The Fast Metabolism Diet (23 page)

You might want to take one last freezer, fridge, and pantry inventory, and switch out any of these meals with foods you already have on hand. Then finish out the week with your favorites from the past weeks, or the recipes from the recipe chapter that you’ve been dying to try. And if you don’t get to try everything, don’t worry; these are recipes you can continue to make and enjoy after the Fast Metabolism Diet is over. My kids each have their favorite meals from the recipe chapter, and I use many of the recipes for entertaining, so these are not just recipes for “a diet.” They are recipes for life.

You’re done! You did it! When you get to the end of this week and you’ve lost even half a pound a day through the whole four weeks, you have completely rehabilitated your dysfunctional metabolism, creating an abundance of health, balanced hormones, stabilized cholesterol, and healthy immune system production. We’ve done a lot of work together these last 28 days—you, me, and the five major players. I am very proud of you and I look forward to working together on other life ventures. Before I cut you loose, though, I want to talk about living with your new, beautiful, to-be-cherished body.

C
ongratulations! You’ve just done something incredible. You’ve repaired your metabolism, lit it on fire, and burned through fat like never before. And you did it with everything you’ve been afraid of in the past. You did it by enjoying food. No drugs, no surgery, no torture. Just real, delicious food, coupled with an easy amount of physical activity and some critical stress reduction. You should be feeling amazing, and much different than you did before you began.

Let’s check in with where you are. I bet you’re feeling much different from how you did before you began because your liver, adrenals, thyroid, pituitary, and physical body are finally getting everything they really need. Take a look in the mirror. Does your skin look better and more supple? Is your body more toned? Is your hair thicker, shinier, healthier? Are your nails growing faster? Do you have more energy? How many inches did you lose? How many pounds? Do your clothes fit differently?

I want you to think about how your life has changed these past four weeks. What have you loved about following this way of eating? Did you enjoy coming home and savoring the aroma of food cooking in the slow cooker? How did you feel after eating mangos at 4:00
P.M.
in the afternoon, instead of some fake sugary snack? What was it like to have a healthy lunch all packed and ready to go every morning, and a freezer pregnant with delicious options for dinner?

What was life like having breakfast every day, and never going to bed
hungry? How did it feel to have your family drift into the kitchen when they smelled something delicious and healthy cooking? Did you like being able to eat with friends and even entertain while on this diet? Did you like having such a clear system for how to eat? Think about all the experiences you’ve had in the last four weeks. What things would you like to keep doing in your daily life?

But are you ready for regular life yet?

You’ve completed 28 days, but have you reached your
weight
goal? Turn back to
this page
, where you wrote down the weight you want to be. How close are you?

If you had much more than 20 pounds to lose, you probably aren’t there yet. But don’t worry. If you still have more weight to lose, you can simply do the plan again. In fact, you can do this program forever and thrive. Whether you need to lose another 20 pounds or 40 or even 100, you can eat your way to your goal weight, and to sustained, lasting health.

If you still have weight to lose, I recommend turning right around and
repeating the 28-day cycle again. Many of my clients follow up with two or three cycles of the diet, until they get to where they want to be. But, what if you have just another 5, 7, or 10 pounds to lose?

Not a problem. After you’ve done the first four weeks, you can do as many additional weeks as you need—one, two, seven, whatever—until you reach the weight you want to be. Even if you are just a few pounds away from your ideal weight, even fewer than 5 pounds away, keep going until you reach it. It may only take an additional week or two, but do it. Get there. Otherwise, I guarantee you that in five years, you’re still going to be messing around with those same 5 pounds. Just get rid of them now, and let someone else tell that story of how close they got to their goals … you’ll have achieved yours.

As I said earlier, many of my clients love to do the 28 days every quarter, just to keep the metabolism trained, like an athlete. Others do it once or twice a year. I have one client who did two full rounds of the Fast Metabolism Diet and achieved her goal weight in those first 56 days. However,
she lives a very hectic and demanding lifestyle and travels all the time, so she does one week of the Fast Metabolism Diet on the first week of every month. She has done this religiously for years, and it works for her. She says it keeps her metabolism on fire and the glow lasts all month long. She says it also reminds her that she can actually cook nourishing, comforting, enriching food, and those domestic goddess moments keep her grounded.

Whether you do the Fast Metabolism Diet for 28 days or another four, six, or eight cycles, at some point, you’ll need to stop the weight loss and settle in at a happy, healthy weight. I have a few rules, shocking I know, for when you get there.

