The All-Day Fat-Burning Diet: The 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula That Resets Your Metabolism To Lose Up to 5 Pounds a Week (2 page)

BOOK: The All-Day Fat-Burning Diet: The 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula That Resets Your Metabolism To Lose Up to 5 Pounds a Week
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In the chapters to come, I’ll share the strategy I developed from my personal experience and investigations into health to help thousands of people around the world shut off that fat-gaining switch for good and reset their metabolism to burn fat 24/7. In case you’re wondering, my brother Adam is one of them. I had to atone for my sins, and it really was a joy to share all that I learned with him so he could overhaul his life. Today, he’s slimmer and taller than I am. We’ve worked together for years to help him attain the body he’s always wanted, and his becoming a part of my health business has been a major catalyst toward this goal.

Adam’s success has been rewarding for us both, but unfortunately my journey to good health had yet another chapter that is relevant to your weight-loss mission.

My recovery and new education gave me the basis for a successful Internet business through which I’ve helped people all over the world. My videos have earned more than 15 million views on YouTube, and I’ve published a
New York Times
bestselling book. I was living the dream, but it meant nothing to me when I lost my eyebrows . . . again.

You can’t imagine the fear I felt. What was happening to me? Did this mean there was no truth to what I was teaching? Flooded with fears of my alopecia returning and my business falling apart, I did what any grown man would do: I started secretly using my wife’s makeup to fill in my thinning eyebrows.

The shedding increased and I developed a makeup routine, applying my fake eyebrows every morning after I brushed my teeth. I eventually started toning down my workouts out of fear that my sweat would make my “eyebrows” run. I refused to go swimming with my kids because the water might ruin my makeup. I continued shooting and posting YouTube videos but was in constant fear of being outed as a fraud. It was exhausting.

In
late 2013, I went to a 4-day personal and business development event in the Dominican Republic. I had no idea what to expect, but I was certainly meant to be there because it profoundly affected my life—for the better. After the first 2 days, I sat down one evening to catch up with my friend Dane. As we so often do, we had a long conversation about what was happening in our lives. That’s when everything came spilling out. I opened up about everything I was dealing with: my eyebrows, the makeup, and why I was afraid. I don’t think I had ever been this vulnerable or open about my feelings. Being the amazing person that he is, Dane peered into my soul and worked some kind of magic that touched me at a fundamental level. Something shifted inside of me.

Later that evening, I was having another conversation with a good friend, Fabienne, whom I hadn’t seen for about a year. We were talking about one of the exercises from the event in which we were asked to give away something of value to us. Most people had brought jewelry and other personal mementos. I couldn’t think of anything to bring that was meaningful to me—other than my children. I didn’t think it would be wise to give them away! Then, it hit me. There was only one thing I was holding on to like a baby does a blankie. Any ideas? Take a guess. It was that damn eyebrow makeup. Could I really get rid of it? Could I take off the mask and bare my true self? Deep down inside, I knew the answer.

That evening’s conversation with Fabienne reaffirmed my belief that this was the right thing to do. She reassured me that I was a beautiful person and gave me the courage I needed to take the leap. I broke down in front of her. I couldn’t keep up my disguise any longer. I promised Fabienne that the next morning I would be done with the makeup for good, and because my word means everything to me, that’s exactly what happened. The next morning, I walked straight into the bathroom, picked up the makeup, and chucked it into the trash can. I stared in the mirror at the shiny patches of flesh above my eyes. There was no turning back now.

Anxiously, I left my hotel room and made my way to the beach for a morning yoga session. I felt naked and awkward and kept glancing
around
to see who was looking at me. Oddly enough, no one really noticed. I felt weird, but then, it wasn’t like I was wearing a giant scarlet letter
A
on my chest. What happened next was pure magic. As I moved through each position in our yoga session, my body was soothed by the warm morning sun. About halfway through the session, it started raining, even while the sun was shining. I remember lying on my mat with my eyes closed and relishing the feeling of the warm rain splashing my face.

After the yoga session, I ran to the ocean with childlike excitement, crashing through the waves and diving headfirst into the salty water. As I swam underwater, time froze. It was like living in slow motion. When I surfaced, I wiped the water off my face, opened my eyes, and felt more alive than ever before. I was finally free. I felt like I’d just baptized myself in a sense. My true self had finally emerged. I reflected on the fact that all life initially came from the ocean, so it was fitting that, with my first step out of the water, I felt reborn.

For nearly 2 years, I had hidden underneath a mask of shame, worrying about what people would think of me if I shared my struggle. The irony is that I felt more free, more happy, and more alive without the makeup than I ever did when I was wearing it. As painful as it is to relive these memories, I share this story for this reason: If you’ve ever felt ashamed about your weight or how you look, then believe me, I’ve been there. I can totally relate, and this is a big part of why I was inspired to write this book. Having gone through intense shame and disgust with myself, I came to understand what Adam must have felt all those years ago when I was unrelenting in my teasing. I can only imagine how you feel, not so happy with how you look in the mirror, always self-conscious about how others see you. I want you to find the relief and self-love that both Adam and I have found.

If you want to lose 20 pounds, that’s great. You should. Being a fit and healthy person is important. You’ll feel better about yourself for doing what needs to be done to get you there. But start now by showing yourself a little compassion. As you’re about to find out in the next chapter, being overweight is largely no fault of your own. That’s right—you can stop blaming yourself so much.

By
easing up on yourself, you’ll likely experience a pleasant surprise: People are far more accepting of you when you’re accepting of yourself. Upon my return from the trip, I shot a video for my audience in which, for the first time ever, I was makeup free. This was easily the scariest moment of my life, putting myself out there for potentially millions of people to eventually see, but I wanted to come clean. What happened next continues to touch me deeply: Within minutes of my posting it, tons of comments started pouring in from viewers and clients who thanked me for being real and honest with them and giving them permission to be and love themselves. I felt a new peace, and it’s ultimately what I want for you as well. (To this day, that video is still online. It’s called “My Coming Out—Part 2,” and you can check it out if you like.)

