The All-Day Fat-Burning Diet: The 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula That Resets Your Metabolism To Lose Up to 5 Pounds a Week (39 page)

The bigger idea at play is that you’re rebooting your lifestyle. I’ve waited 12 chapters to tell you this, but the All-Day Fat-Burning Diet really isn’t about burning fat at all—it’s about learning how to truly care for the beautiful machine that is your body. You’re a sleek sports car, not some busted-down old station wagon! This plan teaches you how to keep yourself running in optimum condition. Losing those pesky pounds isn’t the be-all and end-all of this book; in fact, it’s just the beginning of your glorious new life. Here’s how easy it is to apply everything you’ve learned in the months and years to come.

MODIFYING THE 5-DAY FOOD-CYCLING FORMULA

You know what’s music to my ears? It’s the question I’m often asked when participants complete this program: “Yuri, what do I do after 21 days?” It’s a question that excites me because it means the person asking it wants to make sure she doesn’t undo all the progress she’s made—she’s lost weight and wants to keep going or, at the very least, maintain her new body. My answer always goes one of three ways.

Option 1

The first option is to continue following the 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula as it is laid out for you in this book, slightly customizing it to better suit your schedule, if needed.

For example, I first enlisted several hundred clients to go through this plan during the Christmas holidays. Almost everyone who works at my company thought I was crazy. Why on earth would I have several hundred overweight people follow a diet during the time of year
when
indulgent parties and feasting are the norm? The answer was quite simple: If I could help those clients lose weight and feel great during the most gluttonous, challenging time of year, just imagine what they could achieve in January, the summer, or any other time of the year when motivation is highest and circumstances are more supportive?

During that 21-day Christmas beta test, the average weight loss was 10 pounds, and a few of the women lost twice that amount. Pretty amazing, considering the final day was December 26—one day after Christmas! Many clients had work and family events that fell on the same day as their 1-Day Fast. Even Christmas Eve fell on a Low-Cal Day. So what did we do? Rather than panic, we simply shifted things around slightly. Since Christmas Day fell on their 1-Day Fast, we just swapped it with the 1-Day Feast. That’s the kind of flexibility I want you to practice going forward. Yes, there will be times when you feel hungry while doing your 1-Day Fast and you might cave in and eat something after 14 hours. That’s okay—don’t beat yourself up over it. With consistent effort and time, your body will reset to a point where it feels absolutely normal to go a day without food.

In essence, the answer is simply this: For the first 21 days, follow the plan as closely as possible, but when that time is up, feel free to move around the 5 days as you see fit. My one suggestion is to do your best not to put your 1-Day Fast after your Low-Cal Day or Low-Carb Day. On those days, your body is likely more depleted of glycogen than usual. To follow either of those days with a 1-Day Fast would be pretty challenging for most people. Plus, we shouldn’t keep your body in a low-carb or low-calorie state for too long. One day is more than enough time. That’s why I’ve strategically placed your 1-Day Feast
before
your 1-Day Fast. That way, your body has the necessary stores to make it through your fast day.

Option 2

The second method is to dedicate specific days of the week to a certain food-cycling day. For instance, your weekly schedule may look like the following:

Monday:
Regular-Cal Day

Tuesday: Low-Cal Day

Wednesday: Regular-Cal Day

Thursday: Low-Carb Day

Friday: Regular-Cal Day

Saturday: 1-Day Feast

Sunday: 1-Day Fast

Notice how all 5 days are represented during this week. The only difference is that you consistently have 3 Regular-Cal Days per week. It’s a slight change, but that’s totally fine. If you’re someone who likes having an airtight schedule, this is definitely the option for you. Your eating and exercise get locked in place, and you don’t have to ever think about them.

Personally, I find that doing a 1-Day Fast at home is too much of a challenge. It’s so much easier for me to fast when I’m on the go. Why? Remember when I told you that environment will always trump willpower? That’s certainly true of fast day; when you’re at home, surrounded by food, it’s much easier to take a nibble here and there without thinking twice. That said, I’m in love with my family’s 1-Day Feast on Saturdays. This is when we have our “Crepe Saturdays” tradition, and I love gorging on healthy crepes filled with strawberries and hazelnut chocolate spread with my kids.