When you are at your goal weight, you have graduated from dieting. You’ve tasted true, vibrant health, and this chapter is going to show you how to continue to reap all the healthy benefits you’ve worked so hard to achieve. This is a
maintenance plan that really works, and works for life.

I love my horses. I feed them well, groom them well, and indulge them. They get a lot of attention, but that’s nothing compared to the way some of the great racehorses and performance horses get treated, with private masseuses soothing their muscles, Reiki masters manipulating their energy, and horse blankets with magnets sewn into them to treat inflammation. They eat six meals a day and get multiple grooming sessions. They are pampered and cherished. You can spot the horses who are fed really well. When they are performing, they shine, radiating beauty and confidence.

Why don’t you treat yourself this way? You can! Now that you’ve given your metabolism a wake-up call and coaxed it back into shape, I want you to see yourself the way a trainer would see a valuable performance horse. I want you to value yourself and respect and nourish yourself so that you can stay at the top of your game. I want you to glow. Let life be your performance ring. Treat yourself like you’ve got the potential to win the Triple Crown. Shake your mane and step out into the world. I want you to respect your own level of metabolic performance. Cherish what you’ve accomplished in your own body. Move forward into your future with pride and dignity and a commitment never to abuse your body again.

You are a champion. You have been in my stable, and you will now reflect the care you have given yourself the past 28 days.

This level of self-care should be your new reality, as you step back into real life after 28 days on the Fast Metabolism Diet. I know that right now you might be feeling a little nervous. Going back to real life can feel a little scary. What if you go back to all your old, bad habits?

Don’t worry. You have formed so many good ones here that they don’t stand a chance. Plus, you’re stronger than you were a month ago.

But in order to maintain your weight loss by maintaining your fast metabolism, there are some critical principles that I recommend to follow in your regular life.

No matter what you eat, make sure it’s real
food. People are so obsessed with reading labels and counting calories or carbs or fat grams, but I say, screw that! Look at the ingredients list. If you don’t know what every ingredient is, then put it down. A little raw sugar, some vegetable oil, those things are okay. At least you know what they are. But if you don’t know what it is, leave it on the shelf. In particular, watch out for
fake sugars and fake fats. These are huge metabolism killers and they are not real food.

Grandma always says
breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This is a good habit for life. If you don’t eat right
after you wake up in the morning, you are requiring your body to think, work, drive, and do everything else you need to do in your day on zero fuel. In response, your adrenals will produce that emergency hormone that tells your body it had better start stockpiling fat because who knows when you’ll get
more food. We’ve worked so hard to transform your fat into muscle during this program, and this is no
time to mess that up. Keep the muscle, lose the fat: Eat breakfast!

Never get up and
exercise in the morning before you’ve eaten breakfast or at least a snack. Eat at least 30 minutes
before exercising. Otherwise, your adrenals will stimulate a hormone to break down muscle for fuel during your
workout, cannibalizing the muscles you’re trying to build. What a waste of a workout! A piece of fruit is the ideal pre-workout snack. Then have a snack containing 10 to 20 grams of protein afterwards. That will set you up perfectly to get the most from your workout. The natural sugars in the fruit fuel the muscle motion during the workout, and the protein aids in rapid repair. This is an ideal formula for fat burning and
muscle building so you continue to sculpt and develop a healthy physique.

Stay in the habit of eating three meals and two snacks every single day. This will keep your metabolism stoked and burning through the food you eat. Don’t forget to plant Crash Stashes at home, at work, in your car, at the gym, etc. (The recipe chapter includes a great list of Crash Stash snacks you can enjoy both on and off the
diet.) Although you aren’t eating in phases anymore, I recommend keeping some type of phase rotation when it comes to snacks. Two days of fruit snacks, two days of protein snacks, and three days of healthy fat-based snacks will keep you out of a rut and keep your metabolism guessing. This helps to ensure your body will never become resistant to any type of
foods, and it sets you up for rapid burn if garbage (like that ice cream you’ve been dreaming about) ever happens to pass your lips (only to be consumed by your roaring metabolic fire).

Study after study shows that the body’s digestion, hormonal output, and structure changes with the seasons. Nature mirrors this in its production of different foods at different times of the year. Eating
seasonal foods—like watermelon and berries in the summer, apples in the fall, and root vegetables in the winter—help to support the body’s natural rhythm and its connection with nature. Typically this is also a more affordable way of eating, as well celebrating food and boosting those feel-good, metabolism-enhancing hormones.