The goal of this book, helping you lose up to 5 pounds per week with my proven 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula, may strike you as superficial. But it’s really about allowing you to be your true self, freeing you of the shackles that have held you back for far too long. I want to strip away the complexity and confusion and make your life a whole lot easier by giving you a proven, very intuitive plan. It’s something you can practice for the rest of your life if you want to. This plan jibes with the way your body has been hardwired since the beginning of time. It craves for you to give it what it needs. I hope you’re ready to do so!

I’ve worked with enough people in the last 2 decades to know that no one, not a single person, in spite of what he says, feels good when he’s overweight. Let’s be honest—we are all motivated by vanity. We all want to look better. And we totally should. That’s part of striving to be a better version of ourselves. When you look good, you feel good. And when you feel good, you look even better. I know you can do that without plastic surgery or radical quick fixes.

Over the course of this book and the 3 weeks to follow (and hopefully beyond), we’ll be deconstructing all of the ways we inadvertently allow our bodies to pack on the pounds—from what we eat for breakfast to what we do before we go to bed every night. We’ll pick apart your diet and replace the junk you may have been eating with nourishing and delicious foods that reset your metabolism and allow you to
burn
fat more easily. We will not only address what meals you should eat, but how and when to eat them, as these meals will be the heart of the 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula.

In
Chapter 10
, I’ll give you the exact meal plan to follow for your first 21 days, along with all the recipes you’ll need. This is the same plan that has yielded the amazing transformations you’ll read about in this book. I chose 21 days because that’s a great starting point for creating lasting habits, but you’ll likely find that you can sustain this lifestyle much longer.

Why is food cycling so important for losing weight? Well, up until the last 100 years, humans didn’t have the luxury of eating five or six meals per day. Nor were their meals bombarded with the chemicals and toxins that are a mainstay in today’s food supply. Our early ancestors thrived on oscillating periods of feasting, fasting, and grazing on fresh foods found in nature. Yet today we mistakenly believe that eating every 2 or 3 hours keeps our metabolism “revved up” and that man-made, synthetic foods are the most convenient way to nourish ourselves. Obviously, our waistlines and health have paid the price—big time. As you’ll discover in the next chapter, there are six reasons why the modern world has made us fatter than ever. These six “fat triggers” shift our metabolisms and upset the normal hormone function inside our bodies, causing us to gain and hold on to fat. Everything in this book is built around rectifying those six fat triggers so that you can lose weight for good.

Finally, we’ll address your body both at rest and at work—from how to properly recharge your body to how you can develop an efficient and enjoyable workout schedule that powers you up and turns you into a lean, fat-burning machine.

The goal is simple: to push the reset button so that your metabolism, your hormones, your inner workings can return to normal, allowing you to burn fat 24/7. With this approach, weight loss isn’t something you accomplish through tiny, tasteless meals and draining workouts, but through an entirely new lifestyle you’ll adopt one day at a time. The end result? A body that is constantly burning fat, no matter what you’re doing, while you enjoy the process.

Adam
did it, and now he has an entirely new life. You can, too.

If you’ve tried all the diets and are still struggling to lose weight, then you’ll find this book very refreshing. Most diets focus only on dietary changes, and that’s why their success is short lived. In contrast,
The All-Day Fat-Burning Diet
’s unique approach to weight loss is so effective because it harnesses the combined power of clean eating, smart exercise, and optimal rest and recovery. It helps you reestablish a healthy relationship with food and provides a flexible dietary and exercise framework that can be enjoyed for life.

You are about to experience the only dietary plan that resets your metabolism to lose up to 5 pounds per week using a unique 5-day food cycle that mirrors and honors your body’s natural rhythms. And you’ll do it without calorie counting, dogmatic diet rules, or long hours of exercise. Plus, the foods you’ll eat will be delicious. I hope you’re excited. I certainly am.

Let’s begin.

Part I

Why
Your Body’s Not Letting You Lose Weight

CHAPTER
1

IS YOUR BODY STOPPING YOU FROM LOSING WEIGHT?

I
’d like you to do something for me: Dust off an old photo album that contains those treasured photos of your parents when they were young. Flip through those pages, paying particular attention to any photos of large family gatherings. Notice anything? (Aside from the retro fashions, that is.) If you can’t get your hands on an old family album, just do a Google search for group photos from the 1960s or even earlier. Anything jump out at you?

If you look around today, whether while walking down the street or watching one of the many reality shows on TV, I guarantee that you’ll see a much different picture. If you take public transit or live in a big city, you have plenty of opportunities to spot what I’m talking about: Most people nowadays are so much heavier than people were 50 years ago! They are easily 20 to 30 pounds heavier, on average. It’s not an exaggeration, no matter how much I wish it was. The proof is literally frozen in time for everyone to see.

Faded photographs aside, figures back up this observation. In the 1960s, the average American man between the ages of 40 and 45
weighed
169 pounds. By the year 2000, that average weight was 196 pounds!
1
According to 2012 stats from the
Journal of the American Medical Association
, 16.9 percent of 2- to 19-year-olds and 34.9 percent of the 78.6 million American adults who were 20 years or older were obese.
2
What’s scary is that those numbers didn’t even include another 35 percent or so of adults who didn’t qualify as obese but were still overweight and also at risk of weight-related problems like heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer. And this isn’t just happening in North America, either.

BOOK: The All-Day Fat-Burning Diet: The 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula That Resets Your Metabolism To Lose Up to 5 Pounds a Week
7.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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