The Fast Metabolism Diet (2 page)

I
am the metabolism whisperer.

I know why you can’t do it—why your body doesn’t respond anymore to the relentless dieting, the mind-numbing exercise, the low-carb or low-fat or high-protein diets. I know why you aren’t losing weight … and I know how to fix it.

I am a body mechanic, a personal trainer for your metabolism. I’m an innovator, not a duplicator. I’ve even been accused of adding black magic to my diet plan because the way it works seems so ridiculously easy, and the results defy past experience with other diets. I can assure you that there is no dark magic at work here.

I am out to revolutionize the way people feel about food and use food. You can lose 20 pounds in four weeks by eating real food, never counting calories, and creating a healthy, fast metabolism. There is no magic. There is no con. In meetings, doctors ask my advice and listen. People copy my programs and products, and clients walk out of my office, as my tactful sister sometimes puts it, “Ready to drink the Kool-Aid.”

But this Kool-Aid is the kind that really will make you slim and healthy and fabulous … and finally free of excess weight. My clients are not people who will be satisfied with a diet that doesn’t work, is too hard to follow, saps their energy, or deprives them of pleasure. Those clients include NFL athletes and their wives, as well as TV and movie stars. The Sultan
of Dubai even flew in to see me, upon the advice of his physician at Johns Hopkins Dubai.

I’ve also counseled
a lot
of people who aren’t particularly famous but who need to lose weight and lose it
now,
doctor’s orders. I have also spent years focusing on face-to-face, one-on-one client care. I consult with intensive weight-loss centers and weight-loss doctors, and I go behind the scenes developing weight-loss programs for major television shows. Advertising agencies and PR firms have flown me out to review their products, from sports drinks for children to healthy lunch programs. I’ve consulted with Safeway, advised Warner Brothers for their Looney Tunes Back to School campaign, and was on the social-action campaign for the movie
Food, Inc.

I’m out there promoting health, and making weight loss happen. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. And it’s why I can help you.

I’m telling you all of this so you understand that the Fast Metabolism Diet isn’t an untested theory or a product of wishful thinking. I’ve given this diet to hundreds of clients and seen hundreds of clients lose thousands of pounds, so I know it works. It has to work, or I would be out of business. Instead, all my clinics have waiting lists and people fly me on private jets to their homes just so I can show them how to do this. I’m
your
nutritionist now. With this book, I am taking my program to you. I want everyone who wants to lose weight and get healthier and lighter to be able to do it—fast, effectively, and permanently.

Years of study and clinical work have taught me how to get your metabolism to stand up and pay attention, and how to push it to get busy and start burning away the fat that has plagued you for years. In this book, I’ll show you exactly what to do to make it happen for you.

This is not a book for first-time dieters. This is a book for last-time dieters.

It is a book for people whose old tricks don’t work anymore. It is for people who love food but who are tired of fighting their cravings, fatigue, and protruding stomachs, and for chronic dieters who just don’t think they can diet one more time. If you are about to give up on ever reaching your ideal weight, if you think you must be destined to be heavier than you want to be, then this is your book. Your battle is over. It is time to love food and know how to use it to bring about real, lasting weight loss.

Chronic dieting burns out your metabolism, but the Fast Metabolism Diet stokes the fires again. It works on a simple premise: confuse it to lose it. Just as you might cross-train your physical body to improve your athletic performance, cross-training your metabolism stimulates different burn, build, and restore mechanisms to maximize your efforts.

Through my
systematic rotation of
targeted
foods on
specific
days, at
strategic times
, the body transforms itself by cycling between rest and active recovery of the metabolism.

Your body stays surprised, nourished, and revitalized, until it becomes a fat-burning wildfire and the weight finally drops off the way you always dreamed it could. The Fast Metabolism Diet is designed to make you healthier, lighter.

You will eat in three different ways each week—according to Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3. This phase-rotation continues for four weeks, in order to cover every possible biochemical scenario in your body’s monthly cycle (that goes for women and men). You will get more out of your food and your body than you ever thought possible. You’ll start burning through food and scavenging body fat like never before. You want quick results that last? This is your diet.

You will come away from this book understanding how the body works and why it responds to your actions the way it does. You will never go on a fast. You will never starve. But you will lose weight.

This is not an empty promise. You can do this. I’ve seen it happen time and time again, for women, for men, for people in their 20s to those in their 70s. I’ve created clear, precise meal maps that can be adapted for use with every eating population: gluten-sensitives, vegetarian or vegans, and meat lovers. The plan is easy to follow and hard to resist.

Many of my clients jokingly tell me I’m cocky or overconfident when they share their diet horror stories and I tell them they can heal their metabolisms. Then they begin my program and they say it’s like we lit a match inside them. I like to tell clients as they leave my office that I look forward to seeing less of them. And I tell them that if they follow the diet, all they have to worry about is finding a good tailor. Because their metabolism is going to be on fire and their excess fat is the fuel … and it’s burning off, baby.

Get ready to change your life, because food is it.

It’s the only thing we have to build our bodies, to create a healthy heart, strong bones and muscles, as well as good skin, hair, and nails. It’s what we use to fuel the manufacture of hormones that regulate everything in our bodies. It’s not just energy. It’s life. It’s time to stop being afraid to eat, and learn how to do it the right way. It starts with the burn …

Losing weight seems mysterious to some, impossible to others, but it’s really not that complicated. It’s not about calories or fat grams or carbs. People like to say that losing weight is simply a matter of eating fewer calories than you burn. Calories in, calories out. I’ve never believed in that, and I’ve witnessed how untrue it is for some people. It’s
not
a matter of eating fewer calories. But it is about the burn.

