The Fast Metabolism Diet (20 page)

Both of these dysfunctional strategies will stop weight loss in its tracks.

I had a client who had significant weight loss in her first week. She had been an angel and it had paid off big time. During
week two, her
food diary showed that she had pulled a lot of the grain servings out of her meal map in Phase 1, and left the avocado off her toast in Phase 3. She even
skipped a 3:00 snack because she wasn’t hungry. She thought, “If I’m doing this well and I’m this full and this satisfied, just imagine what I could do if I took more food away!”She then decided to do four spin classes and an intense run in a span of five days. When we sat down together at the end of week two, she had only lost a pound and was feeling pretty ragged out. I couldn’t believe how easy it was for me to convince her to begin the whole program over—that’s right, we started from scratch! She went on to have a glorious, satisfied, successful four weeks and saw a lot more of her
massage therapist and a lot less of her spin instructor.

Because my client had limited so much of the food and had increased her intense
exercise, I was concerned that her starvation-mode hormones would be in full swing. If the body goes into starvation mode, that will increase stress hormones. And what do stress hormones do? They signal the body to store fat rather than burn it. So this week, be so gentle with yourself and be mindful of stress.

Stress is definitely a factor in week two—this is exactly why I call it the OMG week! People get stressed about how much weight they lost, about whether their weight loss is fast enough or too fast. Or, they go in the opposite direction, wondering whether their excessive weight loss means they can start changing the rules of the plan.

It’s important to understand that while
guilt is fattening and stress is fattening, feeling guilty about being stressed is the most fattening of all! So get massages this week, take a hot bath in lavender oil, try to take your cardio outside at the beach or a park, and be prepared with your food because it is what will coast you through. I once had a client who, with great anxiety, told me that he was almost all the way through a pear he had grabbed as a quick snack when he realized he was in Phase 2. “I panicked!” he said. Don’t panic; just be prepared.

During week two, make a conscious effort to let stress and guilt
go.
Stress evokes hormone responses we don’t want right now, so if you have slipped or mixed up phases, don’t stress. Just move forward with greater
consciousness. The best thing you can do for yourself, besides sticking to the plan, is to keep feeling great about what you are doing. Feel empowered, feel strong, and if you make a mistake, forgive yourself and move on. Feeling guilty only compounds any slipup.

These common feelings are usually based in fear about what just happened the week before and disbelief that you can actually enjoy eating and still lose weight, or thinking last week was a fluke and there is no way that it can happen two weeks in a row. Sometimes, I even see this type of thinking begin to happen at the tail end of week one.

Listen to these very important words:
True metabolism repair happens when we have stability and consistency in our repair process.

Every phase in this plan is intense and focused, which is why it requires a lot of energy from the body, and why we can only stay on it for a short period of time. If we do a phase for too long, the body gets exhausted and can’t do the necessary work. This is why we change the phases in the way we do. But you can’t mess with them or start improvising, or the process is going to stop working.

Week two is your chance to nail down the rhythm that you established in week one. It is definitely not the time to start changing anything. Stability and consistency reduce stress in all aspects of your life, physiologically and mentally, so your body feels that it’s okay to burn fat because it’s no longer necessary to hoard it. Just stick with the program. It’s all going to work out great.

So, during week two, you may be thinking, “OMG, I have to change something to keep this going,” or “OMG, I have to change something to slow down this run-away weight-loss train,” but stop. Take a deep, calming breath. Week two is about
not
making any drastic changes.

Instead, what I would like you to focus on in week two is celebrating what you enjoyed from the previous week, and maybe being open to trying new and different foods you didn’t try last week. It’s also a good week to get a little bit curious about what is happening in your body. Approach it with wonder rather than fear. If the first week was about trusting, this week is more about being inquisitive and staying open.

Try not to have a knee-jerk reaction to what happened in the first week. Approach it with an open mind. Your body is responding to some pretty amazing metabolic changes, so in week two, you have to convince your
body that:
Yes, we’re really going to do this and yes, we really have everything we need. We have enough fruit, enough fat, enough carbs, enough protein. I’m not going to choke you by putting in too much and I’m not going to starve you by taking too much away. We will have enough.
This is what your body needs to feel, and the best way to transmit this message from your brain to your metabolism is by calming down, paying attention, and towing the line.

Here’s an example of an ideal meal map for
week two (print out at:
http://rhlink.com/fastmain
.) As always, you can substitute, as long as you stick to your phase.

Remember, you can be as creative as you like, within the guidelines. Stay strong with the cooking because if you froze enough foods during week one, you’ll hardly have to cook at all
next week, unless you want to. Before you go shopping for next week’s meals map, do a
freezer inventory. Base your meals on what you’ve already got frozen—some dinners you loved? Raw almonds or frozen mangos? Figure out what you need to use up, and include it in your meal map for next week.

The weight is peeling off, and you are looking and feeling fantastic. You can probably feel that inner burn, which is fat melting away as the flame of your metabolism is stoked. Burn, baby, burn, all the way through week two!

A
fter two weeks on the Fast Metabolism Diet, your weight loss is beginning to look pretty obvious to the outside world. During week three, my clients tell me that they are finally starting to get to that place where they understand what I’ve been telling them all along—they get it. The fear is gone and they finally believe that they really can lose weight by eating food. By now, you are comfortable with the diet. You know what you’re doing. You start to hit your stride and notice that your body is responding. This is truly a transformational week, where the paradigm has actually shifted. You’re believing in yourself. You’re believing in your ability to heal your metabolism—and to gain a fast metabolism.

This is also the week that my clients say they start to get a lot of comments. Week three is the head-turning week. You’ve got a new energy and confidence, and you’re looking hot. During week three, a lot of my clients also tell me that they’ve finally recognized how painless losing weight on the Fast Metabolism Diet really is. They can still socialize, they can still eat with other people, and they don’t have to feel isolated. There are so many great food options that doing the Fast Metabolism Diet in the real world is easier than they ever imagined it would be.

However … this week has its own very particular challenge. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. I like to call this the “cocky week,” or the “If You Think I Look Good Now, Wait Until You See Me With a Drink in My Hand” week.

You’re down 10, maybe 14 pounds, and you’re thinking,
Hey, this isn’t so hard. This is my ace in the hole. If I screw off now, if I cheat a little, I can always go back to it and lose more.
So you start to cheat. You think,
Why not have a couple of glasses of wine at this party?
or
I’ll just have a piece of cake, it’s no big deal,
or you add your morning latte back in, or whatever it is. And this is where you start to slip back into the habits that messed up your metabolism in the first place.

Remember, my goal is for you
not
to have to be on a diet for the rest of your life. My goal is to repair your metabolism so you can eat at a barbecue, a bar mitzvah, a birthday party, and not experience the aggressive weight gain that comes from a slow metabolism. I want you to be able to enjoy your life, know how to rein it in just a little before and after a big event, stay consistent with your exercise, and be okay with those normal life events, like going out to a restaurant or a party.