The 20/20 Diet (7 page)

chapter, I put together a top-notch team of experts across several fields.

If you have read any of my other books or watched me on TV, you

know that my expertise is in the area of human behavior. I’ve been

studying it and applying that knowledge with patients and guests on

my show for four decades. And when it comes to weight loss, you

32 | The 20/20 Diet

might not immediately think of a psychologist as the type of expert

from whom you would seek answers. Look, weight is a function of

behavior, and your thoughts control your behavior. In a study pub-

lished in the
Journal of the American Dietetic Association
, researchers found that subjects who ate out of stress or emotion were 13.38 times

more likely to be overweight or obese. That’s a huge number! Imagine

how much better off you’d be if you could remove tha
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t emotional

eating factor from the equation. This is exactly why I’ve got to help

you stop using food for anything other than nutrition.

Here’s the truth: even if you know exactly what it takes nutrition-

al y and in terms of physical exercise to shed those pounds, putting

it into action and sustaining it is the tough part. It’s estimated that

80 percent of people who do succeed at losing weight will gain it all back.

Why? Unless you alter your lifestyle and find new, nonfood ways to cope, you will eventual y drift back to your previous behaviors. So I’m going

to take what I know about human beh
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avior to help you reprogram your

thinking and your lifestyle so that they’re designed to support your goals.

I’ve said for a long time that I wasn’t going to write a new diet

book until there was something new and intriguing enough to take

the conversation to the next level. Well, when my research team and

I sat down and really pulled apart this new information, I knew that

time had come.

Food is, of course, a critical piece to this puzzle. A vital member of

my nutrition team is registered dietician Cynthia Sass, who brings to the table a great dea
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l of experience both with patients in her private practice

and as a sought-after writer in the nutrition field. She’s a
New York Times
best-selling author in her own right and has contributed to several well-known national health and wellness magazines over her career. With her

bachelor’s degree in nutrition/dietetics, her master’s degree in nutrition science, and another master’s degree in public health, Cynthia knows a

thin
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g or two about what, when, why, and in what combinations you need

to eat food. And she has formal culinary training because she gets a vital point about all of this—you’ve got to
want
to eat the foods on your diet!

This plan is a 360-degree approach because I believe anything less

will fail you. Now I’m going to show you just how all the pieces of the

puzzle come together for you.

A Diet That Defies Your Logic | 33

The Fly-By Version of the 20/20 Diet

This diet is divided into three phases over the course of 30 days. Here’s a breakdown of each phase:

Overview of Phase 1: The 5-Day Boost

The first phase lasts a total of five days and helps your bod
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y find new

dietary balance and restore itself. In these first, very important five

days, you will build a momentum (a “boost”) that will set you on a

new path and keep you motivated. You will choose your meals and

snacks (four a day, spaced about four hours apart) from a list of sim-

ple, delicious recipes that are created by using only the 20/20 Foods.

The primary goal of this phase is to tune in to your body signals by

learning how to distinguish between physical hunger, habit hunger,

and mind hunger using my Hunger and Fullness Scale.

If your doctor OKs it, during this fi
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rst phase you can also start the

exciting (and fun!) 30-Second Burn Burst Exercise Program explained

in chapter 10. If not, you will simply increase the number of steps you

take throughout each day you’re on this phase so you can prepare your

body for more physical activity later.

Overview of Phase 2: The 5-Day Sustain

By the end of Phase 1, you’ll be in a positive pattern of eating certain foods at specific times of the day, and your body and mind will be in

a brand new groov
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e. In the second phase, which is also just five days

long, you’ll continue to expand on your progress by introducing some

new foods to the mix (no boredom here!). The primary goals of Phase

2 are:

 Start recognizing flavors better because the meal plans have

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been designed to rely on flavors other than added salt, sugar,

and artificial sweeteners.


Splurge safely:
You won’t be set up to rebel.

There’s a new list of delicious meals to choose from so you don’t

have to think about how to combine foods in the correct proportions.

34 | The 20/20 Diet

We’re keeping it simple. Each meal will include at least two of the

20/20 Foods.

You’ll also keep up the 30-Second Burn Burst Exercise Program or

be walking more each day.

Overview of Phase 3: The 20-Day Attain

During these 20 days, you’ll continue eating two of th
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e 20/20 Foods

in each of your four meals a day. The goals of Phase 3 are:


Maintain steady weight loss:
Keep losing weight and trim-ming inches.*


Dine out without slowing progress:
Apply simple strategies

for dining in restaurants.


Discover variety:
Enjoy lots more foods and flavors to inspire healthy food preferences more than ever.

You’ll find 80 meals to choose fro
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m (yes, you real y could eat a dif-

ferent meal four times a day for all 20 days), and they’re still combined for the right balance to fuel your body. Plus, you’ll have a comprehen-sive list of options for what to order when you go out to restaurants.

*
Remember, everyone is different and we al lose weight at different
rates, so maintain a realistic outlook on how much you’re losing and how
quickly.

The Power of the Right Portions and Proportions

In all the phase
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s of this diet, we’ve designed each meal to have a certain

amount of heart-healthy fats, lean protein, wholesome starches (also

known as complex carbohydrates), and fruits/vegetables because the

current findings suggest that the correct portions and combinations

create thermogenesis and satiety.

