The Zen Diet Revolution (14 page)

Levine’s work is based on the principle of NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) which accounts for the movement and calorie burning we can achieve in a day. Because we spend a huge amount of our time sitting – at work, commuting, watching TV, etc – we are at risk of not only obesity but a host of medical problems such as diabetes or heart disease. We also use so many labour-saving devices that our need to move around is further compromised. Statistically, in comparison to a man or woman living in an Amish community who have forsaken modern gadgets and lifestyles, we take 5,000–6,000 steps a day compared to their 14,000–18,000 steps.

So how do we make these changes?

The answer is to include as much movement into your daily routine as you can. We are not implying that you have to squeeze a daily gym session into your already hectic schedule of sitting down, but simple things like taking a 30-minute walk during your lunch break, taking the stairs rather than the lift or escalator, pacing while on the phone, housework, having standing meetings at work, cooking, standing while you talk to a friend during your coffee break, ironing or folding laundry – even fidgeting seems to be an option. You get the picture; basically, it is about moving and getting off your backside regularly throughout the day – incorporate some of these ideas into your daily life and you could burn an extra 500–1,000 calories.

B
URNING FAT! THAT’S WHAT
weight loss is all about and no one would disagree with such a statement. However, it’s strange but true that very few diet plans ever deal with the issue at all. That’s not the Zen Diet way! Zen teaches us a direct path to our goals; a path where we do not waver or get distracted. For this reason, it’s important for you to learn to specialize in the art of burning fat. It’s vital for you to understand the process of fat burning and then to learn to feel and recognize fat metabolism taking place in your own body. Approach fat burning as an art form, as you would when learning to play the piano or learning to paint. And remember: practice makes perfect.

Remember to apply the
kaizen
principles you’ve learned in previous chapters to your exercise. Focus on making small but permanent adjustments to your exercise routine. Once you’ve established that change, then, and only then, move on to making another small change in your routine.

In this chapter you will have the following
kaizen
changes to make:

•   Know your enemy: understanding the mechanics of fat storage and loss

•   Choose your weapon: introducing exercise to your weekly routine

•   Remove habits that prevent your metabolism from burning fat

•   Introduce changes that increase the after-burner effect

•   Introduce supplements that increase fat burning during exercise

•   Introduce pre- and post-exercise nutrition that helps burn fat

•   Learn the art of resting

•   Zen Meditation – adjust your expectations

Let’s take a quick look at how the fat gets there in the first place.

Basically fat is our body’s energy reserves. It’s a survival mechanism for our body to store energy in the form of fat when food and energy are plentiful so that if in the future there is a period of potential starvation, the reserves are in place.

At different times in our lives we are more predisposed to laying down fat:

•   During our childhood and early adolescence

•   During hormonal upheaval such as pregnancy and menopause

•   In adulthood when extreme weight is gained

Women have more fat cells than men, but genetics tend to also play a role. Compared to an infant who has around 5–6 billion fat cells, a healthy adult usually has 25–30 billion; an overweight adult ranges from 75 billion to a terrifying 250–300 billion fat cells in the morbidly obese.

Fat cells can shrink or expand depending on how much ‘fuel’ a person takes in – think of the body like a car; the fat cells are the fuel tanks holding on to the excess fuel. When you are taking in the right amount of food (calories), the fat cells stay small, but when the calories exceed your energy output, the fat cells store up the excess and expand just like a balloon!

Fat also tends to be stored when you eat a large quantity of food at one time. Studies show that eating lots of calories
in one sitting is the worst thing you can do. People who eat the same number of calories over a whole day have far lower body fat. It is a fact that you don’t ‘lose’ fat cells; they just shrink as you maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle – if you go back to eating badly and not exercising, they will fill right up again!

To keep burning fat and keep your fat cells minimized, consume fewer calories than you burn (energy in) and exercise regularly (energy out) every day.

