The Fast Metabolism Diet (24 page)

Chinese New Year, Day of the Dead, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanza or any other religious or cultural-based holiday, seem to always have a major food component. Embrace this, celebrate this, and make coming together to share food and tradition a good thing. For some, family time can bring about unique stressors. Often we let one holiday
celebration bleed into the next, losing the specialness of a moment and instead falling into a downward spiral of gluttony. This stress topped with overindulgence is a recipe for disaster. Instead, learn new recipes from your elders and enjoy the meaning of the event but do not allow it to destroy your healthy path to a Fast Metabolism lifestyle.

I have a motto: If I
bake it then my metabolism can take it! But if I’m going to splurge, it’s not going to be mindless munching on packaged junk food, so if I didn’t take the time to bake it then we try to not have that
dessert in our home. So that means we have to go out for ice cream or frozen yogurt, and I don’t keep packaged cookies, cakes, or pies in the house. I feel that what we bake in our home is healthier, made with love, and metabolizes faster. It also takes effort and intention and gives me time to think if maybe I am just stressed, thirsty, or truly hungry and that is why I am having sugar cravings. This is another healthy way I try to get in touch with the food I eat.

Sit down on the weekend and plan your week ahead of time. Chart out at least your dinners, breakfast, and snacks. I do this with clients all day long and the comment I get again and again is that this makes their lives so much easier. I have a method in our busy home. I use a crockpot and make a soup each weekend. This gets us through four dinners and two lunches. I sometimes convert the chicken from a soup to a salad or burrito for the next day’s lunch. We have smoothies for breakfast twice a week and a loaded hot cereal twice a week, and eggs and bacon or avocado and toast or Greek yogurt to round out the last three breakfasts. These are just a given and so routine I literally can pull this off in my sleep. For the remaining three dinners, we grill once, eat out once, and one night is “fend for yourself” night in our household just so no one forgets to appreciate me! It works with my busy lifestyle and keeps me fueled for all I am trying to pull off.

When you’re too busy to cook, get the slow cooker ready the night before and put the “bowl” in the fridge. In the morning, plug it in, turn it on, and go. You’ll come home to a hot dinner so delicious you won’t even be tempted by frozen dinners or takeout. Keep making the recipes you loved from the book, and go ahead and make the recipes you didn’t get to try. Just because the 28 days is over that doesn’t mean you can’t keep making
the recipes! I frequently make these recipes for my family, I serve them at dinner parties, I take them to potlucks, and I keep them in the
freezer for everyone’s lunches and dinners. For hundreds more recipes that fit the plan or your newly healthy lifestyle, look for the Fast Metabolism Cookbook coming out soon, or visit my website:
www.fastmetabolismdiet.com
.

As you’ve probably noticed by now, my freezer gets a lot of use. I cook up fruit and freeze it so I always have a topping for French toast. Whenever I chop up veggies, I chop extra and put them in the freezer for those days when I don’t have time for chopping. When you always have food pre-made, it’s so easy to make a quick meal! At the end of each week, continue to do your freezer inventory. See what you have left over, and use those things the next week, so nothing gets wasted.

You should always, always have a Crash Stash snack in your purse, your car, your office, and your freezer. This way, no matter where you are, if you get hungry or it has been three or four hours since you last ate and you need healthy food fast, you’ll be ready. (See list of
Crash Stash
snacks.
)

Keep avoiding
caffeine,
gluten,
corn,
soy,
sugar,
alcohol, and
processed foods most of the time. Your metabolism can handle the occasional splurge now, such as on special occasions, but you are doing so well, do you really want to go back to mainlining metabolism killers? If you are someone who likes her
grains, eat the
sprouted-grain or
wheat-free varieties. “Enriched” breads and pastas have almost all the nutrients stripped from them, then gluten and chemicals are sprayed on to make them taste good. They are fake foods. See Rule #1.