Option 3

The third option is the easiest: Just follow your gut.

My goal with this program is not to transform you into a soulless robot locked into a strict schedule. Instead, I want you to understand the nuts and bolts of food cycling so that you can make it work for you almost intuitively. The aim is that you become so attuned to your body that you don’t even need to check your schedule every morning—you simply know what you should eat and how much you should exercise based on how you feel.

Let’s say you have a weekend filled with a string of parties and lots of food. By the time Monday rolls around, your body should feel less inclined to eat heavier meals (assuming you have established healthy leptin-hypothalamus communication). With that in mind, you go to bed on Sunday committed to making Monday your 1-Day Fast. Almost
24
hours later, Monday night rolls around and you’re ready for dinner. Satisfied, you go to bed a few hours later, expecting to roll into a Regular-Cal Day. The thing is, for whatever reason, you don’t feel like eating breakfast. And that’s okay—it’s totally fine.

As the day progresses, you find yourself famished at lunch, so you have a huge meal. It keeps you full for most of the day, so much so that by the time dinner comes around, you opt for a small salad. By this point, you’ve really gone off schedule, but does it matter? Not in the slightest. If you’re listening to your body, you’ll know if the meal choices you’re making are in alignment with your health or not. By eating only when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re 80 percent full, you’re eating in the most sustainable fashion, the best long-term solution to staying lean for life.

However, before you can become a “body whisperer,” you need to perform a full-system reset. That’s why I strongly encourage you to follow the 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula in this book as closely as possible for at least 21 days. You need to experience how your body responds to a 1-Day Fast. You need to see how you feel when you limit your carb consumption for a day. You need to see how your body feels after a healthy feast. These experiences are immensely beneficial in helping you learn about true hunger, cravings, and other dieting roadblocks. Are you really hungry or are you just anxious, stressed, or bored? The discoveries you’ll make, especially during your 1-Day Fast, are life-changing. This is how you end cravings for good, but you can’t do it unless you first stick to the plan.

THE 10 FAT-LOSS COMMANDMENTS

If at any point after you’ve successfully completed this program you find yourself falling into old habits, there’s a simple way to find your way back. I call them the 10 Fat-Loss Commandments. No matter what your situation, they will help you lose fat and keep it off. If you ignore them, you will struggle for the rest of your life with yo-yoing weight fluctuations. Think of them as the core truths of the All-Day Fat-Burning Diet distilled into 10 simple rules.

Eat
Real Food

That stuff in boxes lining the shelves of the supermarket? That’s not food. That edible material in tins, cans, and plastic pouches with seemingly endless lists of ingredients? That’s not food either. Throughout this book I’ve relentlessly hit home the importance of eating real food, not man-made junk laced with chemicals. I can’t state it enough. It’s likely the main reason you’re overweight to begin with. Eating real foods cools inflammation and reestablishes proper hormone communication, which automatically helps your body release fat it doesn’t need. You stay lean without even really trying.

Eat When You’re Hungry, Stop When You’re 80 Percent Full

You know the feeling—you’re enjoying a meal, perhaps going for seconds or thirds, caught up in the bliss of it all. Half an hour later you feel as bloated as a beach ball. You don’t need to eat until you’re full, and in fact, you’re probably “full” well before you think you are. By tuning in to your body, you can learn to eat only when you’re truly hungry rather than when you’re stressed or anxious. Better yet, you can learn to stop when you’re 80 percent full. If you find yourself craving food due to stress, then find an alternative like a quick burst of activity or meditation to change your focus and reduce your stress load.

