Nutrition
Jillian Michaels shows you how to master your metabolism
Nutrition
Jillian Michaels shows you how to master your metabolism
On the
Master Your Metabolism diet, you'll eat three meals and one snack: breakfast, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, dinner. Every day. No excuses.
I know everyone has a different way of scheduling their meals. And I want you to go with that—you know your body better than I ever will. That said, I have three iron-clad rules about meal timing that you must adhere to:
1. You must eat breakfast.
2. You must eat every four hours.
3. You must not eat after nine P.M.—and especially never eat carbs before bed. Period.
These three rules will help you tap in to your body's natural hormonal rhythms and instinctive calorie-burning patterns. Using these techniques will guarantee weight loss.
Rule 1: Belly up to the breakfast table
I know how some of you feel about this one, but I'm sorry, I don't want to hear it. "Jillian, I don't have time to eat in the morning. Jillian, anything more than coffee makes me want to puke." Get over it! Less than half of us eat breakfast every day, but studies have shown that breakfast is one of the most reliable ways to achieve a healthy weight and keep your glucose and insulin steady. I n fact, women who don't eat breakfast are four and a half times more likely to be obese than women who do. People who never eat breakfast are also the most likely to develop type 2 diabetes.
One study, published in the journal Pediatrics, tracked more than two thousand adolescents for five years, from the time they were fifteen until they turned twenty. Researchers found that the more often boys and girls ate breakfast, the lower their BMI. This result was independent of all other factors—age, sex, race, socioeconomic status, smoking—even whether they were concerned about their weight (and their diet). The most striking thing about this study? The kids who ate breakfast daily actually ate more calories than those who ate breakfast less often—but they still weighed less.
Breaking your fast jump-starts your metabolism and prevents energy sags later in the day. If you're a guy, your testosterone levels peak at about eight a.m. and reach their lowest point during the early evening. By timing your biggest meal in the morning, you'll be able to capitalize on that surge of metabolic power. One Dutch study found that people who ate a big breakfast rich in complex carbs (such as you'd get from oatmeal, high-fiber cereal, or a veggie omelette with whole grain toast) felt satisfied and full for a longer time, in part because breakfast reduced their ghrelin levels by 33 percent.
Are you running on empty?
If nothing else, promise me you will always eat something before you work out in the morning. During the night, about 80 percent of your glycogen stores—the digested carbs waiting to be tapped as energy— have been used up. If you work out on an empty stomach, you'll go through the last 20 percent almost immediately and then quickly begin to gobble up your lean-muscle mass—definitely not what you're trying to do here.
Page 1 of 3 -- A diet that encourages eating? Find out how having something to eat every four hours will boost your metabolism on page 2.
Excerpted from
Master Your Metabolism, copyright 2009 by Jillian Michaels and Mariska van Aalst. Used by permission of Random House. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.
Hormone homework: Eat as early as is feasible, no more than an hour after waking up. Grab a quick bowl of high-fiber cereal or an apple with a handful of raw almonds before your workout. The sole exception to breakfast within an hour might be those taking thyroid medication—some kinds must be taken on an empty stomach, others after breakfast. Check with your doctor about the best timing for your medication and meals.
Rule 2: Eat every four hours
Let me rephrase: You must eat every four hours. I planned the diet this way not only because eating often makes me happy but because I know it makes my metabolism happy, too. You not only don't have to live with a rumbling stomach—you shouldn't!
When you eat meals spaced four hours apart, your body doesn't get a chance to miss food, so it doesn't develop a scarcity mentality. If you feed your body every four hours, you'll prevent the massive fat storage that comes from feast-or-famine eating. The act of eating and digesting accounts for 10 per cent of your body's metabolic rate. Starve yourself for any portion of the day and you cheat yourself out of a good portion of this bump. The most important part of eating regularly is that it stabilizes your blood sugar and your hormones: Your blood sugar remains steady throughout the day, and because your meals are smaller, your insulin does not spike as dramatically. The body trusts that there's more where that came from, so it happily burns your meal for energy, confident that you'll feed it more later.
Additionally, by eating every four hours you keep your hunger hormone ghrelin in check and keep your leptin levels stable. These two hormones are to blame when you skip meals, become ravenous, and are much more likely to over eat. In fact, ghrelin does its job so well that when it's surging in your blood stream, it can actually make food taste up to 20 per cent better.
On the other hand, the popular concept of six small meals throughout the day is also less than ideal. You don't need your insulin surging on a constant basis by eating nonstop. Body builders developed this style of eating to squeeze thousands upon thousands of calories into their day. (How it became a weight-loss trend is beyond me.) Many of them developed type 2 diabetes later on in life. Coincidence? I think not. Eating every four hours is a perfect formula for hormone balance – it keeps insulin stable, but doesn't spike hunger hormones, either.
Page 2 of 3 -- On page 3, Jill outlines "Hormone homework" that will prevent cravings and overeating.
Excerpted from
Master Your Metabolism, copyright 2009 by Jillian Michaels and Mariska van Aalst. Used by permission of Random House. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.
