The 17 Day Diet (11 page)

Dinner

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Baked or grilled fish, any kind from the list

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Cleansing vegetables, as many from the list as you wish

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1 cup green tea

Snacks

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Kefir Smoothie:
Mix one cup of kefir with 1 cup of frozen unsweetened berries, sugar-free fruit jam, and 1 tablespoon flaxseed oil. Blend until smooth.

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2nd probiotic food

Day 13

Breakfast

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Kefir Smoothie

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1 cup green tea

Lunch

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Tuna tossed with 1 tablespoon olive oil and a tablespoon of vinegar, served over a generous bed of lettuce

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1 cup green tea

Dinner

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Plenty of roast turkey or chicken

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Tomato and onion salad, tossed with fat-free salad dressing

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1 cup green tea

Snacks

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2nd fruit serving

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2nd probiotic serving

Day 14

Breakfast

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2 scrambled eggs, 4 scrambled egg whites, or 1 scrambled egg plus 2 scrambled egg whites. Top with salsa (optional)

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1 apple or 1 cup fresh berries

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1 cup green tea

Lunch

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1 large bowl of
Chicken-Vegetable Soup

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1 cup green tea

Dinner

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Plenty of grilled chicken or fish

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Generous portion of mixed steamed vegetables

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1 cup green tea

Snacks

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1 medium pear or other fruit in season

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2nd probiotic serving of your choice

Day 15

Breakfast

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½ cup Breakstone LiveActive cottage cheese

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1 medium pear, sliced

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1 cup green tea

Lunch

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Eggplant Parmesan

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1 cup green tea

Dinner

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Plenty of broiled lean ground turkey

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Marinated Vegetable Salad

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1 cup green tea

Snacks

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2nd fruit serving of your choice

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2nd probiotic serving of your choice

Day 16

Breakfast

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Spanish Omelet

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½ grapefruit or 1 medium orange

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1 cup green tea

Lunch

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Spicy Yogurt Dip and Veggies

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1 cup green tea

Dinner

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Plenty of roasted turkey breast or turkey tenderloin, steamed carrots and steamed asparagus

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1 cup green tea

Snacks

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1 piece fresh fruit

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6 oz. carton yogurt

Day 17

Breakfast

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Smoothie: 1 cup acidophilus milk and 1 cup berries (mix together in a blender)

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1 cup green tea

Lunch

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Super Salad

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1 cup green tea

Dinner

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Steamed flounder or sole with lemon pepper

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Steamed broccoli

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1 cup green tea

Snacks

•
1 medium apple or other fruit in season

•
2nd probiotic serving of your choice

Accelerate Cycle Worksheet

It may help you to plan your meals using the following worksheet. Using the food lists, simply fill in what you will eat each day.

Breakfast

Protein or probiotic serving:_______________________________

Fruit serving:__________________________________________

Lunch

Protein or probiotic serving:_______________________________

Cleansing vegetables:____________________________________

Dinner

Protein serving:________________________________________

Cleansing vegetables:____________________________________

Snacks

2nd fruit serving: _______________________________________

2nd probiotic serving: ___________________________________

Other

Friendly fat serving: _____________________________________

Your eating habits may be a lot closer to horrible than healthy right now. That means it’s time to hand out pink slips to doughnuts, pizzas, super burgers, shakes and fries. Your stomach is about to welcome some healthier inhabitants, and I’m going to help you understand what it’s like to feel good, and understand the connection between the choices you make and how you feel. For the first 17 days that you follow this diet, you will experience an entirely new energy, and you will see how quickly it can happen and how much better you can feel.

See you (hopefully less of you) in 17 days!

Review

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Cycle 1: Accelerate—jump-starts your weight loss.

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This Cycle reduces carb intake slightly and increases protein intake.

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This Cycle clears your body of sugars and toxins to pave the way for weight loss.

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Use my Hunger/Fullness Meter to help you eat just the right amount of food for your body.

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Use this Cycle as a tool to re-ignite weight loss if you ever have a slip and need to get back on track.

THE 17 MINUTE WORKOUT: Get in Two Quickies

N
ot those kinds of quickies (although you burn calories that way too). What I had in mind are two mini aerobic workouts: 17 minutes in the morning, and 17 minutes in the afternoon or early evening. Science already tells us that exercise boosts your metabolism for a few hours afterward, so just think: you’ll nearly double the afterburn if you split it up. Aerobic exercise includes fast walking, jogging, running, exercising on cardio machines and anything that gets your heart pumping for 17 minutes.

The Fiber Factor

E
veryone knows about fiber. It is the indigestible part of plant foods our body cannot use for energy. Fiber, which our grandmothers used to call “roughage,” travels through our digestive tract creating bulky, soft stools that pass easily. Without adequate fiber, things get stopped up.

The 17 Day Diet is high in fiber on purpose. A growing body of research shows that high-fiber eating helps peel off pounds and banish them for good. Fiber does this mainly by curtailing your food intake. Specifically, fibrous foods provide bulk and stimulate the release of appetite-suppressing hormones. As a result, you feel full while eating a meal, so you’re less tempted to overeat.

High-fiber foods also take longer to chew. You may have to chew some foods 42 times before swallowing them. High-fiber foods may even have negative calories, because by the time you have finished chewing them, you have burned up more calories than the food provides. Chewing also makes yourmeals last longer. That’s nice, since it takes about twenty minutes after starting a meal for your body to send signals that it’s full. And, when eaten with other nutrients, fiber slows the rate of digestion too, curbing your appetite between meals.

Inhaling fiber-rich foods will have your body running strangely. So make sure you have a good book and some nice soft toilet paper on hand. All of this is good for weight loss, though. The fiber accelerates the time it takes for food to move through your intestinal tract. This means fewer calories are left to be stored as fat.

Attention, everyone reading this: If you eat too much food with a lot of fiber and don’t drink enough water, you will have to buy a laxative. Fiber needs water to move through your system, or it will harden up like a block of cement in your colon.

4
Cycle 2: Activate

I
f you’ve been
on other diets, you’re all too aware of the standard outcome: You cut back on your food and you lose weight … at least initially. But then your progress slows to a crawl, before lagging or sometimes stopping altogether. Your body’s natural tendency to preserve itself and its fat, at all costs, kicks in. The Activate Cycle corrects this, resetting your metabolism, so that your body stays in a fat-burning mode.

This Cycle is easy to follow too: You alternate your Cycle 1: Accelerate days with Cycle 2: Activate days. In other words, you work this Cycle by spending one day on the Activate diet and the next on the Accelerate diet, switching between the two, one day at a time, as you progress toward your goal weight over the next 17 days. Another way to look at it: On odd days you stick to the Activate Cycle; on even days, the Accelerate Cycle.