The Badass Body Diet: The Breakthrough Diet and Workout for a Tight Booty, Sexy Abs, and Lean Legs (9 page)

FRUIT CARBS

Eat fruit. I’ve seen so much evidence that adding fruit to the diet helps you lose weight and stay full and satisfied. Fruit is nature’s candy and really the best food you can eat to placate our natural desire for sweets. It’s a terrific source of fiber and provides the right balance of carbs in my meal plans.

One of my favorite fruits is apples. I eat apples almost every day with my breakfast because they’re slow-burning fruits, meaning that the energy they yield stays with you a long time. This is because they contain pectin, a type of fiber that digests slowly and promotes weight loss. Pectin stops glucose from being absorbed quickly by the body, so we avoid fat storage and sugar cravings.

Oranges get burned up faster but pack higher levels of nutrients, including a whopping dose of vitamin C, which helps your body use hormones for fat burning. In addition, vitamin C creates skin-firming collagen and strengthens the soft-tissue matrix under that skin to make your lower body resistant to cellulite. Oranges also have diuretic properties. They help you shed retained water, which exaggerates the dimpling effect of cellulite.

Berries are superlow in carbs and high in fat-burning fiber. They also have been shown in studies to help your body use insulin more effectively. Insulin tends to be a fat-storing hormone, so you don’t want it lazily hanging around in your blood without doing its job (shuttling glucose into cells for energy). Your body may be less sensitive to insulin, which helps you convert sugar into energy.

The nutrients in these berries trigger leptin formation and release from fat cells. The berries also contain carnitine, which assists muscle metabolism—required for burning fat. There are many varieties of berries from which to choose—all fun and delicious—from raspberries to strawberries to blackberries.

Let’s move on to grapes. These natural sweet treats get slammed a lot. Critics say grapes are too high in natural sugars to be of any use in a weight loss program. I disagree; research shows that grapes are rich in a certain class of antioxidants called phenolics, which increase thermogenesis in the body; this refers to the generation of heat after you eat a meal. The heat increases your calorie and fat burn. The way I see it, grapes are fat burners. So what if they’re a little higher in sugar than a lot of fruits? Combining a dream diet with reality surely must allow for grapes!

While I’m on the subject of fruit carbs, let me add that fruit juices are not allowed. Fruit juices zip through your digestive system; the sugar and carbs in them are likely to be deposited as fat. By contrast, eating fruit in its whole, natural form helps slow down the release of natural sugars in the bloodstream. Those sugars are less likely to be stored away as fat, especially when you eat fruit with protein and fat.

VEGGIE CARBS

You can eat certain vegetables to your heart’s content: mainly green leafy vegetables like spinach, broccoli, lettuce, and any low-calorie veggie. There’s evidence that vegetables keep fat-forming estrogen in line, so that you also prevent your butt from spreading any more than it has. Protective chemicals in these foods are responsible. These foods are great sources of vitamin A, which boosts immunity, helps lower cholesterol, controls diabetes, speeds weight loss, and fights digestive problems.

Leafy green vegetables are high in calcium, a mineral that helps keep you slender. Calcium boosts weight loss by inhibiting the production of calcitriol, a hormone that tells cells to generate more fat. Eat salad as much as you want. Mix it up with kale, baby bok choy, and other leafy greens. You don’t have to bore yourself to death with iceberg lettuce (which is low in nutrients) all the time in your salads!

Researchers suspect that the antioxidants contained in fruits and vegetables play an important role in warding off abdominal fat. Examples of such antioxidants include beta-carotene, found in carrots and squash, and vitamin C, found in oranges and strawberries.

EXTRAS

I mix coconut water with a good whey protein power for my Recovery Shakes. I drink them after my most intense workouts—usually three to four times a week—to instigate fat burning and muscle toning.

Also, don’t be concerned about your meals being bland. On this diet you can add unlimited amounts of herbs and spices as long as they have minimal salt and don’t contain added sugar. Stay away from most sauces, but dry rubs and spices are always welcome.

You can also include dates to get your sweet fix. Dates are as sweet as candy, and one of the healthiest foods you can pop in your mouth. They’re packed with more than 60 percent natural sugar in addition to protein, fibers, starch, and fat. Vitamins A, B, and C are also present in dates. The minerals in dates include iron, sodium, calcium, sulfur, and phosphorus. Dates act as diuretics too, countering ugly bloat. Just limit them: one or two a day are enough to curb your sweet tooth and can count as carbs in your overall macronutrient balance.