Keep drinking half your body weight in fluid ounces of
water every day. This is an essential life habit that couldn’t be easier to follow. When you
are dehydrated, you will actually retain water and get that bloated, puffy appearance. Remember, drinking a lot of water flushes waste and toxins from the body, enhancing the metabolism with every sip you take. Spring water is ideal. Sip on it throughout the day instead of trying to catch up at night right before you go to bed.

Continue to
exercise three times per week every week, rotating burning (cardio), building (weight lifting), and healing exercises (remember massage counts as a healing exercise) just the way you did during the 28 days. You can do more if you want to, but do at least this much. The more active you are, the more
mitochondria your cells will have. Remember, the mitochondria are the fat furnaces of the cell!

When and if you feel the need to refresh and refuel your metabolism, repeat the Fast Metabolism Diet. Some of my clients do it every quarter, or twice a year, or even annually, to add kindling to the metabolic fire. Once you’ve done the full 28 days, you can do the whole thing again or you can do just a week or two at some regular interval. Do what keeps you on track. When you do just a week every quarter, your body will remember:
Oh, yes! This is what we do to get me back into shape and feeling awesome!

If you keep up with maintenance, you won’t necessarily have to repeat the Fast Metabolism Diet, but many of my clients choose to do it because they love it, and they enjoy doing it on a certain schedule. It adds structure and a feeling of nurture to their lives.
Repeating the diet will ensure that your metabolism can withstand changing life circumstances, such as hormone changes, stress, trauma, the birth of a child, or anything else life throws at you. Think of repeating the Fast Metabolism Diet as like sweeping the patio after a storm. Even after you’ve cleaned it, the weather can change and you may need to sweep again. Or think of it like this: just because you broke your leg once and repaired it once doesn’t mean you will never injure yourself and need repair again. Implement this diet at any time when healing from an injury, targeting weight loss, stabilizing blood sugars, balancing hormones, or reducing cholesterol. Use it when
you need it, and keep the awe for what your body can do when you treat it right.

Organic really matters, especially with your dairy,
chicken,
eggs, and
beef. Trust this aggie when I tell you that you do not want what the nonorganic versions of these things have to offer you! Let’s just leave it at that.

Because of both poor soil quality and the tendency of most people to at least occasionally make poor
food choices, consider covering your
nutritional bases with basic
supplements, especially a high-quality, clean multi-vitamin and a food-based essential
fatty-acid supplement. You may already have your favorite brands, or check out the Fast Metabolism supplements on my website,
www.fastmetabolismdiet.com
.

Now you understand how absolutely crucial it is to keep
stress at bay, so don’t let it get the better of you. Learn to relax, breathe deeply, take care of yourself, and say no when you are overextended. Anything else just isn’t worth the metabolic price.

Never stop loving what real, nutrient-dense food does for you and your body. Appreciate and respect what nutrients have to offer and the potential they hold for you. Stay in tune with how you feel before you eat, and how you feel after you eat, to keep tabs on what foods make you feel good and what foods you are better off avoiding. Love healthy fats and complex carbs. You never have to fear food again.

You’ve lost the weight, and it’s staying off. You’re making good choices and living a happy, healthy, Fast Metabolism life. And then it happens … 
the
event.
The dinner party, the wedding, the birthday, the date at a fancy restaurant. You know you’re supposed to be able to eat like a healthy person now, but you’re nervous. You want to enjoy yourself and relax, but you find yourself getting stressed because,
What if you blow it?

If this happens, first remind yourself that you are facing these events as a different person because we’ve repaired your metabolism and you have so many new tools, like food. Remember, food is your friend now.

Just because you are off the program that doesn’t mean everything you’ve learned in this book has left you. All the resources, knowledge, and habits you’ve acquired can come with you, through your parties and your events. You’re not going to that party alone. Plus, it’s especially important to remember that the whole purpose of fixing your metabolism was so you can enjoy the
special events in life, indulge a little, and not have to pay some catastrophic price.

