Chapter Three
METABOLIC MISSIONS AND ACCELERATORS
The Extreme Cycle nutrition lays down the foundation for your weight loss, but it’s exercise that accelerates the results: Exercise is how you control the throttle of your weight loss journey. If you choose, you can lose weight slowly over time with just the Extreme Cycle alone. However, if you want to speed up your weight loss and nearly double your results, then you’ll want to add in daily movement to see your body change faster than ever. When you exercise regularly—even if it’s only 5 or 15 minutes a day—you stimulate your body’s muscles, hormones, and other systems to incinerate more calories. That’s why nutrition controls the fat-burning switch—and exercise turbocharges it! And with our Metabolic Missions and Accelerators, we are going to show you how we get our participants to drop extraordinary amounts of weight in record time. Now it’s your turn!
WHAT METABOLIC MISSIONS DO FOR YOU
We have designed 15 different Metabolic Missions to be completed during your 21 days of Extreme Transformation. Each Metabolic Mission is a short-duration, high-intensity circuit, designed for maximum metabolic afterburn, as well as to stimulate the muscles for shape and development. As you know, your body is made to move—to push, pull, squat, crunch, run, and jump! So all of the exercises in the missions reflect those basic, natural movements your body is meant to do.
The high-intensity nature of each Metabolic Mission elicits a strong neuroendocrine response—to release catecholamines, increase oxygen uptake, increase lactic acid in the body, and raise body temperature. Sounds like a lot of blah, blah, science stuff… but this is why it’s so awesome: When you train hard and fast, your brain is stimulated to increase the release of growth hormone—this stuff is like liquid gold. Growth hormone is one of the most lipolytic (fat-burning) hormones in the human body, and increases the rate at which the cells replenish themselves. So basically, high-intensity exercise increases fat loss and makes you look and feel younger. Doing the Metabolic Missions is the true path to the fountain of youth!
The Metabolic Missions don’t require any equipment and can be done anywhere—at home, in a gym, and outside—whatever works in your life and is enjoyable for you! Now, these Metabolic Missions might seem simple, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to test your mettle. These rapid challenges will raise your heart rate, make your muscles burn, and get you the results you want—a slender, more toned body. An added benefit? Once you do them, you help your body burn even more calories throughout the day!
The Metabolic Missions are totally scalable by ability and can be done by anyone—whether you haven’t worked out in 10 years, or you’re already a gym rat. As long as you push yourself, you will take your fitness to new levels.
And to make this process even more forgiving, if you are just starting, you can cut the Metabolic Missions in half until you feel ready to take on a full mission.
Metabolic Mission Code 
For our Metabolic Missions, we use five different types of challenges. Each day of the work week (Monday through Friday, or whatever five days work in your schedule), you will embark upon one of these missions… and will not stop until the mission is accomplished!
1. Stepladders—These are circuits that either ascend or descend in repetitions. With the ascending stepladders, it’s fun to see how far you can get in an allotted amount of time. The descending ladders are awesome because as you progress, the rep counts get smaller and you see an end in sight!
2. RFT—This acronym stands for “rounds for time.” See how long it takes you to do a set number of rounds of the prescribed circuit!
3. Chipper—These circuits have a lot of reps of each exercise. It can seem daunting at first, but rep after rep you will “chip away” at the total circuit. See how long it takes to complete one round of the entire circuit!
4. AMRAP—This acronym stands for “as many rounds as possible.” Whenever you see AMRAP next to a Metabolic Mission, do as many rounds of the circuit in the allotted time as you can!
5. Tabata—Tabata was developed by a brilliant physiologist from Japan. It indicates a four-minute exercise routine in which you perform as many repetitions of an exercise as possible for 20 seconds, then take a 10-second rest, then begin again with another 20-second round, followed by a 10-second rest, until you reach four minutes (8 rounds total). When you see Tabata next to one or more exercises, you know what to do: Just Tabata each of the exercises in the list for an amazing workout!
NOTE: Each Mission is a competition, either with yourself or with others. As with any game, it is important to have movement standards—ways to measure if the rep counts! For all of the Metabolic Mission Movements and their competition standards, refer to the detailed instructions in Part Four.
ACCELERATORS 
Following the Extreme Cycle and doing Metabolic Missions alone will put you on the path to steady, sustainable weight loss and greater fitness. However, many folks want faster results. We understand. When working with our participants during a one-year transformation, we have 365 days to get these individuals to lose between 100 and 300 pounds. So to accelerate the process and give them the results we all want, we add an Accelerator to their daily program. An Accelerator is a cardio-based exercise or activity that, when added to your normal routine, will aggressively burn body fat and accelerate weight loss. Accelerators are not super-quick high-intensity circuits like the Metabolic Missions. They are activities that raise and maintain an elevated heart rate, that last longer than the missions, and are much less intense. So if you want to accelerate your weight loss, add an Accelerator such as walking, running, soccer, racquetball, biking, or swimming into your routine six days of the week.
