carb products that I do need to give you. And it's extremely important for you to pay attention to this:

If you are allergic to wheat or have un-diagnosed celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, low-carb products will cause severe physical reactions and can escalate intestinal destruction, due to the super-high gluten content in low-carb products.

For that reason, it's best to start with a very tiny serving to see how your body reacts to wheat, barley, or rye.

The Power of Five

The power of five is simply a chart that helps you tell at a glance what a 5-carb serving of a particular food looks like. You could do the same thing yourself by looking up your favorite foods in a carbohydrate counter and writing down what amount of food a 5-carb serving would be like.

For example:

A 1 ounce portion of nuts and seeds would be:

• 14 walnut halves
• 24 almonds
• 31 pecans
• 3 tablespoons of sunflower seeds, shelled
• 26 dry-roasted peanuts

Cashews are more carbohydrate dense, but not outlawed in 2002. Dr. Atkins merely lowered the portion size from 1 ounce of cashews to half an ounce, which would be 9 cashews.

Making up your own chart would also show you quite quickly that a 5-net carb value for melon would only be a quarter of a cup, about 2 melon balls. This is why I used higher carbohydrate counts than 5 in our summer fruits article.

By the time you add fruit to your menu, there should be enough variety in your life that you can use an occasional higher carb fruit to replace something else a couple of times a week.

That Dreaded Stall

As you keep raising your carbohydrate level, if you don't balance it by lowering your protein- and fat-calorie intake, your weight loss speed is going to slow way down due to the smaller calorie deficit. It can even stop completely.

To clarify that:

I am not talking about taking your protein down to very small levels.

If you go below 0.8 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass you're taking a large risk with your health because low protein intakes when coupled with very low carbs can result in muscle loss and severe malnutrition.

You will need to adjust your calories to maintain an appropriate deficit or you will have to cut down on carbs and limit your calorie intake that way. 

Some people have also eliminated all snacks and cut their daily meals down from three to two, or even one. The current popular technique is water fasting on a consistent basis. 

It doesn't matter how you bring yourself into a calorie deficit. You just have to do it.

As you carve off the pounds, what you could eat at the beginning of your diet is not the same amount of food you'll be able to eat as you approach the weight you want to be. 

The amount of food you can eat as you approach your target weight will also not be the amount of food you can eat once you hit your target.

A smaller body has fewer calorie demands. Fewer calories are required to maintain a smaller body. 

As time goes on, protein needs stay steady and carbohydrate needs are dialed in to fit your metabolic defects and personal taste. 

The only macro you have left to play with is your dietary fat. Dietary fat must come down as you lose more and more body fat.

That's just how it is.

If you stall partway home, then you are eating at maintenance. 

Your body has reached equilibrium. At that point, you have two choices:

1. Accept your current weight, readjust your goal, and be happy with what you have accomplished so far. How you're eating right now, or slightly more, is how you'll eat for the rest of your life.

2. Readjust your dietary fat and calorie intake to keep yourself eating at an appropriate deficit, so the body fat will start coming off again. For some people, this will mean going quite low in calories, so you'll have to live with a certain degree of hunger, temporarily, as you head into the homestretch of your target weight.

There is only ONE exception to this:

For a small group of individuals, going too low in fat can cause you to stall. For these individuals, slightly upping fat intake can get the scales moving again. 

Whether you're eating too much or too little depends on how your body reacts to food deprivation. Anything that stresses out the body can interfere with fat loss.

How Long Can I Stay on Phase 2?

Stay on Phase 2 until you come to within 10 pounds of the weight you want to be. At that time, you'll need to begin transitioning to Phase 3, the Pre-Maintenance Phase of the Atkins Diet.

*If you need help creating menus for Phase 2, check out our post that has Atkins 2002 menu templates for both the Induction Phase and Phase 2.