GO GRAZY

Using a big selection of foods, you get to eat six times a day: three meals and three snacks—in other words, you’ll “graze.” There’s solid proof that grazing, or spreading your calories out throughout the day, can keep you trim and fit by cutting down on the amount of food that’s converted into fat. There’s a cool little study published in the
Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine,
which found that volunteers who ate multiple meals through the day had less body fat than those who ate most of their calories at dinner. Your body can process only so much food at a time, so if you eat too many calories at once, the excess might get packed away as fat.

Try not to skip any of your six eating times, either. If you go more than five hours without eating, your body might respond as if it’s starving, even though you know you’ll eat again. But your body “thinks” differently and decelerates your metabolism to save calories. The next time you have a meal or snack, your body might store those calories as fat, since the body is stocking up for going without food again. So feel free to eat between main meals, and take advantage of grazing.

Can’t squeeze in six mealtimes a day? It’s okay to eat three times a day if you’re time-crunched. I’ll show you how later. The Badass Plan is flexible.

Booty foods, along with other primo macros, automatically switch on the body’s natural fat-burning mechanism and help you lose weight and get a bad, sexy ass. If you’re feeling uncertain about how and when to eat them, don’t worry. I’ll give you the skinny in upcoming chapters.

Step-by-Step Meal Planning:
Your Nutritional Blueprint

LOSING FAT AND GAINING
muscle should be fun! But too often diets are known for their boring predictability and bland choices, rather than for their taste and variety. Not here. You’ll get to eat a lot of different delicious foods—and six times a day. If you feed your body well and often, and don’t sit on your butt inhaling a box of cookies, it will do wonderful things for you. Let the fun begin.

In Part 1, I showed you the basic concepts of my program—how and why it works, the balance of protein, carbs, and fat, the importance of booty foods, and what you can expect. Now it’s time to put all of this into motion by planning your meals, eating the proper foods, and making important day-by-day changes in your lifestyle.

First, I’m going to ask you to stick to the program faithfully for just 21 days if your goal is to lose weight, gain muscle, and get a better body. That’s just a mere three weeks out of your life! At the end of 21 days, see how you feel and how you look. Are your clothes fitting better? Have you lost weight? How’s your energy level? Do you feel excited about the changes taking place in your body?

After 21 days, you can certainly loosen up a bit on the diet and learn how to introduce some occasional “cheats” in your menus. Or you can repeat those three weeks over and over again until you get right down to the beautiful body and butt you want. I will emphasize:
If you continue on the straight and strict path, you’ll get the full benefits of the program—faster.

I’m going to bet that you repeat the three weeks. Why? Because you’re going to feel healthier, more energetic, and more mentally vibrant than you’ve felt in a long time. And you’ll start loving the way you look.

The Badass plan is a way of life, not just a diet. You’ll learn in the first three weeks how to balance your foods and what foods are better for you. Afterward, you’ll be able to incorporate it into a lifetime change of eating habits. This is designed to set you up for success for life, not just for three weeks out of your life.

How can I be so sure? I have heard many, many stories from people who have done my program who say that after even the first week, the changes they’ve made just felt so good, and their bodies kept getting leaner and tighter with every passing day, thanks to this very powerful food and exercise plan.

Give yourself every chance to succeed. You deserve no less, and I know you’ll love the results so much that you’ll want to follow this program permanently.

Let’s dig in.

STEP 1: Decide Which Plan to Follow

Everyone comes to my program with different requirements and goals, which is why I personalize the diet for four different types of dieters: the
Minimalist
, the
Modifier
, the
Gainer
, and the
Maintainer
. Each is described below.

THE MINIMALIST

This plan is very basic and is designed to help you get started and maintain simplicity. Unlike the other plans, it does not require to you weigh and measure your foods. Weighing and measuring will give you much better results, but if you’re not ready to commit to that, I advise that you start out on the Minimalist plan.

It’s designed for flexibility—and for the person wants to dip her toe in the pool of my eating plan and guesstimate food portions. You’ll still get lose body fat, but not as quickly or efficiently as you might on another plan. How much muscle you add depends on your workout habits. The more you exercise, the more muscle development you’ll gain. You’ll eat primo foods exclusively on this plan.

Select the Minimalist plan if one or more of these criteria apply.

•  You are interested mostly in reducing body fat.

•  You need a more flexible approach that does not involve weighing or measuring portions.

•  You aren’t sure whether you’re a Modifier, Gainer, or Maintainer. If you don’t find yourself a precise match to any particular plan, start with the Minimalist.

THE MODIFIER

The Modifier plan is engineered strictly to help you see and feel change right from the get-go, and it is effective for anyone who wants to shed extra pounds fast. You must weigh and measure your foods if you want the best results. Don’t be surprised if you drop 15 pounds or more in 30 days.