Phase 3 is always 3 weeks- the confusion you’re running into is because even though Phase 3 is only 3 weeks after every round, the actual full length of time you are supposed to be break from hCG before you start your next round of hCG is a minimum of 6 weeks. Actually for each round you add 2 weeks to that. So that after round 2 you are technically supposed to wait 8 weeks to do hCG again.
Please see my post on Breaks from hCG to see the whole rundown of that and why these breaks are important to do.
So what this means is that many people are left not being sure what to do themselves after the 3 weeks of phase 3 is up as far as what to eat. Technically you are allowed to enter “phase 4” at this point.
So for the P3toLife program, we chose to do a 9-week meal plan for a few reasons, one main being so that you have a complete guide on what to eat for the whole time between your rounds. The first 3 weeks of the P3toLife meal plan are strictly P3, and then starting week 4, we begin incorporating some phase 4 dishes with a few higher carb items like sweet potatoes, or a little more dairy and/or nuts. However, during weeks 4-7 meal plan, we are sure to mix both strict P3 recipes with P4 recipes to help promote maintenance, as it doesn’t seem wise to just eat simple starches every day at meals when first transitioning into P4.
That said, there are still no simple carbs in the P3toLife plan – things like bread, rice and pasta. I figure once you feel like you want to try adding this, you can do so on your own- whereas many may not really eat these items very frequently again for maintenance.
I hope that helps explain it!
