This is the homestretch, and I am so proud of you! In this phase, you will increase your workouts by another 20 percent, up to a total of 90 minutes. That means you can test your favorite exercise classes or sessions with your trainer.
Have you found that some of your favorite exercises didn’t pass? That’s okay. Remember how, after two years of not running, I started sprinting again? Keep testing new types of exercise at the times and intensity you began with in Chapter 7 and gradually keep working your way up. Your goal is to find something fun (remember the kid on the playground!) that also makes your body happy. It’s amazing how small tweaks, such as lowering or raising the amount of weight you lift by just 20 percent, can make a huge difference in how your body responds.
In this next phase, I am pushing you out of the nest so you can enjoy a bit of freedom. In other words, it’s time to start making your own menus! After all, you’ll be creating your own menus for the rest of your life. Let’s get started now so you really get the feel of how to put together the foods your body loves.
The process is really quite simple. First, meet the protein requirements for each meal by choosing the proteins you like that work for you. Then plug in your friendly foods. And always remember that our motto is “rotate or react.” In other words, don’t repeat any food during the day, and don’t eat any protein two days running. If you have kale and sunflower seeds at lunch on Monday, don’t have kale and sunflower seeds at dinner or on Tuesday. Save them for Wednesday!
Does this sound like a lot to manage? Don’t worry, I’ve made it super easy. This chapter will walk you through how to create a menu and give you some easy cooking hacks to keep you on track. You can also download my app “The Metabolism Planner” from my website, which will guide you through all 30 days (and beyond) and also help you program your menus.
• Create a list of all the foods that have worked for you.
• Eat one animal protein a day at most, unless you have successfully tested eating two animal proteins in one day. Remember to use the guide here to help you rotate your proteins.
• Eat one grain a day at most. In other words, you can have either rice or bread once a day. Try to rotate so that you have each type of carb every other day. You can test to see how you do with more carbs per day. If you pass it, I recommend saving your double carbs for workout days, when your extra exertion balances the increased consumption.
• Eat one bean serving a day at most.
• You can have multiple servings of seeds and nuts on any one day, but rotate the types of seeds and nuts as often as possible and never have the same type more than once a day. So if you have almonds for breakfast, have sunflower seeds for lunch; if you have chia seeds for breakfast, have pumpkin seeds for lunch.
• As you have been doing, women can have 1 to 1.5 ounces of cheese a day, while men can have 2 to 3 ounces of cheese a day.
If you want to try more than one daily serving of animal protein, grains, beans, or cheese, use one of your test days to test two servings. If you pass this test, have your double serving on the days you exercise, so that the extra activity balances the increased consumption.
Note: You can download this menu-making template and Days 1 to 30 from our website.
Breakfast: 10 to 40 grams of protein (use the higher end of the range if you are an athlete).
Lunch: 15 grams of protein (if you exercise for more than 90 minutes a day, boost protein at lunch to 25 grams).
Dinner: 25 to 60 grams of protein (most women do best with 35 to 40 grams).
Note: You can download this menu-making template and Days 1 to 30 from our website.
Breakfast: 15 to 60 grams of protein (use the higher end of the range if you are an athlete).
Lunch: 20 to 35 grams of protein (use the higher end of the range if you are an athlete).
Dinner: 40 to 70 grams of protein.
Choose the fruits you have already been eating—apples, blueberries, dried cranberries, pears, and pomegranates. Your smoothie, compote, and streusel each count as one serving.
Women: Up to 1.5 servings of fruit per day
Men: Up to 2 servings of fruit per day
Chia seeds and flaxseeds are great proteins full of many nutrients, which makes them a great addition to your diet. However, they also have a tendency to expand, so I find that they do best on an empty stomach—that is, at breakfast, when you haven’t eaten anything for several hours.
Does that mean you can’t have a chia-rich lunch? No, just know that it is a mild test. This is an easy one: If you feel bloated after a lunch with chia, it didn’t work for you.
All the portions in the meal plans and recipes are the least reactive amounts. If you would like to use larger portions, please test them so you know whether they produce weight gain, weight stabilization, or symptoms.
I want you to eat the foods you love—and that includes sweet foods. But I don’t want you to overdo it. Remember, when you eat any food—even a friendly one that has passed a test—moderation is the key.
