The Fast Metabolism Diet (5 page)

Of course they won’t. That’s absurd. And so is the idea that 1 cup of oil-popped popcorn has 55 calories or two slices of pepperoni pizza have 420 calories.

I believe that one of the greatest, most pervasive misconceptions today is the false notion that losing weight is simply a matter of calories in, calories out. It sounds logical, but it’s just not true. The calories in/calories out theory is a vast and grossly deceiving oversimplification of how the body uses energy. It is also, in my opinion, a malicious marketing tool that has been used to advocate unhealthy and damaging foods.

A calorie, as used by the food and diet industry, is actually a kilocalorie (kcal), or 1,000 calories, as used in chemistry. (We’ll call it a calorie because that’s the convention.) A calorie is just the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius, when the food is sealed and burned to ash inside a container surrounded by water.

In school and in clinical practice, I could never wrap my head around the idea of counting calories like they were some little round balls or molecules that made up food. They’re not. A calorie is not an object. What does food sealed in a container surrounded by water and burned to ash have to do with you and your body? Nothing.

A calorie is just energy. In food that hasn’t been burned (or eaten) yet, it’s potential energy. Outside the lab, this potential energy, or “calorie,” has very little to do with a food-burning experiment. In the real world, “calories” are subject to millions of variables—since each person has a unique body and biochemical make-up—so a calorie isn’t going to be the same thing for you as it is for anyone else. What really matters, much more than the number of theoretical “calories” you do or don’t consume, is how you burn the food or otherwise distribute the energy, once it gets inside you.

In the real world, in a real human body, a so-called calorie is just energy potential, and an individual could potentially get fat on 1,400 calories a day, just as she could get fat on 2,400 calories a day. She could also potentially get skinny on 1,400 calories or 2,400 calories a day. It all depends on what the body is doing with the potential energy taken in. If it burns those calories for fuel, then poof! Those calories are used and gone. If it stores them as fat, they sit there, on the hips or butt or belly, still waiting to be used. The idea that 200 calories for you is the same thing as 200 calories for me is ridiculous. So why bother to even think about it that way? It’s misleading and depressing, and it pisses me off.

The human body is a complex melding of millions of interrelated chemical processes, and every one of them can potentially affect what happens to the food you eat and the energy you expend, and how it relates to the muscle fibers you gain or lose and the fat cells you accumulate or deflate.

Think of it this way. Say you need to move a car. A car is really heavy, so it’s hard to move it. But if I give you a car key, or I show you where you can get a crane, moving a car is easy. If you don’t have a key, or a crane, and the emergency brake is on, then, well, you’re probably screwed. That car’s not going anywhere.

Burning “calories” is similar. Say you need to burn those theoretical 100 calories. If your metabolism is in a state of dysfunction, that’s like not having the car key or the crane. Those 100 calories are going to be extremely hard to burn, like pushing that car uphill with the emergency brake on. Good luck with that.

But if you’ve got the key, which is a fast metabolism fueled by nutrient-rich food, then burning 100 calories is practically effortless. You just turn the key and drive away. That’s not to say that someone with a high metabolism can regularly eat 8,000 calories a day (unless he is an Olympic swimmer), but it is saying that when you do have a high-calorie day, your body will be ready. It’s important to stoke your metabolic fire constantly, just in case a hot fudge sundae crosses your path.

What’s really indicative of what will happen to your body when you eat
food isn’t calories at all, but your
burn rate
, or your metabolism. As I said earlier, your metabolism determines what to do with the food you eat—whether to burn it, use it for building the structure of your body, store it in your liver as glycogen for quick fuel, or store it in pockets all over your body as fat (you know the ones I mean—what collects on your butt, your thighs, and/or your belly).

So many different things influence your burn rate, and they have nothing to do with the number of calories in the food you choose. Do you have a broken leg and your body needs energy for repair? Did you sleep well last night? Have you gone four days without a good bowel movement? Are you dehydrated? Have you moved from that desk chair in the last seven hours? All of these conditions influence how you use calories. Also relevant is the
nutrient density and the type of food, and when you eat it and how you eat it, as well as your
stress level, activity level, and current body composition or your muscle-to-fat ratio. There’s no way to pin it down to a number.

Don’t blame poor delicious chocolate, ice cream, birthday cake, or chocolate chip cookies for your stalled metabolism. Desserts are to be celebrated! When we eat them occasionally with a fast metabolism, we can do so without
guilt. When we eat them with a slow metabolism, they stick to us, just like everything else we eat. Add guilt, and you’ve upped the stress response, elevating the release of fat storage hormones and making the
situation even worse. I like to tell my clients that guilt is as fattening as a bag of pork rinds. If you really want dessert, have it with intention and pride and full enjoyment, and most important,
no stress.
If you can’t do that, then skip it. It’s not worth the price.