Hormone homework: When you first start to eat every four hours, believe it or not, you might find that you're not very hungry when the four hours are up. But that's the idea—we don't want you to be famished. You want to head off extreme hunger, which is a signal that your blood sugar has dipped too low, a surefire recipe for cravings and overeating.
Rule 3: Don't eat after nine P.M.—especially carbs
One of the biggest risks of skipping meals during the day is that you then overeat at night. Your body uses calories throughout the day, but any big surplus gets stored as fat. One study in the journal Metabolism found that people who skipped meals during the day and ate a big meal between four p.m. and eight p.m. ended up with some very ominous measurements:
• Higher fasting blood glucose in the morning
• Higher blood sugar overall
• Higher levels of ghrelin
• Impaired insulin response (an indicator of insulin resistance)
Scary, right? Yet so many people I've worked with have done this – work hard all day, ignoring their need for food because they're "too busy to eat." And then, at the end of a long day, they "reward" themselves with a nice, relaxing, diabetes-inducing meal.
Your levels of fat-storage hormone cortisol dip after breakfast and lunch, but not after dinner or evening snacks. Eating more calories during the evening will pack more fat around your belly, where you have more cortisol receptors than other places in your body. Eating the bulk of your calories after dark also sends your bad LDL up and good HDL down.
The rate at which food will leave your stomach—also known as your gastric emptying rate – slows down at night. Plus, your ability to process glucose gets weaker as the day goes on. If you eat a carb-heavy meal at eight p.m., your body reacts much differently than if you eat a carb-heavy meal at eight a.m. The old adage, "eat like a king at breakfast, a prince at lunch, a pauper at dinner" is right on the money—although I'd stick another pauper in there somewhere.
Why you should never eat before bed
The most important thing is not to eat before bed. Muscle-glycogen stores fill during the day's meals. By the end of the day, all the spots in the glycogen stores are filled up. You're not going to be burning any extra calories, or drawing on those glycogen stores, for the better part of seven or eight hours, so any remaining calories you eat now will turn straight into fat.
This part is by far the most important: About one hour after you fall asleep—at about midnight for most people—your body releases its largest pulse of growth hormone for the day. Insulin inhibits growth hormone production, so the last thing you want to do is eat any carbs that will drive up your insulin and interfere with this precious fat-burning growth hormone supply.
Hormone homework: As soon as you have your evening meal, shut the kitchen down and don't head there anymore. Try to make that last meal tilt more toward proteins than carbs, to keep insulin levels down and allow for maximum growth hormone release at night.
Page 3 of 3 -- Jillian shares a shocking statistic on the importance of eating a healthy breakfast. Find out on page 1.
Excerpted from
Master Your Metabolism, copyright 2009 by Jillian Michaels and Mariska van Aalst. Used by permission of Random House. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.
I know everyone has a different way of scheduling their meals. And I want you to go with that—you know your body better than I ever will. That said, I have three iron-clad rules about meal timing that you must adhere to:
1. You must eat breakfast.
2. You must eat every four hours.
3. You must not eat after nine P.M.—and especially never eat carbs before bed. Period.
These three rules will help you tap in to your body's natural hormonal rhythms and instinctive calorie-burning patterns. Using these techniques will guarantee weight loss.
Rule 1: Belly up to the breakfast table
I know how some of you feel about this one, but I'm sorry, I don't want to hear it. "Jillian, I don't have time to eat in the morning. Jillian, anything more than coffee makes me want to puke." Get over it! Less than half of us eat breakfast every day, but studies have shown that breakfast is one of the most reliable ways to achieve a healthy weight and keep your glucose and insulin steady. I n fact, women who don't eat breakfast are four and a half times more likely to be obese than women who do. People who never eat breakfast are also the most likely to develop type 2 diabetes.
One study, published in the journal Pediatrics, tracked more than two thousand adolescents for five years, from the time they were fifteen until they turned twenty. Researchers found that the more often boys and girls ate breakfast, the lower their BMI. This result was independent of all other factors—age, sex, race, socioeconomic status, smoking—even whether they were concerned about their weight (and their diet). The most striking thing about this study? The kids who ate breakfast daily actually ate more calories than those who ate breakfast less often—but they still weighed less.
Breaking your fast jump-starts your metabolism and prevents energy sags later in the day. If you're a guy, your testosterone levels peak at about eight a.m. and reach their lowest point during the early evening. By timing your biggest meal in the morning, you'll be able to capitalize on that surge of metabolic power. One Dutch study found that people who ate a big breakfast rich in complex carbs (such as you'd get from oatmeal, high-fiber cereal, or a veggie omelette with whole grain toast) felt satisfied and full for a longer time, in part because breakfast reduced their ghrelin levels by 33 percent.
Are you running on empty?
If nothing else, promise me you will always eat something before you work out in the morning. During the night, about 80 percent of your glycogen stores—the digested carbs waiting to be tapped as energy— have been used up. If you work out on an empty stomach, you'll go through the last 20 percent almost immediately and then quickly begin to gobble up your lean-muscle mass—definitely not what you're trying to do here.
