The 20/20 Diet (5 page)

When you’re eating the same exact foods day in and day out and your

list of “safe” foods can fit very easily on a standard-size Post-it note, you’re going to get bored. Monotony is certain death on a di
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et. If your

diet consists solely of steamed chicken and celery, you quickly get to

the point where you’d rather the damn chicken eat
you
than you eat another tasteless, dry hunk of white meat. Most people want variety, so if you deny your body that, you’re steering the boat right into

the storm. As your taste buds scream for something,
anything
, other than another bite of raw celery, you finally throw it down and make

a beeline for the closest drive-thru window. And you know what else?

A bland, boring diet does nothing to address your sugar withdrawal

symptoms like we talked about before
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. So you feel bad, you’re hungry,

and you hate the foods on your diet.
Result: Failure.

I understand that the moment you get bored on a diet is the

moment that you start the downward spiral into failure, so this plan is

designed to keep your taste buds engaged. I want you to look forward

to eating and to enjoy the healthy foods your body needs, and you will

be shocked by how quickly this can happen. Listen, if you’ve trained

your brain to crave things like chicken-fried steak or ice cream sand-

wiches, you might not believe that you could ever crave something

that’s actuall

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y good for you. But because your body
needs
the nutri-

tional building blocks found in fresh, whole foods, once you switch it

into the mode of eating right, the shift will happen quickly. The meals

on this plan are made with colorful, nutritionally dense foods and

seasonings, rich in flavors and variety, so they check all the boxes and keep you from ever getting bored.
Result: Success.

Temp
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tations

If an alcoholic went to a rehab center that stocked every room with

booze, how long do you think he’d stay sober? Come on, that’s like

asking a fish not to swim. When you’re trying to lose weight and

20 | The 20/20 Diet

“sober up” from your long-running food addiction, your environment

has got to prop you up and support your goals. Weight loss plans that

don’t address how to successfully set up all of your environments (I’m

talking home, office, car, and your “virtual” environment) could be

setting you up for failure. You simply don’t stand a chance in moments

of weakness when you open the freezer and there are cartons of ice

cream and frozen pizzas staring back at you.
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ure.

I will show you how to program
all
of your environments for suc-

cess. Again, when you are hungry, you
are going to eat
. So here’s a novel thought: let’s clean out your space so when it’s legitimately time to reach for a snack, you aren’t tempted with bags of chips lined up

on the counter, a cookie jar, and nine boxes of popsicles. If you don’t

have all that available, then you’ve set up your world to support your

“sobriety.” The truth is, you don’t
break
a bad habit; you must replace one behavior with a new one. And the new behavior should meet two

criteria: it must be healthy, and it mu
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st be incompatible with the pre-

vious behavior.

That first criterion means you’ve got to replace the chips, cook-

ies, and popsicles that you’re removing from your environment with

healthy alternatives that you actually enjoy eating. On this plan, you’ll never, ever get caught with nothing to eat. You’ll have the right foods

available to you because as I’ve said, hungry people eat and they eat

what is there, and you should
never
feel guilty about eating!

The second criterion means you need to adopt new habits that

crowd out bad h
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abits, because they cannot be done simultaneously.

If you have a habit of coming in through the kitchen and consuming

thousands of calories in “snacks” before you even take your jacket

off, then let’s figure out something that is incompatible with graz-

ing around the kitchen. Go through the front door instead, or go

directly to the gym right after work—do whatever it takes to get

ou
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t of that old space, that old way of doing things, and into a new

activity. I think you will be really surprised by how big of a role your environment is playing in your weight loss failure and how simple

it will be to reprogram it so you set up habits to last you a lifetime.

Result: Success.

What Makes This Diet Different | 21

Inconsistent results and plateaus

There you are, first thing in the morning, standing in front of the scale just hoping, praying, that all your hard work over the past week is going to pay off. You think about all the times you white-knuckled your way

through cravings and fought off light-headed moments of sheer starva-

tion, making for the world’s longest month, and now, right now, you’re

going to see if it was all worth it. You squeeze your eyes close
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d, step on

the scale, exhale, open your eyes and—WHAT?!—you
gained
a pound?

How can this be? You fol owed that stupid diet chapter and verse! You

turned down your grandma’s apple pie at the family get-together and quit drinking soda cold turkey. This is an outrage! Impossible. Unthinkable.

And, you’re done. Diet is over. No payoff, no results right out of the

gate—forget it. And then you wonder, “Is there any of that pie left?”

Or maybe a diet actual y works for a little while but then suddenly

you hit a screeching halt and the needle on the scale won’t budge, no

way no how. You’ve hit the dreaded plate
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au, which sends you into a tail-

spin, causing extreme frustration and destructive self-doubt. You start

to think, “It’s me. I’ll never weigh one ounce less than I do right now. I might as well accept this fate, stop this insane diet, and go back to wearing muumuus full time and eating frosting straight from the container.”

Whether it’s the last five pounds or the last ten, if a diet doesn’t

offer a solution for getting over that hump, that diet is going out the

window. And pretty soon, that muumuu looks like a minidress—it

now goes sideways instead of down.
Result: Failure.

If I’m going t
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o keep you motivated, I know I have to be honest

with you about weight loss. Experts indicate that you should aim for

consistent weight loss of about one to two pounds per week, so you

should remain realistic—you aren’t going to lose 40 pounds per week

(no matter what any diet product claims).

