Chris Powell's Choose More, Lose More for Life (2 page)

As our friendship and marriage have grown, Heidi and I have continued to
choose
personal transformation into the best “we” we can be (and we definitely have to work at it!). I wish I could say that only wonderful things have happened for us, but we’ve had our share of tough times. To
us, though, life’s challenges—the bumps in the road—help us see the brilliance in what we do have, and they encourage us to grow as people. If life was all butterflies and roses, we wouldn’t appreciate their beauty… and to be honest, it would be pretty darn boring!

But let’s get back to the good stuff. On the phone one day, when I was catching up with a friend who works for a production company in Los Angeles, I mentioned that Heidi and I were bringing some clients to Arizona to coach them through weight-loss and life transformations. My friend told her boss about it, and twenty-four hours later she asked me to come to L.A. for a meeting.

In about a month with the creative folks in L.A., Heidi and I hammered out the concept for a television show for people to transform their lives by losing weight and embracing a healthy lifestyle. Then we went home, kept transforming clients, and continued building the business. We went on as usual. It all changed a couple of months later, when I got a phone call from the production company’s CEO. ABC had picked up our show! In a matter of weeks I packed my bags and hit the road to make
Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition
.
*

Season 1 premiered a month before our first wedding anniversary, and two weeks before our first child together, Cash, was born. Unbelievable, when only two and a half years ago both of us were at our all-time personal lows! The show was a mega-success, so ABC brought it back for Season 2 and then for Season 3. To support the show, Heidi and I created our Arizona Boot Camp, where participants who are struggling with their process can come for a week or two—or three, or more—to get Heidi’s guidance through their transformation. So the transformations that you see on
Extreme Makeover
are truly a family affair: While I’m out on the road helping people on their home turf, Heidi’s working with them in Arizona.

Doing the ABC show has been an awesome opportunity to work side by side with my best friend and wife. We bounce ideas off each other and come up with different tactics and approaches for helping each participant through his or her process. Early in 2012, Dr. Oz—the man behind
The Dr. Oz Show
—asked Heidi and me to be regular contributors on the show. More and more television and radio shows, websites, magazines, and newspapers have asked us to pass our insight along to their audiences.

It seems like a long, long time since that day in 2008 when Heidi and I were both so low and both searching for ourselves. Today, I know that even though we all
fall
sometimes, like I did before I met Heidi, it doesn’t mean we
fail
. We
can
get up and keep going. I’ve learned not to listen when people tell me—or life tells me—no. I keep believing and keep going. It’s part of my own ongoing transformation.

Our story is Success Story #1. I’ve been so fortunate to have Heidi as my true partner in the personal and professional learning experience that each day holds. Everything that happens in our lives presents an opportunity to discover wonderful new things about ourselves and about growing.
Our
philosophy of transformation—which goes way beyond weight loss and wellness—continues to evolve with every single person we coach.

As we learn and understand more and more about fitness and transformation, our goal is to give each new client a hand up not only to
lose
unwanted pounds, but to
choose
his or her own unique path to personal transformation. Now I’d like to empower you to choose to lose. I hope to be your partner in weight loss and life transformation: I’m so excited to share our philosophy with you and can’t wait to help you write your own success story!

There are thousands of diet and exercise programs around, and everyone’s looking for “the right program for me.” Somehow, only a few of us ever find it. Sure, plenty of diet plans melt the fat, but that’s always going to happen when you take in fewer calories than you burn off. So everyone’s convinced that this formula is all they need to know in order to get a permanently perfect body: diet + exercise = weight loss. Technically, that’s correct. But the truth is that it’s the magic inside you—what happens in your heart and mind—that makes weight loss happen! It’s what turns weight loss into
life transformation
.

There are lots of ways to drop pounds and get in shape. But most of them take buckets of blood, sweat, and tears. No wonder we’re always searching in the wrong place for a better weight-loss solution! I want to show you a different, easier, awesomely effective way to reach your weight and fitness goals, whatever they are. Whether you’re going for a killer body or peak athletic performance or great overall health, this book will satisfy your needs. And I’m going to get you there in
the least amount of time, with the least amount of effort
.

Yawn. Every diet promises you’ll get fantastic results with a minimum of work. Every diet guru says his or her scheme is different. How can I claim that my plan will do what all those others can’t? To start with, I’m going to tell you to
stop thinking about food and stop thinking about exercise
—those are actually minor players in the weight-loss game!

In my eleven years as a personal trainer and fitness expert, I’ve learned something really big:
Dropping pounds and getting fit aren’t really about diet and exercise
. I’m going to hand you the real keys to losing weight. When you read my clients’ Success Stories and see the jaw-dropping transformations that they’ve achieved, you’ll know my program works. And you’ll wonder, “What do they know that I don’t?”

The first and most important step is to
make a commitment to yourself
not just to lose weight but to change your life. On the day I start working with a client, we have a conversation that lays bare the truth behind the client’s weight issues and reveals what the client really wants—and what the client actually can have. For most people I work with, this conversation is the turning point when they realize that transformation is a genuine possibility for them. That’s why they go on to achieve such extraordinary results.

I can’t say it enough: Reaching your weight and health goals, as well as staying healthy and gorgeous once you get there, is about transformation—remodeling your lifestyle, your life, and yourself! Yeah, trimming those excess inches can improve your life to some extent. But it really works the other way around: Transforming your life is
the key to getting lean
permanently and maintaining that fabulous body. What does transformation really mean, and how can you do it? Stick with me, and I’ll show you.