But in case you’re still worried, I’m going to let you in on a few of my little secrets that can help minimize the damage when you know you’re going to
splurge. These are the secrets I share with my celebrity clients, who can’t afford to look bloated or gain 5 pounds after a night on the town.

Maybe you know you’re going to pig out at a Mexican restaurant tonight, or you’ve got a church potluck that’s going to last all weekend, or you’re facing a lavish buffet with too many can’t-miss items. Whatever it is, you know you’re going to be eating a lot. To minimize the damage, all you have to do are two things:

1. EAT 10 TO 15 GRAMS OF PROTEIN
EVERY TWO HOURS
THROUGHOUT THE DAY
, from 30 minutes after waking until you arrive at the event. Eat like it’s Phase 2—low-glycemic, lots of vegetables, but especially protein, and especially animal protein, which is the most easily absorbed. Have protein-rich meals and between meals, eat slices of chicken breast or nitrate-free turkey deli meat, an ounce or two of leftover steak or pork loin or fish. This will keep your blood sugar stable and your muscles will have fuel to store any extra sugars (like the wine or the margarita you plan to drink) as glycogen instead of fat.

This will also put the brakes on bingeing and out-of-control party
eating because you’ll show up hungry, but not famished. Finally, eating protein every two hours all day without fail will kick your fat-burning hormones into gear. They’ll be primed and pumped to handle anything you shovel in.

2. GET REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THE EVENT
. This is very important! Your protein regimen will totally work, so you have no reason to stress. Look forward to it, rather than worrying about it. Then when you get there, have an
awesome time.
This convinces your body that there is no emergency, that everything is going great. With
stress hormones out of the picture, your body has no reason to stockpile fat. When you’re at the party, your body will be having it’s very own fat-burning party!

Each year, my niece’s soccer team has an annual pie-making contest. Naturally, her apple pie is the best. But just to make sure, I have to try all the others. Maybe your sugar-coma–inducing event will be Halloween or Easter, or a Valentine’s Day chocolate fest. Maybe it will be birthday cake, or it’s a holiday dessert buffet. Whatever it is, you
know
exactly how you’re going to act. You’re going to eat the sweets. You’ve got to live it up once in a while, right?

Absolutely. Fortunately, you can
prepare your metabolism to handle the occasional onslaught of sweet stuff by doing four things:

1. EAT
NATURAL SUGARS ALL DAY. HAVE FRUIT AT BREAKFAST AND FRUIT WITH LUNCH
. Whole fruit, no juice. When breakfast and lunch are full of fruit, your body gets nicely and comfortably settled in to an elevated
but stable
blood sugar level. For those two meals, breakfast and lunch, eat like it’s Phase 1 for breakfast and Phase 1 for lunch.

2. CHANGE ALL YOUR SNACKS TO PROTEIN-ONLY
. This will stabilize your metabolism and prep it to handle any garbage you put in. Eat your snacks like it’s Phase 2. Fruit with meals, jerky or slices of meat for snacks.

3. HAVE GOOD FATS FOR DINNER
. The fat will slow the rate of sugar delivery. So you’ll eat dinner like it is Phase 3 again.

4.
ENJOY YOURSELF
. Go to the party and whoop it up while you’re eating that chocolate truffle torte. Then go dancing. Relish it, and don’t you dare feel guilty! Remember: Guilt is more fattening than pork rinds.

If you enjoy a cocktail, a glass of
wine, or a frosty mug of beer now and again (like once a week or so), I’m not going to take that pleasure away from you. But there is a way to drink
alcohol with the least amount of metabolic damage. You probably already know that your liver has to work hard to process alcohol. True, I’m not being quite so greedy with your liver anymore, now that you’ve effectively repaired your metabolism, but let’s not be too hard on it, either. One drink per week probably won’t hurt anything. One drink per day is pushing your liver a little bit hard. Figure out what you’re willing to sacrifice, but just remember that alcohol does not
help
your metabolism in any way.