Introduction

Fire Up Your Metabolism : 9 Proven Principles for Burning Fat and Losing Weight Forever
by Lyssie Lakatos, R.D., Tammy Lakatos Shames

"I can't loose weight because I have a terrible metabolism"

You may not realize it, but you can take control of your metabolism.

Identical twins and registered dietitians, Lyssie Lakatos and Tammy Lakatos Shames embarked on a twin study to determine precisely what does — and doesn't — increase the rate at which our bodies burn calories and fat.

Their findings? Small changes have big results.

The nine weight-loss principles — and the 200 tips that help you incorporate them into your lifestyle — in Fire Up Your Metabolism are surprisingly simple: Eat breakfast before you get to work. Learn which sugary snacks trump others (peanut M&Ms boost metabolism, but Twizzlers don't). Drink water, which is essential to burning calories. Always eat dinner, even if it's late. Focus on muscle building, not cardiovascular workouts.

With Fire Up Your Metabolism, you won't have to avoid restaurants or follow a diet (though one is included if you like regimentation). The fatigue and distracting hunger that derail most dieters won't affect you because revving your metabolism is all about eating. You will enjoy breads and other carbohydrates. You will boost your metabolism with power proteins, including hamburgers, and avoid other proteins that bog you down. You will indulge in snacks you thought a dieter could never touch.

Lyssie and Tammy's clients have experienced not only dramatic weight loss but also the thrill of having more energy than ever before. Now you, too, can rewire your metabolism to lose weight fast and forever.

Dieters today are frustrated and discouraged. Their strict eating plans are carried out in vain and their trips to the gym don't pay off. If they do see some success, their results quickly vanish as soon as they veer — even slightly — from regimented diet and exercise programs.

Why?

Many people don't burn calories efficiently, and they store food as fat rather than burning it up for energy.

Frustrated dieters simply need to fire up their metabolism.

So now you may be saying, "What exactly is metabolism and how can I fire up mine?"

Simply, metabolism is the way your body uses calories from the food you eat. The speed at which it does so is called your metabolic rate. Everyone who likes to eat wants to have a speedy metabolism so that they can burn food for energy without storing it as fat, which is what happens when the metabolic rate is slow. Unfortunately, the body's natural tendency is to slow the metabolism and store food as fat, causing weight gain.

Yet no one is doomed by these factors.

People who have a slow metabolism often blame their weight gain on their genes. Or their age. Or their inactive jobs. They don't realize that they can burn more calories by making relatively small changes in their diet and lifestyle.

* * *

It's probably not news to you that what you eat and how you live affect your weight. Despite this, desperate dieters want a quick fix, and they jump to try the newest fad diet, such as the Atkins Diet, Sugar Busters!, and The Zone in hopes of seeing quick weight loss.

These diets can cause an initial quick weight loss, but when they do this, they do something else, too: They actually slow the metabolism. And that hinders long-term weight loss.

We are all too familiar with the embarrassed dieter who rebounds to a higher weight after each round of dieting.

When weight fluctuates in this manner, not only is body composition altered, but so is metabolism. You see, chronic dieting transforms metabolism to favor weight gain.

Why?

Because each time you lose weight, you also lose lean muscle tissue. Lean muscle tissue needs calories simply to exist. So the more times you gain and lose weight, the more lean muscle tissue you lose, and the fewer calories your body burns.

When you fire up your metabolism, you are not going on a diet. So there's no such thing as "cheating." Yes, you will make some changes to what you eat, but more than anything you are changing the way your body uses food.

On the Fire Up Your Metabolism plan, you will try to apply as many metabolism-revving tips to your life as possible — and you will see results. This plan will become your nutrition and fitness bible, your way of life, a lifestyle that keeps your metabolism on high. You can have that cookie. Take a bunch of french fries. Enjoy a slice of pizza. Relish your favorite foods. You can't have a lot every day, but you don't have to swear off the foods you love to fire up your metabolism.

After reading our book and following our tips, you will lose weight and keep it off — without feeling deprived. Whether you are a man in your mid-twenties trying to stave off a gut, or a menopausal woman, our strategies combined with the nutrition principles we explain in plain language will help anyone who has struggled to achieve a thinner body. Weakness and lethargy will be feelings of the past.