Another very important thing I want you to start thinking about, even before you begin the plan, is that if you want to repair your metabolism and reverse the cascade of metabolism-slowing biochemical
events caused by stress and chronic dieting, you are going to have to start with one fundamental change: you are going to have to make nice with food again. Your metabolism wants and needs this. It’s the way your body is designed to work. So I need you to remember how your body is meant to respond to food.

Each time you ingest food, a series of biochemical reactions takes place. Your body learns what these biochemical reactions are, so that when you smell, touch, or just see a food, your body responds in a specific, learned way and begins responding before you even begin eating. But chronic dieters try to separate themselves from food. They’ve developed such a negative relationship with food that they’ve lost all sense of what a healthy relationship with it can be like. I like to say it is the ultimate love affair. This is a relationship that can be hot and steamy, spicy and creamy, icky with sweat and engorged with variety. It also embodies the true meaning of “till death do us part,” because without food you will not have life. And without healthy food it is darn near impossible to have a healthy life.

Many chronic dieters see or smell or taste something delicious, and their first thought is:
No!
or
Guilt!
That’s not how the body is supposed to react to food.

Let’s say you’re going to a dinner party; it’s a food-centric holiday like Thanksgiving or you’re going to your favorite restaurant. What are you going to do? If you’re a chronic dieter, you’re probably going to feel anxious.
Oh, my gosh, how am I going to handle this? Do I skip the appetizer if
everyone else is eating it? I can have one drink but no dessert, or three bites of dessert but no alcohol. I’ve got to figure out how I can get through the night without eating any carbs.
And worst of all:
I’d better starve myself until tonight, so I can eat everything.

How can you have any fun at these events if they stress you out? Not only will you be unable to fully enjoy the times in your life that are meant to be enjoyable, but this stress causes fat storage. You’ll kick your body into famine mode, and then when you do get to the event or dinner, and you overeat, your body will frantically grab all those calories and turn them straight to fat. You were intending to “be good.” To do what dieters are supposed to do. But this is exactly the wrong thing to do unless you want to store more fat, which I’m betting you don’t!

We are going to turn that response around. When you’ve got a fun event coming up, it’s much healthier for your metabolism if you were to think like this:
Wow, I got invited to this amazing party! I
love
Thanksgiving dinner. I can’t
wait
to go to my favorite restaurant!
Then, you need to eat before the event, throughout the day, to get your metabolism going. (I am going to walk you through exactly how to do that later.)

Eating the right way before the big event and feeling positive about it will keep the stress hormones at bay. Instead of saying “Red alert, store every molecule of fat!” your body will say, “Oh boy! Let’s get geared up for this! Let’s get moving!” Then your metabolism will be roaring, and you’ll be in a great position to burn off whatever excesses you might decide to indulge in during your special event. Not insignificantly, you’re also a lot more likely to enjoy yourself, but not necessarily by gorging on food. You’ll be more relaxed, happier, and the food you do eat, you’ll eat with control and pleasure. It’s win-win. (I’ll talk more about strategies for handling special events in your everyday life in
Chapter Ten
, “Fast Metabolism Living.”)

It’s a whole new way of thinking, and a whole new way of living, and you’re going to love it. Repair your metabolism, and better yet do it
by eating great food,
and you won’t ever have to worry about calories or guilt or special events or anything food-related ever again. So for the next four weeks, put your head down and charge on through, and let this program get your body back on track.

Fall in love with food again and let it support, nurture, and carry you over the threshold to a new paradigm of eating.

Things have to be real to be called food in my book. You know, apples, oranges, avocado, chicken, sweet potatoes, pork, shrimp, almonds, mangos. Chemicals, artificial sweeteners, colors, dyes, fat blockers,
preservatives, pesticides, plastics, paint thinners, oven cleaners, weed killers, and spider spray just don’t count as food.

Have you ever looked up the uses for some of these chemicals commonly found in our “food”? And what exactly is Yellow #5 or Blue #6? What purpose do aluminum, sodium benzoate, quinolone, carmoisine, and tartarazine 19140 serve in a body? I was reading a package the other day and its second ingredient was Sunset Yellow FCF15985 (E110). I wasn’t sure if I was to bake, broil, or deep-fry “yellow,” so I decided to skip that ingredient for dinner.

Many of these chemicals are designed to add color to your paint or remove stains from your carpets, to build navy ships and bulletproof vests. They are not food! Therefore, they should not be consumed.

Use them to decorate your house and build bombproof shelters, but do not put them in your mouth. The American Medical Society has coined a term for these industrial chemicals found in or sprayed on foods:
obesogens.
These obesogens disrupt normal hormonal balance and inhibit lipid (fat) metabolism. Obesogens can literally make you fat! Sadly, and ironically, most “diet”
packaged foods are loaded with obesogens.

Do not eat them. If you still feel the need to ask why and are not concerned that the accumulation of these toxins might someday kill you, then let me give you another little fact to chew on.