The All-Day Fat-Burning Diet: The 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula That Resets Your Metabolism To Lose Up to 5 Pounds a Week (12 page)

The key is to set up your environment so that it supports you in your moments of weakness. Sure, it’s easy to eat clean when you’re full of energy and motivation in the morning, but you really need your environment to come through for you when you’re feeling grumpy and tired, perhaps later in the day. Your environment can be anything from your kitchen or your entire home to your car and even your office. The sneakiest one is the office-away-from-the-office: the coffee shop. That’s where most moments of weakness occur: hunched over a laptop, typing away and snacking on a sugary muffin between keystrokes. Bars and nightclubs are just as dangerous. If you make it a point to hang out anywhere there’s a bartender, you’re much more likely to have a stiff drink.

One of the best things you can do to combat this is to de-clutter your surroundings. A cluttered environment leads to cluttered thinking and less than ideal behavior. I don’t personally know many successful people who live like hoarders. Everything is neat and clean in their world. I do my best not to judge, but I can almost predict your quality of life by the state of your surroundings. If your car is littered with junk and your house is a complete mess, then that’s a reflection of you as an individual.

To let go of the weight, you need to let go of the junk. So, go through your fridge and pantry and toss all the packaged junk that
won’t
support your health and weight-loss goals. Dump the sauces loaded with hidden sugars and MSG. Trash those chips and crackers laced with inflammatory vegetable oils. The chocolates hiding at the back of your cupboard? Give them to a neighbor or throw them in the garbage. Instead, fill your refrigerator and cupboard with fresh produce, nuts and seeds, fit fats, and clean proteins.

Next, attack any mess in your house. Imagine you’re a drill sergeant instructing the troops. If there’s anything on your counters that doesn’t need to be there, put it where it belongs. Organize your drawers and fridge shelves. If you’re thorough, you’re bound to end up with a pile of things you don’t need and should donate to charity. Having less is certainly more. What you’ll find is that as you clean up your environment, you will feel better about yourself and more motivated to improve other areas of your life, too.

Remember, how you do anything is how you do everything. If your environment is a mess, your life is likely a mess as well. A clean house leads to a clean body. In this process, you also have to be efficient and realistic. You want to make sure you’re eating healthy foods, but the more work and time required to make a food, the less likely you will be to eat it. This is where planning comes into the picture again; when you have some time, cut up your favorite veggies and make some fresh hummus. Have them ready to go in your fridge so that when you get home after a long day, you can put them out on the counter and snack on them.

STEP 6: TAKE MASSIVE ACTION

The final step to burning fat, improving your health, and achieving anything else you want in life is to take massive action. Nothing replaces action.
Nothing.
You can believe in the law of attraction all you want, but if you just sit around doing nothing, guess what? Nothing will happen. Action creates attraction. Yes, visualization and focusing on your goals are important, but only if they prompt you into action.

Action is also the very best way to conquer your fears. Don’t laugh, but I used to be deathly afraid of big spiders. Just seeing a picture of one would make me shudder. My way around this was to do something
that
would have sent me into apoplectic shock when I was younger: I held a spider, right in my hand. If you’re scared of working out, the best thing you can do is to work out (properly). You’ll quickly realize that it isn’t all that bad and the rewards it yields are incredible.

As we’ve learned, change can be difficult. We all want that magic bullet, but unfortunately, change doesn’t work that way. It’s helpful to understand the specific journey that unfolds between taking an initial action and finally realizing your dreams. Dan Sullivan powerfully hit it home for me more than a year ago when he outlined his “4 Cs,” a framework for the change process, from idea to realization.

The first C represents
commitment
, or as I like to think of it, the stage where you finally say, “Enough is enough!” You simply can’t live as you have up until this point, and something has to change. In your case, you picked up this book, which is a commitment to burning more fat in a healthy and sustainable fashion. Well done for committing—that’s huge! The second C represents
courage
. This is a crucial step toward bridging the gap between wanting something and developing the skills or capabilities to attain it. As Dan famously says, “Fear is peeing your pants. Courage is what you do with wet pants.”

Building courage into the process is helpful because it reminds you that there will be times when you feel scared or doubtful. Courage is needed to get you through those tough times. Most people fail on a diet or any new endeavor because they think it’s going to be easy and that immediate change will occur. When immediate results do not occur—which is the reality for most people—they just droop like a wilting flower and call it a day. Courage is needed to power through that initial disappointment. It’s what ultimately leads you to results beyond your wildest dreams.

On the flip side of courage is
capability
, the third C. By taking consistent action—be it eating well, exercising more intelligently, or following a solid sleep schedule—you are creating new habits that are the key to pushing you past the finish line. The more you take action, the easier it is to keep going. You’ve built up terrific momentum, which is simply a series of better habits that automatically move you in the direction of your goals. You’ve now become a highly capable person
and
likely experienced consistent fat loss, improved fitness, and better eating and lifestyle habits. By this point, even if you are derailed by some life event, you know you have the capability to get back on track. You know you can lose weight again and, hopefully, keep it off this time.

There’s no way around it: You’ve got to put in the work. However, as daunting as that may sound, it’s
how
you put in the work that makes all the difference. If you follow the steps I’ve outlined here, it becomes a much easier process. I strongly believe that our level of happiness is directly related to our ability to get stuff done. When we do work that produces great results, we feel good about ourselves, and that builds further momentum.