This is not a fad diet book. It's a plan that adheres to the recommendations of the American Heart Association and the American Dietetic Association. The plan is rooted in nine principles that will teach you how to speed up your metabolic rate:

1. Never skip meals.
2. Eat at the right times.
3. Choose a diet rich in the best carbohydrates.
4. Appropriately time intake of lean proteins.
5. Drink appropriate amounts of certain beverages at specific times.
6. Eat a diet low in "bad" fat.
7. Get enough sleep every night.
8. Find surprising ways to stay active.
9. Incorporate muscle strengthening in your exercise routines.

You may have heard these suggestions before yet not fully understood how to incorporate them into your eating and lifestyle habits. Or, like many of our clients, you may be suspicious of anything that promises weight loss. We are, too. Not only will we tell you what to do, but we will explain why it's important for revving up your metabolism. We know that if you don't understand why something works, you won't be motivated to try it. For instance, you will understand why you must become a devotee of breakfast.

We had a great way to prove our theories — and we took advantage of it. Each chapter contains a "twin trial." There are many things twins can do that no one else can.

For example, you can make your other half be a guinea pig for you. If you don't like what happens to your twin, then you don't follow in her footsteps. A few years ago, Tammy watched as a hairdresser got scissors-happy. She chopped Lyssie's long locks, which had hung halfway down her back, to hair that barely reached her earlobes. Lyssie's heart sank as she looked in the mirror with horror — the bobbed hair was far from flattering. On this particular day, Tammy happened to be the lucky one; she immediately noticed that this short hair was not a good look for us and decided that she would skip the chop.

When it came to writing this book, both of us fought to avoid being the guinea pig. When it comes to nutrition and exercising, we both practice what we preach because we like to do what makes us feel healthy — that makes us feel good. We realize that eating any other way won't allow us to feel our best. Our first twin experiment, which involved manipulating the carbohydrates we eat, caused quite a battle, as neither of us wanted to be the one to mess with the body's major fuel source.

However, despite the tension caused by the first trial, we continued to test each of these nine principles, one of us serving as a control, and one of us serving as a guinea pig. We are extremely regimented (almost to a fault, if you ask our mom), but this made us excellent study subjects, as we both eat the same amount of calories and foods. We have the same jobs and exercise together. Therefore, we could run trials in which the twin who was the guinea pig would not follow the recommendations of one of our basic premises. We saw the results — and they were dramatic!

You may wonder why we tested the nine principles, which people already seem to know about. But the truth is, they just don't get it. And until we saw the results of our trials, we weren't aware of how much each principle completely affects metabolism.

In addition, we conducted these trials because we didn't just want to tell you what to do. We wanted to prove to you why our tips will fire up your metabolism. People always make the mistake of thinking that they can lose weight only if they make drastic changes. We wanted to prove to you that making small changes, like any of the tips based on our nine simple principles, will fire up your metabolism and cause lasting weight loss more than anything else.

Whether you have tried every possible trick to lose body fat or have never tried in your life, whether you travel frequently or spend most of the day at your desk, this book will help you. We give you hundreds of specific suggestions and show you how to incorporate them. We help you time your meals and offer dozens of ideas for what to eat so that you're neither hungry nor craving metabolism-slowing foods. We also provide sample menus to help on the frontlines of your metabolic revolution.

Hundreds of tips is a lot. We include that many because we want you to choose which ones suit you best. You don't have to take advantage of every tip to see results.

If, however, you like to follow a step-by-step plan, we've got that for you, too.

So no matter who you are and what works best for your lifestyle, this book is designed to help you succeed.

Each chapter includes our clients' success stories. You will be inspired by how our clients gave their metabolism a jolt and not only saw mind boggling results but also changed their lives in other important ways. You, too, will experience this.

You will feel rejuvenated.

You will be more energetic and light on your feet.

Physical challenges such as staying alert in the afternoon, or walking up several flights of stairs, or running a couple of city blocks will be so easy that you won't give them a second thought.

Life will be easier. Everything from meeting your health and fitness goals to advancing in your career to having successful relationships with family, friends, and significant others will seem like less of a struggle.

Looking in the mirror will be enjoyable, and you will want to show off your new body.

People will compliment you.

You will have a newfound confidence.

You will have the knowledge and the motivation to have a completely fulfilled life.

Copyright © 2004 by Lyssie Lakatos and Tammy Lakatos Shames

About the Author

Lyssie Lakatos and Tammy Lakatos Shames, registered dietitians, nutritionists, and personal trainers, are the founders of Healthy Happenings, Inc., a company that provides consultations to more than 300 corporations. Their advice has appeared in Self, Family Circle, Woman's Day, and Good Housekeeping. They live in New York City.

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