Cavewomen Don't Get Fat (16 page)

As you work through the three Paleo phases of
Cavewomen Don't Get Fat
, keep in mind that your body has different needs than those of your friends. These are overall
guidelines
that will fluctuate based on your training schedule, stress levels, sleep, hormones, and all the other pieces of our lives that often require fine-tuning. You
may need to tweak these plans to better suit your needs. I'm not a believer in counting calories, but it's essential to be in the proper zone for your body to achieve proper fat loss. If you're training with heavy weights four days per week, you'll need to eat more calories to compensate for your caloric expenditure during workouts and the fat burned after workouts and to preserve lean muscle mass. But if you're trying to lose body fat, then you can shave off about 300 calories per day. The good news is that once you eliminate carbs, you'll do this naturally. Eating this way, it is possible for women to gain lean muscle mass while simultaneously losing body fat.

O
nce you finish the fourteen-day Paleo Detox, you're ready for the Paleo Reset, which loosens the reins a bit and allows you to enjoy more carbs but still enables you to continue on your fat-loss journey. The great news is that you can still expect one to two pounds of fat loss a week. This phase balances your hormones and tackles body fat. Stay on this plan until your body fat percentage goal is reached. How long is that? It all depends on your individual biochemistry and your commitment to eating Paleo.

The Paleo Reset phase allows you to have one cheat meal each week to help reset your leptin level (see
page 102
) and prevent you from becoming weight-loss resistant. But before you dive headfirst into a bowl of chocolate pudding, let's take a moment to discuss some logistics. True, cavewomen could not really cheat on their diets because all the sweets and processed foods we now have access to did not exist at the time. (And, accessibility to food in general was inconsistent for hunter-gatherers, making actual consistency of meals
more of an issue than anything else.) There was no cake to cheat with, no soda to slug back, and certainly no unlimited access to all things sweet. So why do I allow it on the Paleo Chic plan? Because we do live in a world with cake, and I'm not going to tell you that you can never enjoy another bite in your life. But I am going to tell you that there's a fine line between indulging and overindulging, and gorging yourself on a weekend bender can set you right back to your starting point.

There is also a case to be made for not cheating with junk food, but, instead, increasing your total quantity of food. Reestablishing your leptin level is less about junk food than the total quantity of food. So instead of pigging out on junk food, you can increase the volume of food you consume (think double portions), and you will still achieve the desired effect. You can also cheat every other week to really up your fat-loss game.

So respect the cheat meal. Remember that it is not a license to ill but simply another tool in your belt for coaxing along the weight loss process. Your goal is not to overstuff yourself and wake up with a hangover the next day; it's to satisfy a craving and then get back to business.

Dieting can lower your leptin levels, and severely limiting your carbohydrates for more than a couple weeks can raise your cortisol levels. Cheat meal to the rescue! Throwing your metabolism a curveball will prevent your leptin from getting out of line and keep your stress hormones in check. We rarely have the opportunity to trick our bodies into weight loss, but a planned cheat meal can achieve just that. Plus, it will keep you psychologically fulfilled and allow you to enjoy your favorite foods on occasion. Done correctly, the cheat meal can add back some sensuality to your eating experience and create what I consider the ultimate bliss: a life lived in balance.

A cheat meal is a necessary part of fat loss. Strategically planning a cheat meal will boost your metabolism and reach the pleasure centers in the deepest parts of your brain. And when you have a
craving for a piece of pizza or a slice of chocolate cake, knowing that you will be able to enjoy them in just a few days keeps you honest. We all need a carrot—or a cupcake—dangled in front of us to keep us motivated. The cheat meal does just that.

As you get leaner, you can incorporate two cheat meals per week to keep your body guessing. Don't abuse your privileges, though, or you won't see the benefits you've worked so hard to gain—or lose.

What does a cheat meal look like? Allow me to show you the path of enlightenment:

Hamburger and French fries, chocolate chip cookie

Pancakes with butter and syrup and sausages

Enchiladas with beans and rice, sour cream, guacamole, and cheese, and a beer

Cheese ravioli with a glass of wine

Sushi and sake

Bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon

Pork dumplings, shrimp fried rice, broccoli with brown sauce, and green tea ice cream

• Carbohydrates will raise your leptin levels and, to a lesser extent, insulin. So keep your fat intake low if you are eating a higher-carbohydrate meal. Your insulin levels will be high enough as it is; adding fat with a storage hormone will not give you the desired results.