I’ve found that most people do well with limiting their intake of natural sugars, such as fruit and winter squashes. Roasted vegetables fall into this category as well, since a vegetable’s natural sugars are increased when the vegetable is cooked for a long time. Find your own balance: Begin by limiting roasted veggies and winter squash to a total of twice a week—that is, two portions of one, or one portion of both. You can expand as you find out what works for your body. As you test your own choices, you’ll fine-tune your own personal Metabolism Plan. Remember, when you start exercising for more than 75 minutes, your body may love more natural sugars, carbs, or protein.
Combining animal protein plus either grain or legumes at the same meal is something you have to test. For example, you might want to test chicken (animal protein) plus chickpeas (legume) or rice (grain). Or perhaps you’d like to test a combination of eggs (animal protein) plus bread (grain). Combining coconut milk and animal proteins is also something you need to test. Interestingly, fish and seafood tend to combine less reactively with both coconut milk and rice.
In winter we always have either a cooked vegetable or a soup with lunch to aid digestion. Cooked foods are easier to digest than raw ones because fiber gives your digestive track more of a workout, and the cooking process reduces that fiber. Soups are easier to absorb and digest than cooked foods because they contain even less fiber, but don’t have soup at dinner. Too much fluid at the end of the day hampers digestion.
Dinner always includes cooked vegetables and a raw vegetable salad, because raw vegetables contain enzymes that aid digestion. You want to keep an eye on having only raw vegetables at a meal, however, since their higher fiber content makes them harder to digest. (Your digestive tract likes the enzymes and likes the fiber in raw vegetables—but too much fiber can become a bit too much of a challenge.) Remember, anytime you hamper digestion, you slow weight loss. Always support your best digestion, and you are rewarded with optimal mood, body, and health.
When summer rolls around—think the heat of July and August—you may be able to digest raw salads beautifully. Remember how I told you that traditional Chinese medicine considers some lettuces to be “cold vegetables”? Your body can tolerate “cold vegetables” better in the heat of summer, so try a raw salad and see how you feel. If you bloat, that’s a sign to add in more cooked vegetables.
And don’t think, just because you live in a temperate climate, that you don’t have a “cold season”—it’s all relative! When I lived in balmy Hawaii, 70 degrees felt freezing to me! Some of my Wisconsin friends take off their winter jackets when the temperature reaches the high 40s. Either way, you want cold vegetables in your warm season, and hot soups with cooked veggies in your cold season. Your digestion will be happier, and so will you.
Here are some testing options to liven it up:
• Test a new vegetable or fruit.
• Test a new vegetable protein or something to beef up protein in your smoothies.
• Test larger portions of proteins to fuel your workouts. This will be helpful as you increase your exercise times and intensify your weight training.
• Test two servings of carbs or larger portions to fit your increased cardio/workout needs.
• Try some of our sauces from here to add zing to your dishes.
One of our mantras on The Metabolism Plan is that when you find a new friendly carb, plug it in on your workout days, especially now that you are increasing intensity. Research has shown that eating slow-digesting carbs such as whole grains at breakfast and lunch leads to lower insulin levels and more fat burned during the day. So if you haven’t tested any grains yet, please do!
What about animal protein at lunch? Your chicken soup passes, of course, but generally, animal proteins at lunch are hard to digest. Feel free to test it, though, and see how you feel.
Here’s a blueprint to help you build your own Metabolism Plan menus with a list of your low-reactive protein choices. On exercise days, use only foods you have already tested.
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals. Limit flax to two times a week now.
Optional: Add fruit
Women: 10 to 40 grams of protein (Stay at the lower end of this spectrum unless you are an athlete.)
Men: 15 to 60 grams of protein
Soup and salad with vegetarian proteins is ideal. Build a salad from friendly vegetables, seeds, nuts, and perhaps some cheese.
When the weather is below 75 degrees, always add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Women: Aim for a total of 15 to 25 grams of protein taken from the low-reactive protein chart here. (Remain at the lower end of the spectrum unless you are an athlete.)
Men: Aim for a total of 20 to 35 grams of protein taken from the low-reactive protein chart here. (Remain at the lower end of the spectrum unless you are an athlete.)
Your favorite friendly snack
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
In winter, always include cooked vegetables plus a raw vegetable salad, since raw vegetables contain enzymes that support digestion. You want to support your digestion at night so you can go on to get a good sleep.
