The Fast Metabolism Diet (12 page)

Envision that thick yellow fat hanging out in your bloodstream (you released it from your fat cells in Phase 2) just starting to evaporate. Phase 3’s hormones help convert that fat into water-soluble substances that you can
easily break down in the
mitochondria for energy and that can also be easily excreted through the sweat, urine, and blood. It’s all melting away, baby, and you’re looking good!

If the toxin concentration is too dense, your
kidneys will send a red alert out to the
hypothalamus, adrenals,
pituitary, and
thyroid to slow things down again. It’s the last thing we want to do during the release process, so it’s crucial to have enough
water on board. Water helps dilute the toxins, so the excretory process doesn’t cause as much stress.

But you’ll hardly notice the physiological intensity of
Phase 3 (especially with sufficient water intake) because you’ll be too busy enjoying the yummy healthy-fat foods you love, like
avocados and salmon, almond butter and walnuts. You can cook with sesame
oil, drizzle
olive oil on your salads, and dunk your veggies in hummus or guacamole. It’s all so rich and decadent and delicious—and so good for you, too!

During Phase 3, you’ll focus on targeted metabolism-stimulating nutrients that work fast to kick the fat out of the body. For example, Phase 3 foods are rich in
inositol and
choline, key cofactors that metabolize fat and keep it from getting blocked in the liver. These nutrients, found in rich amounts in egg yolks and raw
nuts and seeds, are like goalies for the fat that gets released. They block the fat from being reabsorbed and help knock it out of the body, so it doesn’t get stored somewhere else.

We also eat fatty fish in this phase, which lowers cortisol levels and helps promote healthy hormone balance in the thyroid and adrenal glands. Avocado is another Phase 3 star, and it contains a unique starch called
manahexolose, which helps balance
blood sugar, reduce
insulin resistance, and really light the metabolism on fire. There is also another nutrient found in raw nuts and seeds that actually slows gastric emptying. We call these “feel-full fats.” The longer it takes to empty the food from your stomach, the better chance that meal will stimulate the hypothalamus and pituitary to signal your body that you are full and satisfied. Phase 3 foods also produce
endorphins, those feel-good hormones that make you feel like you’ve had enough and you don’t need to eat anymore.

The fats in olive oil cause a dramatic increase in fat oxidation or fat burning in the body, especially stimulating the burn of
brown fat, which helps your body to burn more and more fat as fuel. In fact, from the first
moment you put that buttery
avocado or creamy almond butter in your mouth and start chewing, your
pituitary will begin releasing hormones that help break down fat.

Phase 3 also contains a lot of
lysine. Lysine is an
amino acid that contributes to that shrink-wrap effect you’re getting during Phase 3, where your
cellulite flattens and your muscles look more defined. This is an old aggie trick. We supplement horses or cattle with lysine before a show to accentuate their muscle definition. Lysine can work for you in the same way, visibly making you look better. Lysine specifically helps scavenge cellulite and surface fat. One of my clients told me that she lost 30 pounds on another diet and people said, “Did you get a haircut?” But when she lost her first 9 pounds on this diet, people said, “You look amazing, how much weight have you lost!” It’s the lysine effect.

You’ll get a lot of lysine to help eliminate that blanket of fat covering all the fantastic muscles you’ve been building, and you’ll get it in Phase 3 foods, especially in nuts like hazelnuts and almonds, seeds like sesame and pumpkin seeds, nut butters and pastes (especially the sesame paste and tahini), coconut, egg yolk, and avocado.

Although decadent-feeling fats are high in Phase 3, don’t let that fool you into thinking you can eat
everything
during these three days. Phase 3 is a lower-glycemic phase, for a very important reason. Phase 3 is
not
just Phase 1 plus fat. In Phase 1, we had a lot of high
natural-sugar foods that are easy to digest. Fat is the hardest thing to break down, requiring the most energy from the body, so if we elevate the sugar intake too much during Phase 3, the body will default to burning that sugar and it won’t burn the fat.
Low-glycemic foods are essential in Phase 3 for this reason. You’ve got to sprinkle in enough carbohydrates to keep your energy going, but not so much that you override the fat-burning effect.

That’s the reason behind why this is not the time to eat a lot of fruit and starch. You’ll notice when you review the
meal maps that you get a grain and a fruit with breakfast, a fruit with lunch, and an optional grain with dinner, but both snacks don’t contain fruit or grain and lunch does not include any grain. It’s very important to stick to this for Phase 3, so the fat-burning magic can happen. The carbs in Phase 3 are just to tease fat metabolism.

Although this phase feels great, it’s also intense for the body, even though you’re loving the food, so that’s why we do it for three days, and then we stop. That’s it. We take a break and carb you up again when you circle back around to Phase 1 and begin the next week of the plan. You might really enjoy the benefits of this phase, but don’t stay here longer than three days because we have more work to do.

Thank that extra padding on your butt and thighs and belly because it’s helping your body remember how it’s really supposed to work. Your fat is a teaching tool! And as you burn it, your body learns, and remembers, so that after the diet is over, you’ll keep burning the fat you eat and using the fat you store for fuel—your metabolism will work just the way it was intended to work. And you won’t store more fat than you need to store anymore.

In Phase 3, you are going to have breakfast within 30 minutes of waking. You will have a healthy fat, a protein, fruit, grain, and a veggie, all from the Phase 3 food list (see
this page
). An example might be an omelet (use the whole egg during this phase) with spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms on sprouted-grain toast, or a bowl of oatmeal with raw almonds, peaches, and almond milk plus some cucumber slices or celery with lime juice and salt.

It’s easy to include vegetables when you are eating eggs, but even if you are eating oatmeal or toast, you must add the vegetable. This will help keep the fat-release shuttle open and also enhance the healthy
digestion of fats. There are so many enzymes in vegetables that help this process along, and you need them! You want all the little fat cells in your butt and thighs to jump on that enzyme wagon to go make hormones and muscles and energy.

For a snack you might have ¼ cup hummus with veggies, and lunch could be an
avocado and turkey lettuce wrap
, or a big green salad with chicken breast, and lots of Phase 3 veggies dressed in olive oil or the Phase 3 dressing (
this page
). You could even heat up some leftovers from a Phase 3 dinner—just remember to ditch the grain. Then dinner might be
shrimp stir-fry
or
avocado chili
.

Sometimes, my clients get confused about how best to include fat in their meals. I say, “liberally!” For example, I had a client ask, “If I’m making a stir-fry, can I also put avocados in my salad?” My simple answer, Yes! Because you are only including healthy fats, I want you to use them liberally. Have the stir-fry, the avocados, even the olive-oil-based salad dressing. Dip your veggies in creamy hummus or rich guacamole. Slather your celery with almond butter. It’s all good. And it’s only for three days. The fat you are eating is amping up the thermogenic process, so have at it! As long as you stick to the Phase 3 food list at the end of this chapter and meal maps, you’re golden.

Next up … the rules of the road.