Chris Powell's Choose More, Lose More for Life (18 page)

It’s astounding what exercise can do for you. Sure, it makes you stronger and beautifully sculpts your body, but there’s a whole lot more to it. Exercise delivers nutrients to all of your cells and oxygenates your organs, tissues, and muscles, giving you
tons of energy
. More and more research shows that exercise has a powerful role in cleaning toxins out of your cells, including your brain cells. When your brain wrings out toxins and soaks up nutrients and oxygen, your mental clarity pops, your depression evaporates, and your productivity skyrockets! Oh, and did I mention that exercise burns right through those extra pounds?

There are so many fantastic upsides to exercise. You want to know how many downsides there are? Zero. It’s guaranteed: The more you move, the better your life. Exercise
transforms
your life!

Carb cycling lays the foundation for weight loss, but exercise accelerates the process, producing outstanding results on the double. Combine nutrition and exercise, and you throw a one-two punch at your fat. That’s why exercise is an essential factor if you want to drop a lot of pounds in a little time. But I not only want you to lose weight,
I want you to be fit!
I want you to have a beautifully functioning body that lasts your whole life. So I’m going to show you the two steps to getting fit while losing weight.

But first, I have to tell you something fantastic: To get fit, you don’t have to join a health club. You don’t need to buy expensive equipment. And you definitely don’t need to order the contraptions you see in TV advertisements and stores. In fact, you don’t need much more than your own body: It’s your
incredible
,
built-in
,
private gym
. Your body, a floor, and a chair are all you need to do your 9-Minute Missions; depending on what kind of Shredders you choose, you might also need to pick up a few basics like a pair of sneakers or a bathing suit.

Not only is your gym inexpensive and simple to use—it’s portable. You take your body
wherever you go
, so you can work out whether you’re at home or on the road. Talk about user-friendly! I’m going to show you how to use your fully equipped, conveniently located gym to get the results you’re after. You’re about to discover how easy it is to make exercise an enjoyable lifestyle and to stay youthful, lose fat, and get fit.

I can just hear you asking, “What the heck is a 9-Minute Mission?” Simply put, they are the workouts that
shape and develop your muscles
. Some people call this kind of exercise resistance training or strength training. My version centers on three of the most fundamental movements of the human body: pushing, crunching, and squatting.

I’ve taken a bunch of muscle-building exercises and designed a series of quick, convenient 9-Minute Missions for you to do one of when you wake up in the morning Monday through Friday. The missions are a challenge, but when you accomplish them, the results are profound. You get energy and a boosted metabolism, as well as increased fat loss, muscle development, and brain oxygenation—the list goes on!

9-Minute Missions boost your metabolism like crazy by stimulating and growing your
energy-hungry muscles
. Not only will you use a whole lot of calories while you’re exercising, but your oxygen-depleted, pumped-up muscles will munch through carbs and fat
for the rest of the day
. 9-Minute Missions will always give you results, but you’ll be amazed at how much better they work when you do them first thing in the morning. Five days a week, these nine minutes of fast, fun, high-intensity morning exercise speed up your weight loss. Start your day right, and you’re set for a whole day of burning fat and feeling great—even if you’re stuck in a cubicle at work.

If you read my first book,
Choose to Lose
, you’ll remember the three powerful 9-Minute Mission workouts I gave you (I called them Shapers). I got such incredible feedback on those that I want to give you more this time. I’m going to show you just how creative we can get with running, jumping, pushing, crunching, and squatting. Now you’ll have twenty
entirely new, incredibly powerful 9-Minute Missions to use in your transformation. Cycle through them and watch the immense increase in your fitness!

You can accelerate your fat loss even more by adding
Shredders
to your exercise program. I call these workouts Shredders because they turn you into a shredding machine that aggressively destroys your body fat. Shredders are cardio workouts, often called aerobic exercise, like walking, biking, and swimming. They’re
interval
training that alternates periods of exercise with periods of rest. I’ve pulled years of my research together to design Shredders that get results in the
least amount of time
with the
least amount of effort
.

