Chris Powell's Choose More, Lose More for Life (45 page)

1. Heat half the butter in a nonstick pan over medium heat. Add salmon; cook on each side until almost done. (It cooks quickly, so keep an eye on it!)
   
2. Remove salmon from pan and keep warm.
   
3. Add remaining butter along with the garlic and the Cajun seasoning. Cook for about 2 minutes.
   
4. 4. Add balsamic vinegar to pan and cook for an additional 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
   
5. Return the salmon to the pan and finish cooking. Plate each filet with a lemon wedge.
   
6. Serve immediately; or portion out and store in the fridge up to 2 to 3 days. (Not recommended for freezing.) When you’re ready to eat, reheat and enjoy.
   

1. Mix sour cream, mayonnaise, and horseradish sauce in a small bowl.
   
2. Heat oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat. Sprinkle one side of fish with basil, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Place fish in pan, seasoned side down. Sprinkle the top of the fish with the remaining seasoning. Turn when nicely browned on one side and continue cooking on the other side until done to your taste.
   
3. Plate fish and garnish each serving with a thumb-size dollop of horseradish cream. Serve immediately; or portion out fish and sauce separately and store in the fridge up to 2 to 3 days. (Not recommended for freezing.) When you’re ready to eat, reheat and enjoy.
   

1. Put half of the green onions, plus the honey, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, and lime juice, in a gallon-size zip-top bag and seal. Gently massage bag to mix ingredients and then add fish, turning bag over several times to fully coat with marinade. Let sit for at least 30 minutes (see do ahead tip box on
   here
   ).
   
2. Remove fish from bag and discard any remaining marinade. Place fish on a broiler pan (line with aluminum foil for easy cleaning!). Broil under medium-high heat until cooked through.
   
3. Plate fish and garnish with remaining green onions. Serve immediately or portion out and store in fridge up to 2 to 3 days. (Not recommended for freezing.) When you’re ready to eat, reheat and enjoy.
   

Essentially, it’s a weight-loss system designed to keep your metabolism as high as possible so you can burn fat like crazy! It’s laid out in
one-week segments
that alternate days of high-carbohydrate eating with days of low-carbohydrate eating. On high-carb days, your meals are higher in carbs and slightly higher in calories, and on low-carb days your meals (except breakfast) are almost entirely carb-free and slightly lower in calories. Carb cycling keeps your protein intake constant from meal to meal and day to day, and on low-carb days you can eat certain fats!

Each week, you repeat your carb-cycling pattern. The net result is a wonderfully balanced nutrition program that keeps your metabolism stoked up in order to
melt away maximum fat!
High-carb days boost your metabolism, which then stays high on low-carb days, burning more fat than it would on a static or stable nutrition program that has you eating the same way every day.

The basic carb-cycling pattern is simple: You eat a high-carb diet every other day and a low-carb diet on the days in between. But you can alternate high-carb and low-carb days in
various ways
, depending on your weight-loss goals. In this book, I give you four different cycles: one for slow and easy weight loss, one for fast weight loss, one for superfast weight loss, and one for weight loss combined with maximum athletic performance.
Some cycles have more high-carb days and some have more low-carb days than the basic cycle.

You need to eat healthy food five times a day to feed your metabolism when it cycles on every three hours. Adding fuel makes the fire burn hotter and incinerate fat faster. The more you eat, the more you lose! You want that, right?

At first, you’ll feel like you’re eating too much, because you’ll be eating a lot of bulk. The real, whole, healthy foods in the carb-cycling diet are high in fiber—that’s the bulk—and low in calories. They keep you fuller longer, so when mealtime rolls around every three hours, you might not even be hungry! Eat anyway, and eat the types and amounts of food that I ask you to. Don’t worry, you’ll adjust quickly!

One day a week, or several meals per week, you take a
reward day or meal
. These are days or meals that you select to indulge in the foods you crave, even if they are unhealthy. (See Appendix C for a list of some reward food options.) Rewarding yourself like this keeps your cravings from going haywire and throwing you off your carb-cycling course. It’s also a way to reward yourself for sticking to your carb-cycling program. It’s absolutely
necessary
to reward yourself at least once a week!

A Slingshot is seven high-carb days in a row. But isn’t carb cycling about alternating high-carb and low-carb days? It sure is, but sooner or later your
body’s going to adapt to your cycle and slow down its fat burning. To keep your weight loss from plateauing, you’ll be doing a one-week Slingshot after every three weeks of carb cycling. It’s an essential part of carb cycling.

When you stop carb cycling for a week to load your body with carbs, your body will feel all that fuel flowing in and crank up your metabolism to its hottest! If you’ve reached a weight-loss plateau, your fat-burning system will reboot and your carb-cycling machine will be up and running again. If you haven’t plateaued, the Slingshot will retune your carb-cycling engine so it keeps purring along.

They’re cardiovascular workouts that I’ve designed especially for carb cyclers like you. Aerobic activities like walking, bicycling, jumping rope, and hiking get your metabolism firing to its maximum fat-burning level. That’s why I also call Shredder workouts
accelerators
. You do your Shredders five days a week, for as little as five minutes if you’re just starting to carb cycle, and as much as sixty minutes if you’re far along on your weight-loss journey.

These are workouts that shape and develop your muscles—muscle-building exercise that some people call resistance training or strength training. Using the most fundamental movements of the human body—running, jumping, pushing, pulling, crunching, and squatting—these brief, vigorous workouts jack up your metabolism by building your muscles, the biggest energy consumers in your body. You’ll do them first thing in the morning, five days a week, to rev up your metabolism for the rest of the day.