Women: 25 to 60 grams of protein
Men: 40 to 70 grams of protein
• Eat until you’re full at every meal.
• Even if you don’t finish all the food, please make sure to have part of each recommended dish.
• Stay hydrated by drinking half your body weight in ounces. Drink between meals—45 minutes away from eating. Try to finish all of your water 45 minutes before dinner and do not have any water after dinner for best weight loss.
• Take your BBT (see here for instructions).
• Weigh yourself and record the results in your journal.
• After weighing, drink 16 ounces of fresh water with lemon juice.
• Take supplements as needed.
How exciting! Your first day to make your own menu. This is your chance to put foods together in your very own way, while also testing increased exercise. If you are happy where you are with your exercise levels, then stay at that level and use this day to test foods or some element of your lifestyle, such as how much sleep you get. Or just coast and relax!
If you decide to test increased intensity and your body likes it, you can go on to increase a different type of exercise on Day 23. However, if you increase exercise today, and your weight and BBT respond poorly, you have two more days—Days 23 and 25—to repeat the test, just to make completely sure that stress, sleep, or some other factor didn’t interfere with your results.
For exercise, you have three options:
• Stay with your current level.
• Increase your amount of exercise time or intensity by 20 percent.
• Increase the amount of weight you lift by 20 percent.
If you decide to increase exercise, make sure to test only exercises that you have passed already. So if you have been doing 20 minutes of kettlebells, you can now increase to 25 minutes of kettlebells. (Yes, I know, technically, a 20 percent increase would be 24 minutes, but please—round up!) Or you can add 20 percent more weight—so you could bump those 8-pound weights to a rounded-up 10 pounds.
As far as hydration goes, drink during exercise until you quench your thirst; then drink your regular hydration amount throughout the rest of the day. The rough rule of thumb is to drink an extra 8 ounces of water for every 30 minutes of exercise.
I also want you to stretch. I have some great videos on my website that you can choose to incorporate after your workouts or the next day. And for my exercise nuts, don’t worry—gentle stretching (and meditation, too!) will not count toward your exercise time and can actually help to lower cortisol.
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals.
Optional: Add fruit
Soup and salad with your approved proteins
When the weather is below 75 degrees, always add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Your favorite snack
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
Remember, if you want to concentrate on weight loss and you have enough friendly foods in your roster for now, you can skip this test day and test something new later. If you do want to avoid testing for now, try different sauces or herbs to add some excitement to your diet and your taste buds. Remember that herbs have powerful flavor and healing benefits, so something as simple as adding rosemary to your lamb or dill on your salad can go a long way!
If you do want to test a vegetable, your low-reactive options are:
Of course, you can choose another vegetable—just be aware that these five are the most likely to pass! If you already passed snow peas on your vegetable test, there’s a better chance that you will pass snap peas or green beans, so you might move on to them. If you choose to test a goitrogen from the list here and you pass it, please limit it to once a week.
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals.
Optional: Add fruit
Soup and salad with your approved vegetarian proteins: vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cheese. When the weather is below 75 degrees, always add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Your favorite friendly snack
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
Okay, you might have gotten the idea by now that I think we are all working a little too hard, so I’m pushing for you to take a day off. Yes! A day off! Your body needs time to rest, reset, and get used to your new way of eating. With no new foods to test and a day off from exercise, your body can focus on bringing down the inflammation and repairing inflamed tissues.
I’d love you to make this a “me day” in some way. Do you have a chance to get a massage, take a walk somewhere lovely, or relax with a good book and a glass of wine? Is there someone you’ve been wanting to talk to for a while—a friend, a relative, someone you just don’t get to hang out with very often?
Even if you’re rocking your usual busy schedule with work, home, and family, take a few moments to breathe deep and appreciate your renewed health. As we learned in Chapter 3, stress has a biochemical effect on your metabolism and your weight. We’re not stressing your body with new foods or exercise today, so any more de-stressing is all the better!
Don’t want to take a day off? That’s okay, too! You have four options:
• Retest the exercise from Day 21 if you didn’t pass it.
• Stay with your current level of exercise, or stay with week 1 or 2.
• Increase the amount of exercise time or intensity by 20 percent.
