Adding back some fruit

Since I got a gift card from Amazon for my birthday yesterday, I bought a couple books for my Kindle.  One I already had in "real" book form, "Good Calories Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes.  The other was one I hadn't read before, "The New Atkins for a New You" by Dr. Eric Westman, Dr. Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek.

I don't think I will find anything terribly new in this book that I haven't found in other books or online, but I'm hoping there will be some twist in the presentation that will help me make it through transitioning to maintenance as I get closer to my goal weight.  I know that I need (probably) to try to slowly increase my carb intake and variety of foods, which is a scary proposition for me.

One thing in the Atkins book I have found so far is the "carb ladder" which I will try to use.  In fact I have by adding back in some berries to my diet.  I like the fact that the book gives pretty good instructions on how to go about testing new foods to see how my body reacts to them.  So I started small today by adding a small portion of blackberries (grown in my backyard and frozen last summer) with some heavy cream to my breakfast.  Usually I don't have any added carbs (other than those in the eggs), so adding even a few is a change.

I don't think I'll up my overall carb level for now, just swapping around the sources.  My average since I started eating low carb again has been around 17g of net carbs per day, within a range of 6g to 34g.  I will probably stay in this range, maybe a tad higher, but just trying out new foods.

The trick for me is going to be finding a good balance so that after 2 or 3 months I don't find myself face down in the candy counter at work, which is basically what has happened the first two times I tried low carb.