Like 9-Minute Missions, Shredders accelerate and maximize your fat loss, but you do them at a lower intensity, in longer sessions, ranging from five to sixty minutes. And you can do them any time of day, because they work differently from 9-Minute Missions: They incinerate fat
while
you exercise. As you run, row, or dance the rumba, your heart pumps faster and your blood rushes through your body, loading your organs with oxygen and converting the padding on your hips and belly into energy
right then and there
. Like an ice cube in the hot sun, your fat melts away. Talk about motivation to work out!

I’ve made a few changes to the Shredders since I introduced them in
Choose to Lose
. I’ve made them easier! Easier to follow, that is. While the impact of alternating low-, medium-, and high-intensity is phenomenal, sometimes it’s difficult to gauge your intensity levels. That’s why this time around I’ve created four different Shredders with just two levels of intensity: low and high. Super-simple, super-easy to follow. No more guesswork!

My exercise program sets you up with a 9-Minute Mission and a Shredder for each weekday. Combining their power, the program does two jobs:
burns fat and increases fitness. Heck, if you’re putting in the time, you might as well kill two birds with one stone! You can sharpen your aim when you throw that stone by doing your Shredder and 9-Minute Mission workouts
at set times every day
: 9-Minute Missions first thing in the morning and Shredders anytime afterward, at whatever time you establish for yourself.

I know you’re going to stick with the schedule you set and actually do your exercises, because I’ve designed the 9-Minute Missions and Shredders to be fun. I want you to look forward to your workouts! Fitness is a game you play with yourself, a challenge you’ll want to meet. You’ll be excited to reach weight-loss and fitness pinnacles that you’ve never thought you could reach, and to push the envelope of your potential.

You’re going to love your 9-Minute Missions, because they’re such a fun and easy way to win a victory first thing in the morning. It’s so fulfilling to
give your all to yourself
before you do anything else each day. Immediately after your 9-Minute Mission, or in the afternoon or evening, you’ll have a blast with your Shredders, because you’ll be doing an activity that you truly love. If you
like what you’re doing
, you’re going to keep doing it. You don’t have to jog for your cardio if you hate to jog—take a class or play some basketball instead if you like to. Enjoy yourself, and transform your life at the same time.

Whether you’ve been a couch potato for years or you’re a well-conditioned athlete, my exercise program will work for you. That’s because it’s scalable—
you can gear your workout to your fitness level
. A 9-Minute Mission or twenty minutes of Shredding can be daunting if you haven’t moved a muscle in ages, so if you’re just starting out, you can take it slowly. Even if you’re athletic, high-intensity 9-Minute Missions and Shredders can be challenging. But if you’re already active, you can find the higher level that’s right for you—and go for it! Either way, you’ll fire up your metabolism and maximize your weight-loss potential.

The beauty of the 9-Minute Missions is that they’re based on
your
ability level. When the clock starts, you simply do what
you
are capable of doing. Your performance the first time you do a mission sets your baseline, and it only goes up from there! It’s so fun when you repeat a Mission from the previous month and see how much your performance has increased. You can literally
see and feel
the proof that your fitness is going up!

If you’re just starting out with exercise, follow the beginner or intermediate versions of the exercises laid out below until you master them and feel comfortable trying the more advanced movements… but don’t rush it! Keep your speed controlled as you get a feel for the movement and timing of each Mission. As you begin to feel more and more comfortable, increase your speed. The fitter you get, the faster you go!

I love to start out my day with a 9-Minute Mission. It’s convenient, and it makes the most of that
quick burst
of high-intensity strength training. 9-Minute Missions sculpt and develop your muscles and definitely improve your physique, plus—they’re stamina-building machines! But their bigger benefit for weight loss is that they get you ready to incinerate fat. By putting your muscles in motion, the 9-Minute Missions totally hyperactivate your fat- and carb-burning mechanisms, so you lose weight on the double!