• Increase the amount of weight you lift by 20 percent.
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals.
Optional: Add fruit
Soup and salad with your approved vegetarian proteins: vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cheese. When the weather is below 75 degrees, add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Your favorite friendly snack
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
Great choices to test are hemp hearts, chickpeas, lentils, and fresh mozzarella (hello, one step closer to pizza!). This will add some welcome diversity to your lunches and snacks! Or, if you’d prefer to focus on weight loss, just stick with foods you know are friendly so you can be sure to lose some more weight.
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals.
Optional: Add fruit
Soup and salad with your approved vegetarian proteins: vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cheese. When the weather is below 75 degrees, always add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
Okay, folks, for those of you who have been wanting to get back to that 5:30 a.m. boot camp or to work out after work instead of before, now’s your chance! Try the alternate time and see how your body likes it. If you’re exercising after 5 p.m., make sure to spend time in deep long stretches after exercise, better yet with deep breathing, to decrease stress and rebalance cortisol levels.
However, if you haven’t yet increased your exercise, make sure you test either extra exercise—up to 90 minutes—or a new time, so that you know exactly what your body is responding to. Test those things separately, so you get good, solid results.
Of course, if you failed the test on Day 21 and this is your third day of testing, stick with your retest. You can always test increased exercise or alternate times later.
Other exercise options:
• Stay with your current level or decrease back to week 1 or week 2.
• Increase the amount of exercise time or intensity by 20 percent.
• Increase the amount of weight you lift by 20 percent.
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals.
Optional: Add fruit
Soup and salad with your approved vegetarian proteins: vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cheese. When the weather is below 75 degrees, always add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Your favorite friendly snack
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
That’s right, I am shoving you out in the cold again. Now, of course you don’t have to go eat out. You can order in—did you try that sashimi yet? Or, of course, you can cook at home. But I do want you to start finding a way to make The Metabolism Plan a way of life, and there’s nothing better than going out, finding a restaurant you love, and continuing to lose weight by eating there. An empty sink free of dishes is also pretty awesome! There are at least five restaurants in a two-mile radius that I know work for me. I want you to have that experience, too. So reward yourself for all your hard work and get out of the kitchen!
Of course, your prep and the restaurant’s prep can be worlds apart, especially because restaurants tend to use way too much salt. So some foods that tested fine at home might not work when you eat out. (Especially chicken! See here.) Still, many restaurants will work with you, and when you know which they are, you can rotate eating at home and eating out while continuing to lose weight. Bonus!
So what should your protocol be for restaurant testing? First, make sure you ask for your meal to be prepared without salt. Next, I want you to eat a full meal, but not to test any new foods. Save that for home! However, if you now know that you do well with, say, wheat, mozzarella, and tomato sauce, it’s time to test your favorite thin-crust pizza at a great Italian restaurant. Have it with a salad, maybe some sautéed broccoli, a nice red, and call it a happy night.
Then, of course, if you lose weight, this meal at this restaurant is friendly. If you gain weight, don’t let that stop you from eating out! Just try a new restaurant next time.
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals.
Optional: Add fruit
Soup and salad with your approved vegetarian proteins: vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cheese. When the weather is below 75 degrees, always add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Your favorite friendly snack
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
If you want to be doing a longer or more intense workout, this is your day to find out whether your thyroid likes the idea as much as you do! If you like, you can increase your exercise intensity by 20 percent, and feel free to exercise for up to 90 minutes. If you don’t pass this test after three tries, you can always retest in three months. If your BBT and weight respond really badly, however, you might focus, at least for now, on finding other activities. Who knows? You might fall in love with a whole different approach to working out.
Of course, if you don’t want to increase your exercise at this time, you don’t have to. Here are your options for today:
• Stay with your current level or decrease back to week 1 or week 2.
• Increase the amount of exercise time or intensity by 20 percent.
• Increase the amount of weight you lift by 20 percent.
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals.
Optional: Add fruit
Soup and salad with your approved vegetarian proteins: vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cheese. When the weather is below 75 degrees, always add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Your favorite friendly snack
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
Instead of a test day I want you to create a friendly day, and I’ll tell you why. I want you to have at least 20 solid days that you can always come back to when you need to lower inflammation. Too many people rely on the cleanse to quickly recalibrate after a reactive day or weekend. Yes, that’s an option, but I want you to know that any day you want, you can lose weight and heal by just eating normally. So please compile all of your favorite friendly foods so far and make this a day where you lose weight like a rock star and eat all of your favorite foods. I call this my “French fry and cheese day.”
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals.
Optional: Add fruit
Soup and salad with your approved vegetarian proteins: vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cheese. When the weather is below 75 degrees, add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Your favorite friendly snack
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
All you exercise lovers have been waiting for this day! Over Days 29 and 30, you can test how your body responds to exercising two days in a row. Aren’t you excited to see what this test is going to reveal?
So what happens if it doesn’t work out? Does that mean you can never work out two days in a row? The answer is that you can most certainly work out two days in a row; you just might not want to do it every week. Just like you, I am balancing my life, my work, and my fitness goals. And sometimes that means that I have to work out on both Saturday and Sunday. That also means that when my stress levels are high, I am consistently up 0.6 pound on Monday. When stress levels are low, I can exercise on Saturdays and Sundays with no inflammatory response. But I always know why, and that’s what’s important. If that happens to you, too, I want you to understand why that number appears on your scale and what you can do about it. So, on the hectic weeks where work is crazy, I know I should take Sunday off and let the inflammation subside. Do I always do it? Not always, but I always know what to do and I also know that it’s only when you have inflammatory day after inflammatory day that you start to set yourself up for trouble. So find the balance that works for you.
Of course, you don’t have to test back-to-back exercise! As always, I want you to pick the approach that is right for you. Your options today:
• Stay with your current level or decrease back to week 1 or week 2.
• Increase the amount of exercise time or intensity by 20 percent.
• Increase the amount of weight you lift by 20 percent.
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals.
Optional: Add fruit
Soup and salad with your approved vegetarian proteins: vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cheese. When the weather is below 75 degrees, always add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Your favorite friendly snack
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
If you decide to do exercise two days in a row, you might get the best results if you do a different type of exercise on the second day. For example, many of my clients do really well having a yoga day after weight training or running. If you’re training your upper body one day, maybe do lower body or plyometrics the next day.
Try to think of your body holistically. To me that means considering how your body responds and creating a well-rounded regimen that supports total health. Rotating exercise will also help to keep you injury-free, which keeps you in the game longer. Last but not least, a well-rounded program will give you better body composition!
If you don’t choose to do back-to-back exercise today, why not test another food? You might enjoy adding one more choice to your roster. If you’re feeling adventurous, check out The Plan Cookbook and find a dish you’d love to make. Test one of the ingredients in that dish if it’s not already on your friendly list.
Easy sources of protein are flax, seeds, nuts and nut butters, and cereals.
Optional: Add fruit
Soup and salad with your approved vegetarian proteins: vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cheese. When the weather is below 75 degrees, always add a soup or cooked vegetable to enhance digestion.
Your favorite friendly snack
Friendly protein
Friendly salad
Friendly cooked vegetable
Wow. You’ve done it! You have completely transformed your life. You’ve lost weight, boosted your energy, and rid yourself of symptoms that plagued you for years. You’ve improved your health, digestion, hormones, and immune system. You’ve learned how to get the sleep you need and how to manage stress. You’ve put yourself on the road to health, now and for the rest of your life.
You’ve also strengthened and balanced your metabolism, which is the best possible news, because now you will be able to lose weight until you reach your target. Then you can continue to maintain that healthy weight, now and for the rest of your life. What could be better?
So many people tell me that going through The Metabolism Plan is like being in one of those snow globes where their world is turned completely upside down and shaken up. Now the snow has settled and you are steady on your feet. Now you understand why you were having so many rough days before, days when you thought you were eating so healthy and doing the right thing, and yet your body seemed to betray you. Now you understand that those “betrayals” were actually your body’s way of saying “I love you.”
In the next chapter, you’ll find out what you need to stay on this path, so that you can reach your optimal weight if you haven’t already and attain your optimal health for life. But first, take a proud and joyful moment to pat yourself on the back. You’ve found the answers to the questions you had about what makes you gain weight or feel sick, and you’ve learned how to hear and understand when your body talks to you. And you know that from here on in, you will always have the power to take charge of your health, your weight, and your metabolism.
You’re now in the driver’s seat—time to make magic!