• No need to count calories, but exercise the boundaries of decency!

• Experiment for a bit to see how your body reacts to your cheat meals. You will have to see how this shakes out. Some women can tolerate gluten on occasion; other babes blow up like balloons after eating a sandwich. How your body
responds really depends on your genetic makeup. So if a cheat meal that includes gluten doesn't work for you, keep your carb choices clean and gluten-free.

• Time your cheat meal accordingly. In a perfect world, we would have our cheat meals immediately following a workout, when our insulin sensitivity is highest. At that point in time, your muscles are primed and ready for a hot night out in carb town, and you'll be less likely to store the carbohydrates you do eat as fat. Most women like to save their cheat meals for the weekend, when they're more likely to go out to eat. Whenever you do, just have fun and revel in the pleasure of delicious foods. I love to save up a cheat meal for a date night out so I can loosen the reins a bit. I'll have a glass of wine, eat a hearty meal that's usually gluten-free—for instance, steak, risotto, and spinach—and I'll have some spoonfuls of dessert. Overall, though, I'd much rather drink booze than eat sugar!

• Go all out, but don't blow it. I must put in a small disclaimer here. The goal of the cheat meal is to reset your leptin levels, not gain back everything you worked so hard to lose. You can't eat unlimited amounts of food and not gain weight. So unless you are lifting heavy weights and training to be a superhero in an action movie, you are probably going to need to limit the amounts of food—and, dare I say it, calories—you are eating in your cheat meal. Everyone wants to find the dietary loophole that will enable them to toss accountability out the window, but I'm afraid no one's discovered it yet! So go and enjoy your cheat meal, but don't make it a 2,000-calorie event, either.

• Make sure that you work out and drink plenty of water the day of your cheat meal, to minimize the bloating from a food hangover the next day.

The thing to remember about a cheat meal is that when it works, it works beautifully, but it does require serious discipline and self-control. There have been times when it took me three days for my sugar cravings to die down after my cheat meal. It was oh-so mentally challenging to stay on track during those three days. If the Paleo way of eating is completely new to you, it may be too challenging to dip your toe in the pool for a night without being able to take a long swim. You have to have an honest conversation with yourself and figure out what works best for you.

You may want to take a bit more time to get the Paleo way of eating under your shrinking belt and get hold of your blood sugar swings before you reintroduce the foods that got you into trouble in the first place. If you feel the cheat meal is going to send you back to your old eating habits, then keep your cheat meals gluten-free and clean, and work within those parameters until you're ready to make the leap.

Food addictions are not just a psychological issue, they're also a physical issue. Processed foods fire up dopamine receptors in the brain, making us immediately crave more. Some of us are more sensitive to these effects than others, and the effect on the brain is like smack to a junkie. Eating processed foods can have the same outcome. Bear in mind that it can take at least seven days to quell your sugar cravings and up to a month to recover fully from junk-food cravings once you clean them out from your diet. That's normal, so cut yourself some slack and just go with it. Knowing what to expect is half the battle. The rewards will be the improvements you see in your body and feel in your mind.

Cavewomen Don't Get Fat
is all about changing your lifestyle and changing the way you eat. And that means you have to change the way you live. And
that
means your lifestyle doesn't affect just you but also everyone around you. That's not a bad thing, mind you; leading by example can help get others on board. (“Wow, you look great! Really? Maybe I should become a cavewoman too!”) For most of us, though, change can be terrifying. Food is such a complicated topic, and often the strongest memories we have of food go back to our childhood.

What you need to take away from this is that the past is a place of reference, not a place of residence. Letting go of old attachments to foods that stand in the way of your goals is the best way to literally clear your plate for new opportunities. Healing requires change. Once we can let go of the past and start to change our bodies, we wonder why we didn't choose this path sooner.

If you're anything like me, then you don't have much willpower or self-control. It takes a phenomenal amount of effort on my part to resist my mother's homemade cookies. And I never want to feel guilty after I eat them, either. So I build a cheat meal into visits to my parents' house so that I can have a couple cookies and not only not feel bad about it but feel like I'm doing my body a favor!