Working with one amazing client after another, and working nonstop on myself to become the best me I can be, I’ve witnessed and experienced transformation. And I have uncovered the most crucial and powerful ingredients in transformation. They’re just as important as—no,
more
important than—the physical techniques!

Here’s the big news: Exploring your identity,
finding your authentic self
, and getting to know your emotional side—what makes you tick and what makes you stumble—are essential to transformation. So are believing that you can do it, keeping your promises to yourself, learning to bounce back from setbacks, and surrounding yourself with people who believe in you. I’d like to share all of this with you—that’s why I wrote this book.

In my first book,
Choose to Lose: The 7-Day Carb Cycle Solution
, I laid out a terrific diet system called
carb cycling
, and I introduced a super-easy workout
method that amplifies carb cycling’s weight-loss impact and accelerates the get-fit process. I taught people how to integrate basic carb cycling and simple ten-minute exercise routines into their lives so they could put the 7-Day Carb Cycle Solution to work—for real. But I recognize that no exercise program is one-size-fits-all. Now I want to show you how to work the program in the way that’s best for
you
!

You’ll find indispensable basics and a solid foundation for carb cycling in
Choose to Lose
, but even if you didn’t read my first book, this one will rock your world! See, this book gives you the advanced version of the info in the first one, and
turbocharges
it. I’ve taken what I’ve learned about carb cycling, exercise, and transformation in the past couple years and added it to the mix. That’s loads of learning, because the people who used my first book had incredible success slimming down and improving their lives.

After reading
Choose to Lose
, thousands of people embraced the carb-cycle lifestyle, and the results speak for themselves. I’ve been overwhelmed by the crowds of people who’ve told me that they can’t believe how miraculously carb cycling helped them finally lose ten, fifty, even two hundred pounds. Many of them were finally able to break through weight plateaus they had always struggled with! Their stories of transformation have opened my eyes again and again.

I’ve peppered this book with wonderful testimonials from people who have
changed their lives
through our methods of transformation and carb cycling. I know you’ll be blown away by these stories—not only by the incredible weight-loss and fitness achievements, but by the life transformations these people have made from unhappiness, frustration, and loneliness to self-fulfillment, joy, and success.

Seeing the benefits that so many people have gotten from carb cycling, it’s my responsibility to reach out to more folks with my upgraded system—and to help those who’ve already started stay on their paths to lifelong fitness. In this book you’ll find
even more
inspiration and guidance, more personal inventories and logs, new nutritional and workout options, and a whole new slew of easy, delicious recipes. There’s even a quiz to help you pick the best plan for you. If you’re a newbie, you’ll be able to hit the ground running not only with the short version of the basics but with the advantage of the enhancements I’ve made! You’ll thank thousands of confirmed
carb cyclers for sharing their experiences as you choose more and lose more for life!

One thing I learned from the e-mails and letters I’ve received is that some people find the principles of carb cycling and general nutrition kind of complex at first, and that it takes some time for some of them to figure out how to turn the facts into action. So this book is a lot more interactive and better at helping you to bridge the gap between its pages and your actual life. It’s packed with step-by-step advice and all kinds of tools that make carb cycling real, hands-on, and practical. I’m going to introduce you to
a truly doable, livable, and sustainable weight-loss and weight-maintenance program
. You’re going to love my fast, easy, and convenient techniques!

Whatever your specific situation, the foundation of the nutrition section of this book is:
There’s a carb cycle for that
. You can adjust the carb-cycle plans, workouts, and recipes according to your needs and to the demands of your life.
Customization
puts you in control, because all of the techniques can work for you no matter where you are in your life and in your transformation process! You’ll have the flexibility you want.

I introduced my
Classic Cycle
in my first book. It’s the simplest of the four carb cycles laid out in this book, although it’s not the easiest. All those carb cyclers who read
Choose to Lose
started their weight-loss journey with the Classic Cycle, and the ones who’ve stuck with it have lost weight quickly and steadily. If you’re ready to take on a moderate challenge but like your path straight and smooth, my good old Classic Cycle will reward you with fast weight loss.

The
Easy Cycle
is a laid-back version of the Classic Cycle. I’ve designed it for people who are just starting their journey and who feel like they might lack the willpower to stick with carb cycling. It’s especially for you if you need to reward yourself regularly with your favorite foods. It’s for you if you’re terrified to take the first steps toward transformation because you don’t want to feel deprived and restricted. If you do the Easy Cycle with no deviations, you will succeed, because it’s built around idea that
if you can’t have it today, you can have it tomorrow
. You’re allowed to cheat every other day, but you’ll still cut your calories in half! Of course, you won’t lose pounds as fast as on the other two plans in the book, but you
will
get instant
gratification from instant results. You’ll find that the Easy Cycle is a truly sustainable lifestyle program that just about anyone can do. It is the easiest way to start your transformation journey.

Then there’s the
Turbo Cycle
, which accelerates and intensifies your carb-cycling results so you can reach your weight-loss goals as quickly as possible. If you’re really antsy to get there and you’re ready to take on a big commitment, this is the cycle for you. It’s carb cycling, turbocharged. The Turbo Cycle revs up your carb cycle so
you get results faster
than with the Classic Cycle or the Easy Cycle. It maximizes weight loss by including more fat-burning days than the other plans do. And I’ve scheduled metabolism-boosting days strategically, to prime your body to burn more effectively on your fat-burning days. How cool is that?