When you see little to no fluctuation in the scale for about a week, you can assume your weight has stabilized. Congratulations! Continue to monitor your weight daily and perform a steak day if necessary.
Knowledge Base
Steak days are only effective on the very day your weight goes more than 2.0 pounds over your LDW. If you fail to do a steak day on that day, then you will need to commit to eating just lean proteins and vegetables for a few days. This usually causes the scale to come back within the safe range within a few days. If you find that you are performing multiple steak days, please give us a call so we can help get you back on track.
A steak day is a tool used to correct weight gain during the maintenance and life phases of the HCG diet. Any time your weight goes more than 2.0 pounds over your Last Drop Weight (LDW); you will need a steak day on that day.
A steak day consists of ½ to 1 gallon of water during the day, along with coffee or tea if desired, with no food whatsoever, and a big (at least 8 oz) steak (or other protein such as chicken, fish, pork, eggs, turkey, etc.) and either one raw tomato or one apple for dinner. The scale should show a 1-3 pounds loss the following morning. Steak days are for the Maintenance phase only.
During Maintenance and the Life stage a Steak Day is used to correct a weight gain of more than 2.0 pounds over your weight on the last day you took HCG (LDW). The steak day MUST be done on the very same day that your weight goes more than 2.0 pounds over LDW or it will not be effective and could be counter-productive. This is why weighing every single morning during maintenance is non-negotiable.
A steak day consists of ½ to 1 gallon of water during the day, along with coffee or tea if desired, with no food whatsoever, and a big (at least 8 oz) steak (or other protein such as chicken, fish, pork, eggs, turkey, etc.) and either one raw tomato or one apple for dinner. The scale should show a 1-3 pounds loss the following morning.
You must never perform two steaks days in a row. If you find that a steak day does not bring you within the 2lb range or, if you find that you require repeated steak days, you should contact our support team for suggestions. Steak days are for the Maintenance phase only.
No. The Atkins diet is a low carbohydrate diet. While on Maintenance 1, you need to avoid sugars and starches, but carbohydrates in the form of low glycemic fruit and vegetables are perfectly fine. You can find the guidelines and allowed foods for M1 in the ThinNow HCG Diet Guide.
Both Melba toast and grissini are considered starches and are not allowed during Maintenance 1.
During Maintenance 1 you need to refrain from eating any foods with sugar or starch, except what occurs naturally in the allowed foods. There are many different names for sugar, so be sure to check the ingredient lists of your favorite foods to determine if they contain sugars or starches. Be warned that there are some vegetables that fall in to this category including: potatoes, peas, and corn. A list of sugars and starches in all the various forms can be found inside the ThinNow HCG Diet Guide.
During Maintenance 1, cheating could result in difficulty stabilizing as well as hindering the reset of the hypothalamus, which controls metabolism. While losing weight on the HCG diet is a fantastic result, the real magic happens when your body achieves a new set-point weight. Cheating is NEVER worth it while on any phase of the HCG diet.
Maintenance 1 is just as critical as the VLCD. It is during the 21 days of M1 that your new weight set point is established and your hypothalamus is reset. The entire six weeks of maintenance is part of the treatment – don’t stop until you’re finished! You don’t want all your hard work in VLCD to go to waste…and it will if you don’t follow the Maintenance plan.
Maintenance is a total of six weeks long, broken into two 21-day stages. The first 21 days is known as Maintenance 1. During M1, no sugars or starches may be eaten. During the second stage, known as Maintenance 2, sugars and starches are slowly added back into the diet.
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