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Complex carbohydrates provide slow-burning energy and B vita-

mins. They are also your body’s preferred fuel source, but in our plan

we’ve created reasonable portion sizes that aid you with weight loss.

Lean proteins help you burn calories in the hours after meals and

maintain or build calorie-burning muscle. When you put these carbs

and proteins together proportionally, the protein actually slows your

A Diet That Defies Your Logic | 35

rate of digestion of the healthy starches. That slower digestion means

a better regulation of blood sugar and insulin levels, and your body

receives its carbohydrate fuel in a time-released manner.

The right portions of “fit fats” may help you feel fuller for longer,

support healthy circulation, and increase your body’s ability to absorb

key antioxidants and vitamins from your fruits and vegetables. Fats

and proteins also provide the raw materials your body nee
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ds to sup-

port healthy bodily functions.

So, when you eat the meals that we’ve created every four hours, you

know that your body is getting reasonable portion sizes of important

nutrients to fuel you throughout the day. Like I said, we need to eat to live, not live to eat. And these foods will have you living a happy and

healthy life.

Overview of the Management Phase

After 30 days, depending on how clos
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e you are to your goal, you may

repeat the plan. When you’ve reached your goal weight, you’ll begin the

Management Phase of the diet. The goals of this ongoing phase are:


Help you adopt lifelong habits to make healthy weight a

permanent part of your life.


Solidify your new, healthy lifestyle.

In this phase, you’ll learn a simple formula for combining the

right portions and proportions of foods in all of your meals. Again,

it doesn’t involv
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e counting calories, doing math, weighing food, or

anything complicated or annoying like that. It will simply help you

strike the right balance between fats, proteins, starches, fruits, and

vegetables while maintaining portion sizes to help keep you at your

healthy weight.

The
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Role Your Metabolism Plays

Metabolism is a word that gets thrown around an awful lot these days,

and as a result, you might have a misconception about what the heck

it has to do with weight loss. It boils down to energy and calorie burn-

ing—it’s all about how your body uses energy to support life, and that

36 | The 20/20 Diet

includes processes you don’t think about but that still require energy.

For example, you need energy in order to breathe, circulate blood in

your veins and arteries, digest, think, heal, produce hormones, and so

much more.

The energy your body requires to carry out those basic functions

is called your basal metabolic rate, and it represents between 60 and

75 percent of the calories you burn on a daily basis. Every
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body’s basal

metabolic rate differs. The number of calories you burn doing these

basic processes of survival is based on your gender, age, and body

composition.

Three Types of Thermogenesis

As I briefly introduced earlier, thermogenesis is the process by which

warm-blooded animals like us regulate body temperature—it’s our

body’s way of producing heat. Ou

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r bodies need energy in the form of

food (calories) in order to stay warm, among many other bodily func-

tions, and thermogenesis is how we use energy to produce that heat.

Thermogenic Source #1:

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)

Normal everyday activity requires energy. For example, taking a

shower, preparing food, working at a desk, and other unintentional

exercise activity—those all require your body to burn calories too.

These activities ar
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e referred to as NEAT, which stands for non-exercise

activity thermogenesis. You can increase your NEAT by adding in

simple, practically mindless movements while you’re doing everyday

activities. You’d be surprised how many more calories you can burn

just by taking the stairs, parking farther away from the store, or standing up instead of sitting on your duff all day. It may not sound like

mu
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ch, but these little things add up in a big way.

Thermogenic Source #2: Exercise-Induced Thermogenesis

The next piece of the metabolism puzzle is exercise-induced thermo-

genesis—working up a good, old-fashioned sweat. This is the most

obvious way in which your body burns up calories. It’s cyclical: the

A Diet That Defies Your Logic | 37

more active you are, the more calories your body burns up in order

to give you the energy for the activity. The 30-Second Burn Burst

Exercise Program is a fun way to burn calories and is easy to fit into

your lifestyle, so it’s a win-win. No, I’m not asking you to go out and

become a triathlete, but I am going to ask you to break a sweat.

Thermogenic Source #3: Diet-Induced Thermogenesis

The final aspect of metabolism is diet-induced thermogene
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sis. This is

the process by which your body manages and digests the foods you

give it. As we’re learning from new theories, some foods may affect

this process differently and help increase your thermogenesis after you

eat them. In chapter 6, you will find information about these foods

and the studies backing them.

Could You Be Weight-Loss Resistant?

My wife, Robin, has a great genetic me
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tabolism. She could eat a flock

of chickens, a sack of potatoes, and two éclairs and not gain an ounce.

I am exactly the opposite. I have a genetical y transmitted disorder

cal ed metabolic syndrome, or syndrome X. It is actually a cluster of

conditions: high triglycerides, insulin resistance, and accumulation of

lower belly fat. The insulin resistance means that many types of sugar

and carbohydrates are like poison to my body and they can block my

body’s normal conversion of food into expendable energy. Instead, it

stores it in fatty d
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eposits. I am also diabetic, which further compli-

cates my weight loss.

So I am predisposed to obesity—but I’m the only person in my

family who is not obese. The reason is simple: they choose what they