An Accelerator keeps your muscles moving and raises your heart rate for a prolonged period of time. The concept is pretty simple: The longer you move, the more calories you burn. Here’s the best part about Accelerators: You get to choose the one that works best for you. It can be anything from basketball to rowing, hiking to mixed martial arts. The only major rule is that it has to be fun! If a fun exercise seems far-fetched right now, then for the time being, choose the most fun way you can think of to move your body… or maybe something you’ve always wanted to do. We have no doubt that over time as you begin to explore the capabilities of your body, you really will find fun in these activities! We’ve created a go-to guide to help you find the best Accelerator for you in Lesson 6—Make It Your Own!
For those starting out, you will want to ease into your Accelerators. This slow start is done for a multitude of reasons. In the beginning, less is more. If your body has not been exposed to exercise for a long period of time, simply doing a Metabolic Mission and five minutes of Accelerating is more than enough to get some stellar results! But even more important, it’s about learning to carve out that time for you during the day. Make sure that you can set that daily appointment and keep that promise to yourself every day. (You will read more about putting yourself first in Lesson 17—Be Beneficially Selfish.)
If you want to jump right into an hour-long class or a competitive sports league, then go for it. However, if you are starting out with an individual exercise like walking, jogging, running, rowing, cycling, and so on, you will begin your Accelerator with just 5 minutes. You’ll do 5 minutes the first week, then add 5 more minutes for the second week. Then add 5 more minutes for the third. If at any time you feel you are unable to increase the duration of your Accelerators, stick with the current duration until you are ready to add the next 5 minutes. It is more important that you keep your commitment to completing a shorter period of time rather than commit to accelerating for longer and not do it! Again, we’ll go into those very important commitments soon. 
In the meantime, here’s an idea for how we structure Accelerators for Extreme Transformation:
| Intensity | Time spent breaking a sweat (120 bpm minimum)* | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Cycle 1 | Week 1: 5 minutes | Week 2: 10 minutes | Week 3: 15 minutes |
| Cycle 2 | Week 4: 20 minutes | Week 5: 25 minutes | Week 6: 30 minutes |
| Cycle 3 | Week 7: 35 minutes | Week 8: 40 minutes | Week 9: 45 minutes |
| Cycle 4 | Week 10: 50 minutes | Week 11: 55 minutes | Week 12: 60 minutes |
| * To take HR, take pulse (on neck or wrist) for 6 seconds and multiply by 10. | |||
Please know that this schedule is what it would look like in a perfect world. In reality, an individual may start off doing 5 minutes and remain at 5 minutes for several weeks until he or she is ready to move up to 10 minutes. And again, be realistic—this increase in duration may not happen for a while. It may take several 21-day Extreme Transformation cycles to hit 25 or 30 minutes daily—it is all about how much time you are willing to commit to yourself and your health. As your Accelerators get longer, feel free to split them into two or even three different bouts of exercise, if it is more convenient for you.
For our one-year transformations, we encourage our peeps to aim for at least 60 minutes of daily Accelerators starting off, and ultimately they increase to 90 to 120 minutes every day (split into 45-to 60-minute bouts each)! How much weight you want to lose, and how fast you want to lose it… are up to you!!
HOW AND WHEN TO DO YOUR METABOLIC MISSIONS AND ACCELERATORS
When to Exercise
We both prefer to wake up in the morning and do our workout right away. It’s a great way to start the day, plus the majority of the calories you eat after exercise will be partitioned into repairing and building muscle. In addition, the high-intensity Metabolic Mission spikes metabolism for hours afterward, so your body will continue to burn calories at a faster rate than it would without exercise. Most important, and we’re sure this will resonate with many of you, we have four kids. Life gets busy really quickly around our home. Most days, if it doesn’t happen first thing in the morning, it doesn’t happen at all!
But here’s the deal. Any time you can find to exercise is a “win” in our book. If you can’t exercise first thing in the morning, find a time that you trust in your schedule and stick to it. That’s the main point: Carve out that time for you every day—and do it. Regardless of whether you train in the morning or at night, as long as you train, you are going to get phenomenal results!
Heidi Tip 
We are all too busy to work out, but part of your new transformation lifestyle is finding time every day to move your body. Here are two of my favorite—and most popular—tips for carving out time to work out:
1. Wake up 15 minutes earlier than you normally do. Not an hour, not even 30 minutes. All it takes to jump-start your metabolism is 5 to 15 minutes of moving.
2. Take advantage of nap time! For those of you who are moms with little kids, when it’s time for the little people to sleep, it’s time for you to move! And if the kids don’t nap, let them join in. My two youngest love nothing more than to follow me around, imitating my workout!
Days to Exercise
We’ve designed a full schedule of Metabolic Missions and Accelerators into your 21-day sequence of Extreme Transformation. We do Metabolic Missions and Accelerators on Days 1 through 5 of each week, and do an extra Accelerator on Day 6—to maximize your weigh-in on Day 7. It is critically important that you do not work out every day of the week. You must have a rest day. Five days of Metabolic Missions and six days of Accelerators will put some physical stress on the body—and it needs at least one day to rest, recover, and reset itself for the week ahead!
When to Eat
If you train in the morning, there are several ways to eat around your Metabolic Mission. If you have an iron stomach, feel free to eat beforehand. However, if you find yourself a bit queasy working out on a full stomach, either eat half your breakfast before and half after, or simply eat breakfast when the mission is complete.
As you will soon see, the 21-day plan in the pages ahead is set up so you can simply follow the Extreme Cycle nutrition, Metabolic Mission, and Accelerator described for each day.