The development of capability finally leads to the fourth C:
confidence
. It’s an unshakable belief in yourself that can only be gained by proving
yourself
to yourself
. Impressing others is fleeting; impressing yourself can change your life. This 4-C framework reminds us that there’s a specific process between dream and reality. That gap is largely bridged by having the courage to take consistent action. Of all the things I’ve shared with you in this book, this is what really counts. Sure, the dietary and exercise protocols are important, but unless you have the inner game figured out and are committed to taking action, then nothing will ever work.

Even if you doubt yourself, I know you’ve got the chops to create the body of your dreams. You’ve already demonstrated you have what it takes by exercising your commitment to read this far into the book. Just take the next step and keep going. In fact, put the book down right now and do 10 pushups to create some positive momentum. I’m serious! Don’t worry about failure, because the only time you truly fail is when you give up, so as Winston Churchill famously said, “Never, ever, ever give up.”

If you don’t lose 5 pounds in the first week, don’t beat yourself up or criticize this program. It’s only been 1 week! In a 100-year life span, that week represents a mere 0.02 percent of your time on this planet. You certainly didn’t pack on the weight you want to lose in that short a time.

Admittedly, you can achieve very fast transformations with this program, especially if you have a lot of weight to lose, but never forget that this is a lifelong journey for you. And the journey isn’t really about the number of pounds you want to drop, but the healthy, fulfilling life you want to live. You don’t want to lose all this weight only to gain it back a few indulgent months later. Just as you’ve committed to this book, commit to your new, superstar life. Even if you don’t realize it, you already have! I think that’s certainly worthy of a fist pump.

CHAPTER
4

STEP 2: REBOOT YOUR KITCHEN

I
f you have cable television, you’ve no doubt watched those home-remodeling shows in which construction and design experts completely overhaul outdated homes, much to the delight of their cheery, grateful owners. That’s what we’re about to do with every aspect of your life, from the stuff in your fridge to your morning routine, and even your body itself.

The aim here is to put you through a hard reset, much as you would a computer that’s acting buggy. From my days at university until now, I’ve never stopped learning about the human body, yet the more I learn, the more I realize that underneath all the stress, junk food, and lack of quality exercise inherent in modern life, our bodies still have the same factory settings as when humans first walked the earth. That’s what we’re aiming to get back to, step by careful step, so you can get back to being lean and healthy—as nature intended.

Take a second to think back to those times. Men, women, and their Paleolithic-era tribes had only a few basic needs in order to survive—food, water, shelter, and the ability to reproduce. They didn’t have fancy condos, workplace cubicles, fully stocked kitchens, or a local
Starbucks
to drop by every morning on the way to the hunt. Contrast that with today’s modern world: You’re jolted out of bed by an annoying alarm clock—sometimes before the sun even rises—and eat a breakfast that more often than not comes from a box. Then you hop in your boxy car and drive to work, where you spend most of your day imprisoned in a cubicle, sitting and chugging cups of coffee and sugar-filled treats to make it through your list of never-ending tasks. You finish the day completely exhausted and return home for dinner—which, more often than not, comes from a box. Is it any wonder our bodies have rebelled?

Undoing this dreadful pattern is not easy, but I’ve calibrated this plan to make it a smooth process for you. It will certainly take some work on your part, but if you weren’t up for the challenge, you wouldn’t have picked up this book. By the end of these 3 weeks, you will have successfully remodeled your life. Like many of those home makeover shows, we have to start where you spend a great deal of your time at home: the kitchen.

THE “FAT AND FILTHY” FOODS

Let’s get one thing straight: You will not be eating bird food on the All-Day Fat-Burning Diet. This plan is full of tasty meals that don’t deprive you of any enjoyment at mealtime, although some foods are a definite no-no. By simply eliminating them from your diet, you’ll already be making tremendous progress toward losing the pounds that are weighing you down.

These foods include:

FOODS
THAT CREATE A HEALTHY FOUNDATION

What you need to power you through this transformation is better fuel in your tank—fresh, high-quality, whole food. The crap food you’ve been eating derails your long, tiring day, so it’s essential that we replace it. That said, it can be quite confusing trying to figure out just what’s healthy and what isn’t. We are continually misled by the latest dietary and fitness advice—much of which is nonsense. Sadly, there’s research to support almost any claim, which doesn’t make matters any easier.

The result is that many people continue to eat junk once they embark on their fitness mission, lured by comforting labels such as “low-fat” this and “low-calorie” that, not realizing that the other ingredients in these food items are complete garbage. Don’t forget that one of the major reasons so many people are struggling with weight these days is all the processed junk they’re eating. As tasty as it may be, it ends up disrupting their fat-burning hormones and impairing normal brain function.

Most foods you find in a box or package are engineered to make you crave them. They’ve been cleverly designed with just the right amounts of sugar, fat, and salt to trigger the reward center in your brain. Even if they’re lower in calories, these foods are often loaded with artificial additives and other dubious ingredients that do much damage to our health in the long run. Evaluating foods strictly on the basis of their calorie content causes us to miss the bigger, more important picture.