The human body draws on three forms of fuel constantly – these are carbohydrates, proteins and fats, but its preferred form of fuel is sugar. In fact, the body converts any form of carbohydrate we eat into a form of sugar called glycogen which is stored in the liver. The body constantly draws on all three sources of energy, but it takes special conditions for it to start to take the majority of its energy from fat stores. This fat-burning mode is known as
fat metabolism
or
lipolysis
.

Fat metabolism is naturally triggered in the body when it runs out of other forms of fuel, i.e. blood sugar, carbohydrates from food or that stored from previous meals in the liver in the form of glycogen. As mentioned before, your fat is your reserve tank and your body needs to be encouraged
if it’s going to draw on it. The only two ways of doing this are to either be starved of food so that your body doesn’t have anything else to run on or to exercise so that it runs out of fuel and needs to draw on the fat stores in order to keep going.

When the body runs out of blood sugar, a complex hormonal mechanism is triggered which starts the release of fat out of your fat cells and into your bloodstream. Once you begin burning fat, you need to use up 3,500 calories to burn 1 pound (0.45 kilograms) of fat. Your aim is to create a calorie deficit of 500 calories from your diet each day, so you would lose about 1 pound a week (500 calories × 7 days = 3,500 calories). Exercise along with cutting calories helps boost your weight loss.

During every day of your life you have two wonderful opportunities to burn fat – through waking exercise and a sleeping fast. This chapter covers both these things.

A big opportunity to burn fat every single day is during the night. If you sleep for eight hours, that is the longest fasting time you will experience every day. During this time you will have to draw on your fat reserves to keep your body going and it is great because you are asleep, so as long as you don’t wake up, you will not feel any hunger! This is one of the most powerful fat-burning discoveries I have ever made. If you follow my advice, you will wake up every morning with slightly less fat. It is the most motivating
thing in the world when you see that your waistline is shrinking every day.

How much fat you burn, however, depends on a few things: firstly, when you last ate, and secondly, what it was that you ate.

Part of the reason I discovered the super-powerful fat-burning method was by doing the opposite. I found that if I ate a large meal at night, I would wake up with more belly fat. Yes, I had really added some overnight! With men, it seems that fat both goes on and comes off the belly quickly. Many people will tell you it is a myth that eating food late at night stores as fat, but I have found it to be completely true. One thing I do know, and is scientifically unquestionable, is that if you wish to enhance the effect of the natural sleeping fast, you don’t want to go to bed having just eaten. So if you make sure the very last thing with calories that passes your lips is before 7 pm, you will find that you are burning far more fat when you sleep. Try it for two weeks and see the difference.

This is the most powerful dietary change I have ever made. The trick is to make sure that you eat a meal that has lots of bulk and slow-release energy as it is horrible and demotivating to wake up hungry in the middle of the night. I
started by having a salad every evening with little carbohydrate and lots of protein like chicken breast or tuna. Yet I found that, although this is one of the quickest ways of burning fat, it is not a permanent change I want to make. Instead, I have a routine of eating a variety of low-carb dinners – if you would like some ideas, look in the Recipes section of at the back of the book. The important thing is to make sure you have lots of vegetables and protein and keep the carbohydrates low and complex. Don’t eat anything sweet at all in the evening. If you have any problems being motivated on this matter, ask yourself what you want your body to burn overnight: ice cream or your body fat.

If I have had a low-calorie evening meal, I also sometimes have some protein powder with water or some cottage cheese just before going to sleep. This makes sure I don’t wake up hungry in the night and raid the fridge.

If you follow all these guidelines, then you will find that after you go to sleep, your body soon has little energy to run on. The protein will slowly release a trickle of energy and amino acids that will stop your body burning muscle, but not enough to maintain blood sugar levels. Your body will have to fire up the fat-burning enzymes to do that. With that perfect balance going on until breakfast, you will have eight to nine hours of your body constantly burning fat.

Try it for a week and wake up slimmer every day.

The perfect low-carb dinner is of course a salad; here’s a section that will inspire you!