It’s about your metabolism. Fire it up and you’ll burn everything you eat like a bonfire, even if you eat a lot. You know those skinny people who always pack it in? They have fast metabolisms. Then there are people who hardly eat at all and remain saddled with extra weight. They are the ones with slow metabolisms that have cooled off and aren’t burning the way they should. Tamp down your metabolism until it’s like a pile of wet logs, and it’s not going to do anything for you. When you throw garbage on a damp pile of wood, it’s going to become a heap of wet mess. You can’t start a fire with that. All you get is wet logs and moldy garbage. All you get is fat. That’s what happens when you throw junk food, processed sugar, and all those other foods you know you probably shouldn’t eat, into a body with a slow metabolism. You accumulate fat and more fat and nothing seems to burn.

But you don’t want excess fat. You want lean muscle. You want energy, healthy hormones, balanced cholesterol, excellent blood sugar levels, and stunning hair, skin, and nails. You want to radiate health and enjoy the process of getting there. You want to look and feel amazing, but you’re sick of depriving yourself.

No problem! Just fix that damp pile of logs. Dry them out, add the right kindling, spray on some lighter fluid, and light a match. Get it burning again, build it into a roaring fire, and you’ll be able to eat food like a “normal”
person. You’ll be able to eat the way you see other people eating, the way you thought you could never eat again.

The problem for many of my clients, and quite possibly you, is that if you are overweight and have spent a lifetime dieting to get it under control (likely unsuccessfully in the long term), the very thing you thought would help you has actually been hurting you. Long-term chronic dieting dampens your metabolism, your inner fire, turning it slowly, year by year, into that pile of wet logs. The less you eat, the more your metabolism cools, and the less you will be able to eat tomorrow.

That’s precisely the reason some people can’t lose weight even though they don’t eat very much. Their metabolic flame has died out, and they can’t get it lit again, the logs are wet, the garbage has piled up, and the whole process has become dysfunctional.

They need a jump start. They need to be reignited.

They need what you hold in your hands: The Fast Metabolism Diet.

It all began with a couple of sheep. I’m not kidding! You see, I’m an aggie—that’s someone with an education in agricultural science. I was very involved in FFA, Future Farmers of America. I’m a science dork, and my bachelor’s degree is not, as you might expect, in food science. It’s in animal science. That’s where I first began to understand that food can be used, systematically and purposefully, to shape the body the way a sculptor shapes a lump of clay.

I’ve always been fascinated by how things work, and especially by how the body works. But I was also obsessed with animals, and I thought maybe I could handle the complicated puzzles veterinary science would present. So, at a young age, I decided to be a veterinarian.

In college, my course work was heavily weighted toward animal science. In fact, Temple Grandin (best-selling author, animal science professor, and noted livestock industry consultant) was one of my advisers and a personal mentor. I took classes on sheep production, beef production, livestock feeding, and animal nutrition. I worked as a veterinary surgical tech, and after college, in preparation for veterinary school, I did a nutrition
internship at Colorado State. It all added up to an amazing perspective on nutrition. The more I learned about animal nutrition, the more I thought about how some of the same concepts could be applied to people—that diet could be carefully managed to speed up the metabolism and increase the rate of burn in humans, too.

I decided to focus on wellness instead of illness. What if I could help keep people healthy by using my knowledge of animal science? And what if I could do it all by fully integrating my favorite pastime into the mix: food? All this led me to change professional course.

Back in 1995, wellness consulting was gaining in popularity. To become a certified wellness consultant, you must complete a number of science courses, including anatomy and physiology, exercise, nutrition, and stress management, and also be certified in first aid and CPR. This
sounded like just the thing for me, so I immersed myself in study. I wanted to be able to assess an individual’s health profile and be able to make truly useful, meaningful recommendations about nutrition, exercise, and stress management.

I became a Registered Wellness Consultant specializing in holistic health, nutrition, exercise, and stress management—but then I couldn’t stop learning! I went on to garner almost a dozen additional advanced certifications. I loved it. I’d found my calling. I went into private practice as a nutritionist and wellness consultant; and before I knew it, I had several beautiful and bustling wellness clinics: my first clinic, an integrative healthcare clinic in Fort Collins, Colorado; a serene, Zen-inspired clinic in Beverly Hills; a lively Burbank Clinic, located right next to Warner Brothers and Disney Studios and the LA Equestrian Center; and my most recent clinic in Irvine, California, where the focus is specifically on using my nutritionally formulated products to help people lose weight quickly and permanently. (These products
aren’t necessary
for doing the Fast Metabolism Diet, but they are convenient if you need them.)

I never advertised my services, but through word of mouth, business boomed, almost from the start. Why? Because of the unique way I use food to shape the body. When you get results, news travels fast.

Many of my clients come referred to me by a network of doctors who know and trust what I do. Many of these clients have chronic health problems like diabetes, celiac disease, thyroid disorders, arthritis, heart disease, or hormonal issues. Many struggle with fertility. All of them need to get healthier so they can heal more efficiently. Healthier patients at healthy weights heal faster. My clients can’t just say they feel better; the lab numbers have to change for the better: their cholesterol has to improve, their blood sugars have to improve, their blood pressures have to improve, and so do their numbers on the scale.