9-Minute Mission workouts spur your muscles to devour tons of carbs, so your body ends up with a lot fewer carbs to store as fat. Your 9-Minute Missions also
fire up your metabolism
to melt the fat that your body’s already stored. Plus, 9-Minute Missions build and preserve your muscles to drive your metabolism even harder. A bonus upside is that these high-power workouts dose your bloodstream with a hormone that increases fat eradication even more. I’m not kidding!

It’s awesome! 9-Minute Missions accelerate your weight loss in
four great ways
:

1. No New Fat!

When you put your muscles through short, intense workouts like the 9-Minute Missions, they empty their own energy reserves before they start drawing on your body fat. Muscles store energy in the form of glycogen, a converted form of carbohydrate. Your 9-Minute Mission workout drains glycogen from your muscles, leaving them hungry for more carbs. You’ve got a glycogen deficit, an energy hole you’ve got to fill. That’s one reason to do your resistance training first thing in the morning: The carbs you eat at breakfast will
be soaked up into your muscles as glycogen
. That’s right: You should eat carbs at breakfast.

What happens if you eat oatmeal or toast or hash browns when your muscles are already full of carbs (maybe because you haven’t done your 9-Minute Mission…)? Some of it’s used by your working muscles and organs, but the rest of the glucose that’s broken down from the carbs doesn’t have anywhere to go, so your body stores it as fat. But the solution isn’t simply to stop eating carbs: Even if you’re just sitting around, your muscles, and all of your organs,
need that fuel
—and they need a lot more of it when you’re in motion. If you don’t eat carbs, your body will panic and try to preserve its fuel supply—your fat. So, as I mentioned in
Chapter 4
, to burn fat, you’ve actually got to eat carbs!

But before you eat the carbs you have to do your 9-Minute Missions. Working your muscles fast and furious before taking in carbs will force your muscles to soak the carbs right up. There’s nothing left to store as fat, so your fat can’t grow. What’s more, the effect of doing your 9-Minute Missions lasts
for the rest of the day
. Pretty cool! It’s a tactic I’ve used for years to help my clients take control of their body and their weight.

2. A Fierce Metabolism

You can control your nutrition, too, to control your metabolism and create an even bigger carb deficit. When you eat carbs after doing your 9-Minute Missions, the glucose that you drive into your muscles ends up exactly where we want it. By pumping new fuel into them, boom!
those muscles roar to life
. Carbs are like ninety-two-octane—no, one-hundred-octane—gas for your internal combustion engine. Your muscles instantly go from zero to sixty, spiking your metabolism.

That metabolic combustion
keeps going for hours
after you do your 9-Minute Missions. The oxygen in your blood goes on combining with the glycogen in your muscles to ignite your metabolism again and again. Your muscles keep burning through their energy reserves, so they’re starving for more carbs. Muscles are very greedy, and when it comes to nutrition your body gives them priority over other organs—and over fat. A lot more nutrient-rich blood travels through muscle than through fat, so if your muscles are fired up by 9-Minute Missions, they gobble up the carbs
before
those calories reach your fat.

3. Hot Muscles

You need an insurance policy for a high-performance machine like your muscles. The 9-Minute Missions are that insurance: By stimulating your muscles to grow, the Missions protect your muscles from cannibals.
What?!
Well, for most people who are trying to trim down, losing fat means losing some muscle in the process, too. That’s right: Their bodies end up cannibalizing a lot of muscle, in addition to fat, for energy. And since muscles are the body’s biggest carb burners, people who shrink their muscles slow down their metabolism. You know what
that
means!

You can’t afford to lose any of your precious muscle, because it’s your metabolic engine. Doing just a few minutes of vigorous resistance training really helps spare your muscles—by rebuilding them. Your body’s just like everyone else’s, so if you’re working out almost every day, your metabolism will go after your muscles for energy. But by doing your 9-Minute Missions, you keep rebuilding your muscles, so even if you lose some, you gain more. You come out ahead! Your metabolic engine doesn’t break down, and you keep burning calories like crazy. Fantastic! It’s essential to keep your metabolism as high as possible so you can
maintain your weight loss for the rest of your life
. 9-Minute Missions can help you do that.