If you are looking for a healthy option, salad could be a perfect choice. It does, however, depend on what’s
in
your salad. If it consists of a small amount of green vegetables covered in mayonnaise and hidden under many layers of croutons, cheese and dressing, then you are going to be loading on the calories, not burning them off. Likewise, it is hard to keep eating a salad every lunch or dinner time if they get repetitive and boring. I spent a year perfecting the art of making a salad. It’s the perfect meal because you can eat as many vegetables as you like and really fill up. The best weight-loss formula I have ever found is to eat a large salad for dinner with some good complex carbohydrates and high protein. That way, I could eat as much as I liked so that I would not get hungry overnight. The only problem is it does get a bit boring. After a few days your mind rebels and starts trying anything it can to trick you into eating something else. For this reason, in order to maintain your salad focus, you need to be a master salad maker. You need to know all the slimming tricks and build your meal like a green architect.

So you want to be able to make a healthy, filling, slimming salad at the drop of a hat and you want to be able to vary it enough that you fancy eating it every day. Variation means your body gets lots of different nutrients and it’s healthy to have variety.

Here is the first and most important principle of salad building: it must be filling! Yes, the main thing is that you fill your stomach so well that you don’t end up eating something more calorific in a few hours’ time. Think about it in terms of ‘how can I get the most salad with the least amount of calories?’

To do this, you need to make sure you have lots of vegetable bulk. The best way is to use cabbage or lots of chopped carrots or celery, peppers and cucumbers. They work really well and create a nice crunch to what you are eating.

Be creative with your salad options. You can make some delicious salads with some very interesting ingredients. It pays to spend a while each time you visit the supermarket looking at the vegetables they have. They vary more than you think. There are some interesting vegetables with strong flavours that have really low calories. Try adding some asparagus to your salad. Boost the flavour by adding Parmesan cheese or some anchovies (Parmesan is 7 calories a teaspoon) – lots of flavour but low in calories.

Use salad dressing that has low calories and high flavour; to do this, you can add ginger or garlic. If you don’t want dressing, try a few slices of fresh ginger or garlic. The main thing is to use ingredients that add punch and nutrients, not excess calories. Every time I make a salad, I put in a handful of roasted salted sunflower seeds or mixed seeds, not just because it gives it a nice crunch, but it is healthier. However, the seeds are high-calorie, so don’t have too many; just add enough to make it interesting.

The main key in making salads is variety, and for this reason I have included a list of possible ingredients that you can use, some of which will surprise you. Make sure you try them all.

Decide on your protein base and then add whatever takes your fancy.

Meat
– grilled chicken, steak, sliced hams, beef, chorizo (go easy as it can be high in fat)

Eggs
– hard boiled

Cheese
– feta, Parmesan, cottage cheese, halloumi

Fish
– tuna, salmon, sardines, mackerel, anchovies

Cooked pulses/beans
(canned or dried) – chickpeas, black-eyed peas, kidney beans, Puy lentils, cannellini beans, sweetcorn (fresh or frozen), green peas (fresh or frozen)

Cabbage is the best vegetable for salads. I always have lots of finely sliced white cabbage as it is sweet and crunchy and it fills me up for a long time. It may not taste like it, but cabbage is high in vitamin C. It is also packed with glutamine, an amino acid that has anti-inflammatory properties and helps prevent muscle breakdown. Some studies have also linked glutamine to human growth-hormone release. It’s so low-calorie you can eat as much as you like. I have no
idea why, but after eating cabbage my body temperature rises, so there is something thermogenic in it.

Peppers come in different colours – red, yellow, orange and green. To liven up your salad, make sure you have a couple of different colours. I find red and yellow are the best for salads; they go well with rice-based salads or with coleslaw. You only need to eat half a pepper to get your daily recommended dose of vitamin C which helps fight against free radicals (molecules that are linked to cancer). Studies into the effects of vitamin C, conducted by Arizona State University, show that it assists in fat oxidation, or the body’s ability to burn fat. So make sure you add some yummy peppers to your salad.