[boxcigsnick]

The first rung of the OWL ladder is more veggies... you can add 5 net carbs of veggies the first week. That would bring you up to 25 total, with 17 - 20 of them from vegetables. If you're still losing, the next week you can add 5 more carbs from the next rung, which is fresh cheeses (like cottage cheese) as well as more aged cheese. At this point you're up to 30 a day... 17 - 20 from veg, 5 from fresh cheese (the other 5 to 8 carbs can be "spent" on things like cream, olives, avocado, cheese, etc). Third rung, third week... seeds and nuts. At this rung you can add 5 carbs a day for a total of 35 a day. Here is where PNB comes in. There's some disagreement about peanuts and pnb... some people believe that because peanuts are actually legumes that you don't get to add them in until the 6th rung.... legumes. Techinically, that might be true. BUT, if you look up nuts in any of the Atkins books you'll find peanuts and peanut butter listed with the other true nuts. I think that Dr. Atkins felt that they were nut-like enough to put them there... so that's how I eat them, as NUTS, not legumes. He said that his first choice for nuts are macadamia and that's what I try to stick to. They also only have 0.9 carbs per serving.

One serving of nuts is 2 TBS and carb count varies by nut. For peanuts, 2 TBS is 1.8 net carbs. 4 TBS (1/4 cup) would be 3.6. Peanut butter (natural, no sugar added) is 2 TBS for 4.8 net grams. That's two LEVEL tablespoons.... barely enough to bother with. lol Be sure to measure it or you might be eating two to three TIMES the carbs you think you are. The nut list is on page 399 in my book. The OWL ladder is on page 171.

Speaking of the ladder... Atkins said we could skip rungs, BUT we shouldn't skip that week. If you skip the fresh cheese rung stay at 25 carbs (with extra veggies) for two weeks. Then move on to the next rung and add 5 carbs a day from that rung. At that point you would be up to 30 carbs while on the 3 rung, instead of 35 carbs. He explains it quite well in the book.