Chris Powell's Choose More, Lose More for Life (10 page)

All these numbers are swell, but you’re reading this book because you want to slim down, not because you want to study science. Let’s put the facts and figures together into tools that will help you get the body you want. The arithmetic of weight loss is super-simple:

The calorie deficit is what weight loss is all about. If you want to drop the pounds, you have to run your metabolism at a deficit. How big a deficit? Here’s the magic number: To lose one pound of fat in a given window of time—say, a week—you’ve got to burn 3,500 more calories than you take in. That doesn’t mean you have to cut out 3,500 calories a day (you probably don’t even eat that much!). But to lose weight you do have to eat less. Most carb-cyclers find that they get the best results by creating a 500- to 1,000-calorie deficit daily.

The good part about all this math is that you’re not stuck with the “average” metabolism that burns the “typical” number of calories listed in the metabolic rate chart.
You can get a bigger calorie deficit
by making your metabolism burn hotter, so it incinerates calories like there’s no tomorrow. By manipulating your metabolism, you can burn more calories than the imaginary people in that chart! How do you do that? By carb cycling, of course! Cycling your carbs creates a calorie deficit that
guarantees fat loss
. Now let’s get back to those three crazy rules for maximizing your metabolism.

Like I said a few pages back, there are three rules for burning fat and losing weight quickly. I might sound crazy, but I promise that if you follow these rules, you’ll get the body you want—faster than you thought you could. But you’ve got to stick with all three of them, and here’s why:

Eating more stimulates your body’s digestion and maintenance functions. Your metabolism rises and falls with your calorie intake and fires in three-hour cycles. If it’s got a lot of fuel at the right time, it burns at its hottest. This is why you should eat more often—every three hours, to be exact—for a total of five meals a day. Of course, you have to eat the right kind of food, namely carbs, your body’s favorite fuel. If you don’t throw enough fuel on the fire, the flames fizzle out. Just as a log that you toss on a pile of ashes just sits there, calories that you feed to a sluggish metabolism just sit there and get stored in the form of fat.

Carbs are the major macronutrient in plant-based foods like sweet
potatoes, oatmeal, beans, and fruit. (They’re also the main component of not-so-healthy stuff like hamburger buns, soda, and glazed donuts, but not all carbs deserve a bad rap.) Carbs are, first and foremost, the main food for your cells. But they’re also the switch that calibrates your body’s metabolic thermostat, playing a significant role in controlling how fast your metabolism burns calories. When carbs come your way, they stimulate your body to release special hormones that are essential in managing your metabolism. Eating more carbs sends more of these hormones into your system, and the hormones launch your metabolic rate sky-high. Eating fewer carbs slows the flow of hormones, suppressing your metabolism. Carbs set your metabolic thermostat to “hot.” The trick is eating the right amount of them, at the right time, and we’ll get to that in a bit. Moral of the story: Eat more carbs and eat them more often!

If you develop your muscles, your body’s maintenance and movement functions get stronger. Pumping up your muscles with weights or other resistance techniques actually breaks them down, so for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, your body hammers overtime to repair and remodel them. This takes a
ton
of energy, so guess what? Your metabolism goes through the roof while your body builds shapelier and stronger muscles than ever! Plus, moving your muscles at high intensity for short periods of time creates a metabolic afterburn that lasts for hours after you exercise. If you work out regularly, your body becomes a fat-burning furnace—even when you’re flopped on the couch watching TV. Moral of the story: Shape up your muscles.

Moving your muscles improves your body’s movement function. Put them in motion, and we’re talking metabolic explosion. When you move your body, your muscles quickly start devouring calories. Your muscle cells scarf down way more energy than any other cells in your body, so when you make them work, your metabolism cranks up to white-hot.
The more muscle you have, the more calories it eats, and when your metabolism is burning high to feed your muscles,
all
of your cells—not just your muscle cells—end up using more calories, even while you’re sleeping! Moral of the story: Move your muscles!

By following the three rules, you maximize your metabolism so you can create the calorie deficit you need to strip away your body fat. So where does carb cycling fit in? Simple: It takes your metabolism even farther up into the stratosphere!

Cycling your carbs—eating a lot every other day and very few on the days in between—is so effective at intensifying weight loss while maintaining fat-burning muscle that most bodybuilders and fitness models have been carb cycling for decades. Using this method with many of my clients over the years, I’ve taken what I’ve learned from their experiences and have developed my own system. It not only supercharges weight loss for all kinds of folks, it also fits into almost anyone’s hectic everyday life. Plus, I’ve built in one to three days a week when you get to reward yourself with the decadent foods you love. And sometimes you get to eat tons of carbs for
a whole week
!

Of course, you can drop pounds on any diet that creates a calorie deficit, when you take in fewer calories than you use up. But many weight-loss regimens leave you feeling deprived by banning a lot of foods—most often, the delicious ones. Some diets, especially low-carb ones, actually
crash
your metabolism, slowing it way down and actually decelerating weight loss. Diet deprivation and metabolic crashing often lead to
rebounding
after you finish a diet, when you regain the weight you lost. Even more troubling, eliminating carbs from your diet can cause long-term damage to your hormonal system.

Carb cycling heads off the problems caused by other kinds of diets, but it still lets you lose weight rapidly. And unlike so many other weight-loss plans, carb cycling is effective in both the short and long term! By carb cycling—eating a lot of
beneficial
carbs on alternating days—you
can set your metabolism to “high” on high-carb days and keep it from slowing down too much on low-carb days. Alongside high-quality carbs, you’ll eat the valuable vegetables, proteins, and good fats that will enhance the benefits of carb cycling to maximize both fat loss and muscle development.

My carb-cycling program gets another boost from a technique that I call
calorie cycling
. Basically, you eat more calories on your high-carb days and fewer on your low-carb days. Why? Because your body burns calories, not carbs! Carbs
contain
the calories that fuel your body. When a lot of calories—whether fat, protein, or carb—come in, your metabolism quickly rises to turn them into lots of energy for your cells. When fewer calories come in, it slowly begins to fall, trying to eventually preserve as much energy as it can. That’s why I’ve designed my carb cycles to increase your calorie intake on high-carb days and decrease it on low-carb days. More carbs + more calories = metabolic boost and fat burning; fewer carbs + fewer calories = slow metabolic drop and faster fat burning. Cycling calories along with carbs maximizes their combined impact on your metabolism. It prolongs the metabolic boost you get on high-carb days to create the largest calorie deficit possible on low-carb days. It’s successful metabolic manipulation—the ultimate one-two punch for fat loss!