Be Mindful and Love What You Eat

So many of us lose our way because we live our lives on autopilot, never paying attention to what we’re doing or saying, thinking or feeling. This is especially true when it comes to eating. It’s way too easy to eat two or three doughnuts as you drive to work in the morning, and even easier to halfheartedly devour a large order of fries while you’re balancing a spreadsheet or preparing a report at work. To prevent this, never eat while you’re watching TV or working at your computer. When you sit down to a meal, you should be focused on how your body feels and each bite that you take. By doing this, you’re allowing yourself to feel true appreciation for the food you eat, and you’ll ultimately develop a more mindful approach to eating.

Work
Out Less, Move More

One of the things I hope has really made an impression on you after reading this book is the importance of moving—not running a marathon or bench-pressing 100 pounds, mind you, but simply getting off your butt and moving around. It’s really all about micromovements. Most of us spend our days trapped behind a desk, and when we’re not, we’re sitting in our car, on our way to and from that desk. Simply taking the stairs, taking a walk around the block, or getting up every hour or two to do a few stretches goes a long way toward keeping your muscles strong and your metabolic rate high. Keying into this movement mind-set will keep you trim.

Build Muscle, Banish Long Cardio

Your body is often compared to a furnace, as it burns calories all day long. The general thinking is that working out accelerates this calorie burning. It does, but it’s not quite as simple as that. At most, exercise accounts for only 15 percent of your total daily caloric expenditure. Your basal metabolic rate actually accounts for 70 percent of the calories you burn every single day. Thus, it makes sense to focus on increasing your basal metabolic rate, right? The only way to do that is to increase your lean body mass—aka your muscle—and that means skipping the treadmill for bodyweight or external resistance exercises. After all, we’ve seen how long, slow cardio destroys your body and depletes vital fat-burning hormones like triiodothyronine (T3), growth hormone, and testosterone. Your goal should be to lift heavier weights that allow you to perform only 4 to 8 reps or so. And don’t forget about the power of lowering that weight slowly (eccentric contraction) to get more bang for your workout bucks.

Set Up Your Environment to Win

The legendary Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov once made a proclamation about writing drama that writers of all kinds still follow to this day. It’s about stripping away unnecessary elements from any story in order to make it stronger. His famous words? “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the
second
or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” The same can be said for those chocolate-covered pretzels in your cupboard—if you keep them around, they will get eaten. It’s doubly the same for negative friends who engage in unhealthy habits—keep them around and you’ll likely end up mimicking their behavior. That’s just how it works. You deserve to elevate your life, so that means stripping away all the harmful elements currently polluting it. Stock your cupboards with healthy snacks and make sure you don’t keep any junk in your fridge. Ditch the downer, toxic friends and join a supportive community (like the one we have on Facebook) filled with like-minded people who will support and encourage you. This is so much better than doing things on your own. Elevate it all.

Strive for Progress, Not Perfection

This is about progress, not perfection, and like anything worth doing, it gets easier with practice. You have to go easy on yourself. If you screwed up and ate something you knew you shouldn’t have, let it go and move on. If you didn’t get in your workout, don’t beat yourself up. Do it tomorrow. You’re only human, and that means there will be times—perhaps many—when things don’t go as planned. It happens, but you simply need to get back up, dust yourself off, and keep on trekking. I love the Japanese principle of
kaizen
, which essentially means “constant, never-ending improvement.” A life lived in a constant state of gentle refinement is the only way to lasting success. That’s what it’s all about.

Be Consistent

Key to the principle of kaizen that I just mentioned is one more familiar to us: consistency. If you eat well only occasionally, then you’re not going to enjoy the slim, healthy body you want. If you aim to work out a few times this week and then stop for several months because you’re sore, how are you supposed to progress toward the body of your dreams? You are much better off mastering small daily habits that, over time, will create massive change. These small daily habits can
include
walking, sleeping 7 to 9 hours, making a green juice, connecting with friends, laughing, doing 25 bodyweight squats, and anything else that I’ve laid out for you in this book. Although slightly less effective than daily habits, consistent behaviors can add up. For instance, doing a 1-Day Fast every week is a consistent behavior, even though it is not done daily. Get it? Small things done consistently will trump massive efforts that never stick.