Chris Powell's Choose More, Lose More for Life (12 page)

How to Keep It Going:
Every once in a while, it’s a good idea to restart your carb-cycling engine. Even though the high-carb/low-carb pattern prevents your body from adapting to a predictable intake of calories every day, which keeps your metabolism hot even when it should be cool, your intelligent body will eventually wise up to your tricks. When that happens, your metabolism will drop off and your weight loss will slow down or even stop. To restart the process, you’ve got to change up the way you’re eating yet again.

Once a month you’ll devote a week to the Slingshot Technique. During this week, every day will be a high-carb day. Eat exactly as you do on normal high-carb days, and by the seventh day your metabolism will be blazing away again. When you go back to carb cycling, your body will forget the trick you pulled on it before and start losing weight again. What’s more, the Slingshot Technique gives your body extra rest and nourishment that allow it to recover from three weeks of carb cycling.

Any successful weight-loss plan includes exercise as a central component, and my carb-cycling program is no exception. I’ve designed two types of quick workouts to
accelerate your weight loss
: muscle-building and cardiovascular. They go with carb cycling perfectly because they compound its
effects! Every weekday morning you do special muscle-building workouts. I call them 9-Minute Missions because in only nine minutes they move your metabolism-boosting mission forward. To accelerate your fat loss, do your customized cardio exercises anytime after your 9-Minute Missions. I call them Shredders because they tear through fat like nobody’s business.
Chapter 5
, “Shape Your Body, Shred Your Fat: The Exercises” shows you everything you need to know; this is just a preview.

9-Minute Missions to Shape Your Muscles:
Muscle-shaping exercise, also known as resistance training, heats up your metabolism by increasing the size of your energy-hungry muscles—the number one calorie users in your body. (It also shapes up your muscles so your body takes on its most attractive contours as you lose weight.) I’ve streamlined basic resistance training into 9-Minute Missions that can easily fit into your day.

When you’re carb cycling, the 9-Minute Missions make the biggest impact if you do them first thing in the morning—before you eat breakfast—because they prime your metabolism to run at its peak for the rest of the day. I like to roll out of bed, do my Mission, and step right into the shower before sitting down to eat. However, if your schedule will not accommodate training first thing in the morning, any time of day will still give you phenomenal results.

Keeping it simple and natural, I’ve built the 9-Minute Missions around some of the human body’s most basic movements: running, jumping, pushing, pulling, crunching, and squatting. Every exercise in these workouts uses a movement that your body is naturally designed to do. All of these movements are truly functional: They’re downright
necessary
for human mobility and survival!

Since it’s engineered to run, jump, push, pull, crunch, and squat, your body responds fastest to exercise based on these movements, as opposed to exercises that force it into movements it’s not intended to do. This means you get better results with less effort than you would on some of that insane equipment at the gym or fitness studio. Which reminds me: You can do your 9-Minute Missions at home, without any expensive, space-hogging gear.

In
Chapter 5
, “Shape Your Body, Shred Your Fat,” I introduce you to thirty muscle-shaping exercises that we use to create our 9-Minute Missions. Being able to switch between exercises from day to day keeps working out
fun
—not to mention extremely productive. Each of the Shaper Missions includes three of the muscle-building exercises that I’ve designed.

Those are the basics of building muscle while carb cycling. The best basic of all might be that the 9-Minute Missions take only… well,
nine minutes
. Nine minutes, five times a week! What an awesome way to get fit! What an easy way to charge up your metabolism!

Cardio Shredders to Strip Off Pounds:
Although it’s less intense than resistance training, cardio exercise is the optimum fat burner. Getting your muscles moving and your heart pumping will take your metabolism through the roof, and
your fat will melt right off
. When it comes to weight loss, this is what Shredders are all about. But they also deliver tons of oxygen to your organs, make your heart stronger, and do a bunch of other great things for your health!

When you think of cardio exercise, you might envision people sweating on elliptical machines or jumping around in aerobics class, but ordinary exercises, like swimming, biking, and walking, are just as good at working your cardiovascular system and burning fat. The key is to find an activity you love: gym classes, hiking, skating—you choose. You’re a lot more likely to do your Shredders if you’re having fun! They’ll be even more fun—not to mention better at chomping calories—if you switch between different kinds of exercise once in a while.

When you’re carb cycling, you do Shredders every day of the week except on the weekend. Each Shredder takes you through
two levels
of your chosen exercise: low-intensity and high-intensity. This might translate, for instance, to intervals of walking and then jogging. The shredders start out at five minutes in duration and increase five more minutes every week until you reach sixty minutes

For carb cyclers of average fitness, I recommend starting by “shredding” your existing cardio routine. What I mean is simply create intervals with whatever you are already doing and keep the duration the same. Then increase five minutes every week until you reach sixty minutes. Remember, the more Shredders you do, the more fat you burn!

Your Workout Week:
With all these exercises and types of workouts, you might be a little confused about when to do which workout. No need to stress: In its basic form, the carb-cycling exercise schedule is actually straightforward and is laid out in easy-to-read charts throughout the book.

Eating right and exercising—that’s not all there is to weight loss, and certainly not all there is to transforming your life. But by changing what you eat and how you exercise throughout the week, by eating at the right time of day, and by coordinating your workouts with your diet, you can lose all the weight you want to, and keep trim and fit
for life
. Carb cycling makes weight loss as fast and easy as it can be, and you don’t even have to give up the foods you love. That’s a whole lot of carrots—without the stick. That’s carb cycling!

Keep reading, and you’ll find out that carb cycling is the best way to transform your life through weight loss because: