Setting the Stage
Phase III: What You’ll Be Doing
You will be eating five times a day: one smoothie, two snacks, and two solid meals. You will be walking a minimum of 10,000 steps a day and adding a second resistance circuit on alternate days. You’ll still be doing resistance training just 5 minutes a day, but now you’ll be doing it 5 days a week instead of just 3.
• A blender
• A pedometer
• A shopping list
Phase III, which takes place between Days 11 and 15, is your launch-pad to the rest of your life. The eating schedule that you will follow closely resembles—in slightly stricter form—the one you’ll adopt once your 15-day reset is complete, meaning you will ultimately enjoy one smoothie a day. You will continue to have two C-snacks daily, but you will also now have the option of two regular S-meals, choosing from the many great salad, sandwich, and scramble recipes I provide in this book.
You will also increase the amount of resistance training you’ll be doing, but don’t worry—it’s nothing too daunting, still just 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week.
Controlling Your Portion Sizes
As you ready yourself to return to the “real world” of eating, you’ll need to start thinking not only about WHAT you eat, but HOW MUCH you eat. You can eat the most nutritious ingredients in the world, but if you eat too many of them, you’re still going to gain weight. It really is as simple as that.
If, on the other hand, you limit the size of your portions, you can eat pretty much whatever you want (within reason, of course). That’s the primary reason the French, whose cuisine is among the richest in the world, are so much thinner than we are: They know that moderation is the key to success in eating.
A good deal of overeating is behavioral, related more to habit than real need. One study found that children as young as 3 years old eat more food if more food is placed in front of them, and the same holds true as we get older: The more food we’re served, the more food we eat.1 On the other hand, if we make an effort to limit our portion sizes, we will eat less food. A study found that people even feed their dogs more depending on the size of the bowl and scoop they use!2 The dogs fed with the largest scoops and bowls weighed more than those fed with regular-size scoops and bowls.
The same holds true for human behavior: It’s no surprise that as the size of our dishware has increased in recent decades, so, too, has the size of our jeans.3 In a recent experiment, participants were given either 34- or 17-ounce bowls and either 2- or 3-ounce serving spoons and told to serve themselves ice cream. The ones with the bigger bowls took 31 percent more ice cream, and the ones with the bigger spoons took 14.5 percent more.4 Those given both the larger bowls and the larger spoons took a whopping 56.8 percent more.
Start paying closer attention to serving sizes, and be mindful of everything you put in your mouth. Though obviously superior to almost any food out there, even certain good-for-you fruits can cause weight gain if eaten in massive enough quantities.5 Always pay attention to quantity, and know when to say when.
Here are some great tips you can use to control portions.
• Fill up on green salads and soup before the main course. (But avoid full fat dressings and bacon bits!)
• Choose smaller plates so that your eyes don’t trick you into eating more food than you need. A reasonable portion of food will be dwarfed by a gigantic dinner plate, so consider eating off smaller side plates.
• Pack your snacks in advance to limit how many you eat. If you have a single-serving bag of soy nuts with you, you will eat only that small bag. If, however, you bring a large package, you are much likelier to go overboard and exceed the 1⁄2-cup portion.
• Don’t eat in front of the TV or computer—there is no better way to lose track of what you’re eating (and therefore to eat much more of it than you need) than to eat when you’re not paying attention.
• Don’t eat buffet-style (except when it comes to salads and fruits). Remember—the more food that’s in front of you, the more you’re likely to eat. It’s easier to avoid having seconds if you have to cross the room to refill your plate.
Planning Ahead
As you continue the transition away from the reset part of the Body Reset, it’s more important than ever to figure out when exactly you’re going to eat. Is it simplest for you to have your daily smoothie first thing in the morning, when you’re trying to do 10 things at once before rushing out the door to work? Then by all means do that. Is it too much trouble to pack a sandwich to take to work and easier to have eggs at home and pack a smoothie to go? Then try that instead.
Again, as long as you plan your mealtimes in advance and try to get as wide a variety of Body Reset foods into your days as possible, you can alternate the foods according to your taste and your schedule. The following chart shows you how easy it is to organize your meals in Phase III.