But I’ll help you create healthy intermediate goals so that you feel

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good about what you’re accomplishing along the way.

As for plateaus, part of the reason they occur is because when you’re

eating the same food and doing the same exercise day in and day out,

you can get bored and lose motivation. That’s why I’ve designed a

plan with a number of exercises and numerous meals to help you stay

22 | The 20/20 Diet

interested and motivated. You should also restart the phases of the plan every 30 days to help introduce more variety into the plan. So, if you

haven’t reached your goal in the first 30 days of this plan, depending on how much more you have to lose, you will start over at one of the phases to continue your weight loss at a steady pace until you do hit your goal.

Plateaus can also strike when you’re losing muscle mass on a diet,

which happens when you’re focusing solely on cardiovasc
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ular exercise

and calorie restriction, as the majority of diets do! Muscles burn calories, and that’s why I’ve incorporated a specific type of resistance training

designed to build lean muscle tissue so that your body’s caloric burn rate is amplified throughout the day. Even while you’re sitting watching TV,

your body will be working harder for you.
Result: Success.

Like I said, I’m not the first person to come up with a diet that

works, but I do know that by combatting the Top Seven “Ugly Truths”

about Dieting, I’ve reverse-engineere
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d a way to help you meet your

weight loss goals. I want you to have 20/20 vision every step of the

way. No surprises or gimmicky tricks, just a clear-cut, doable plan that gives you results. In the next chapter, we’ll go over the basics of the

plan so you know exactly what to expect.

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What Makes This Diet Different | 23

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2

A DIET THAT DEFIES

YOUR LOGIC

Status quo, you know, is Latin for “the mess we’re in.”
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—Ronald Reagan

It’s 8:00 a.m. in mid-March. You’re in the bathroom getting ready

for the day. You take one last loo
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k in the mirror, check all angles,

and then you freeze. Your mind races: “What is
that
? Right there . . .

that enormous bulge popping out over my waistband. Oh man, these

pants used to be too big and now I’m spilling out all over the place.” I know how you berate yourself, because you have told me a thousand

times. You think, “This whole outfit makes me look like a giant stuffed

sausage,” or “Someone could seriously confuse me for the Michelin

Man.” I mean, did the dry cleaners shrink these clothes, or did I really pack on this many extra pounds over the winter? Just add it to my

tab, right? Fiv

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e pounds from work stress, 10 from the holidays, a few

more from the visit with the in-laws—it adds up before you know it.

Then you think, “I need to cut myself a little slack. It’s been a tough

few months. I just need to give up the double bacon cheeseburgers for

a while and restart my gym membership, and then I’ll be ready for

swi
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msuit season in no time. Right?”

You’ve been telling yourself this same script again and again, year

after year. And even if you did manage to cut back on junk food

or drag yourself to the gym for a few sessions, has it ever worked in

the past? I’m guessing the answer is no. But have you ever wondered

why? It’s what everyone says: you have to starve yourself and work

25

out like crazy—isn’t that the answer? New, developing research and

theories suggest that the solution to your weight problem might go

deeper than eating less and exercising more, though it’s important not

to under-emphasize the importance of healthy eating and exercise.

These theories and new research suggest that it’s about the
types

of foods you’re eating, the
kind
of exercise you’re doing, and significantly,
how
you’re changing your mindset and emotiona
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l responses.

Let me give you an example. A 400-calorie low-fat blueberry muf-

fin simply isn’t capable of accomplishing the same things in your

body as a 400-calorie bowl of oatmeal with apple slices and wal-

nuts. They’ve got the same amount of calories, so you’d think they’re

“equal,” right? Wrong. Way wrong. What you are going to learn in

this diet is that not all calories are created equal, but the current

research that’s unfolding suggests that some foods may even have

intrinsic abilities to help you lose weight, for example, by helping

you feel full for longer.

I predict you are going to have a seri
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ous anger response when I give

you the scoop on these new theories regarding what you need to eat

and how you need to exercise in order to lose weight and keep it off

with healthy lifelong habits. You are going to be thinking, “OMG! All

this time, I never even had a chance! The miles I have walked around

that damn track! The sacrifices I have made! The starvation I endured,

the time I spent obsessing over what I ate, the pricey gimmicks—are

you kidding me? I was dead in the water before I even started! I did it

all with not eve

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n a chance of success.”

This takes us back to the concept of using 20/20 hindsight to your

advantage. I intend to completely revamp your current beliefs about

weight loss, because that thinking hasn’t worked for you, me, or anyone

else. The latest theories based on new and evolving research are telling us that obesity is
not
reversed by cutting out carbs or fasting—both of whic
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h are methods you’ve probably tried before—but instead through

the innate power of certain foods that could assist you in reaching your weight loss goals. My team of nutrition experts has identified the top

20 foods that this new research suggests may have specific effects on

the human body to help weight loss. I refer to them as the 20/20 Foods.

26 | The 20/20 Diet

The foods in this list each fall into one of three categories. Here

they are:

Foods with Potential Thermogenic Properties

New theories suggest that some of the foods on this list can increase

thermogenesis. “Thermo-what?” Well, thermogenesis is t
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