Page 1 of 3 -- A diet that encourages eating? Find out how having something to eat every four hours will boost your metabolism on page 2.
Excerpted from
Master Your Metabolism, copyright 2009 by Jillian Michaels and Mariska van Aalst. Used by permission of Random House. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.
Hormone homework: Eat as early as is feasible, no more than an hour after waking up. Grab a quick bowl of high-fiber cereal or an apple with a handful of raw almonds before your workout. The sole exception to breakfast within an hour might be those taking thyroid medication—some kinds must be taken on an empty stomach, others after breakfast. Check with your doctor about the best timing for your medication and meals.
Rule 2: Eat every four hours
Let me rephrase: You must eat every four hours. I planned the diet this way not only because eating often makes me happy but because I know it makes my metabolism happy, too. You not only don't have to live with a rumbling stomach—you shouldn't!
When you eat meals spaced four hours apart, your body doesn't get a chance to miss food, so it doesn't develop a scarcity mentality. If you feed your body every four hours, you'll prevent the massive fat storage that comes from feast-or-famine eating. The act of eating and digesting accounts for 10 per cent of your body's metabolic rate. Starve yourself for any portion of the day and you cheat yourself out of a good portion of this bump. The most important part of eating regularly is that it stabilizes your blood sugar and your hormones: Your blood sugar remains steady throughout the day, and because your meals are smaller, your insulin does not spike as dramatically. The body trusts that there's more where that came from, so it happily burns your meal for energy, confident that you'll feed it more later.
Additionally, by eating every four hours you keep your hunger hormone ghrelin in check and keep your leptin levels stable. These two hormones are to blame when you skip meals, become ravenous, and are much more likely to over eat. In fact, ghrelin does its job so well that when it's surging in your blood stream, it can actually make food taste up to 20 per cent better.
On the other hand, the popular concept of six small meals throughout the day is also less than ideal. You don't need your insulin surging on a constant basis by eating nonstop. Body builders developed this style of eating to squeeze thousands upon thousands of calories into their day. (How it became a weight-loss trend is beyond me.) Many of them developed type 2 diabetes later on in life. Coincidence? I think not. Eating every four hours is a perfect formula for hormone balance – it keeps insulin stable, but doesn't spike hunger hormones, either.
Page 2 of 3 -- On page 3, Jill outlines "Hormone homework" that will prevent cravings and overeating.
Excerpted from
Master Your Metabolism, copyright 2009 by Jillian Michaels and Mariska van Aalst. Used by permission of Random House. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.
Hormone homework: When you first start to eat every four hours, believe it or not, you might find that you're not very hungry when the four hours are up. But that's the idea—we don't want you to be famished. You want to head off extreme hunger, which is a signal that your blood sugar has dipped too low, a surefire recipe for cravings and overeating.
Rule 3: Don't eat after nine P.M.—especially carbs
One of the biggest risks of skipping meals during the day is that you then overeat at night. Your body uses calories throughout the day, but any big surplus gets stored as fat. One study in the journal Metabolism found that people who skipped meals during the day and ate a big meal between four p.m. and eight p.m. ended up with some very ominous measurements:
• Higher fasting blood glucose in the morning
• Higher blood sugar overall
• Higher levels of ghrelin
• Impaired insulin response (an indicator of insulin resistance)
Scary, right? Yet so many people I've worked with have done this – work hard all day, ignoring their need for food because they're "too busy to eat." And then, at the end of a long day, they "reward" themselves with a nice, relaxing, diabetes-inducing meal.
Your levels of fat-storage hormone cortisol dip after breakfast and lunch, but not after dinner or evening snacks. Eating more calories during the evening will pack more fat around your belly, where you have more cortisol receptors than other places in your body. Eating the bulk of your calories after dark also sends your bad LDL up and good HDL down.
The rate at which food will leave your stomach—also known as your gastric emptying rate – slows down at night. Plus, your ability to process glucose gets weaker as the day goes on. If you eat a carb-heavy meal at eight p.m., your body reacts much differently than if you eat a carb-heavy meal at eight a.m. The old adage, "eat like a king at breakfast, a prince at lunch, a pauper at dinner" is right on the money—although I'd stick another pauper in there somewhere.
Why you should never eat before bed
The most important thing is not to eat before bed. Muscle-glycogen stores fill during the day's meals. By the end of the day, all the spots in the glycogen stores are filled up. You're not going to be burning any extra calories, or drawing on those glycogen stores, for the better part of seven or eight hours, so any remaining calories you eat now will turn straight into fat.
This part is by far the most important: About one hour after you fall asleep—at about midnight for most people—your body releases its largest pulse of growth hormone for the day. Insulin inhibits growth hormone production, so the last thing you want to do is eat any carbs that will drive up your insulin and interfere with this precious fat-burning growth hormone supply.
Hormone homework: As soon as you have your evening meal, shut the kitchen down and don't head there anymore. Try to make that last meal tilt more toward proteins than carbs, to keep insulin levels down and allow for maximum growth hormone release at night.
Page 3 of 3 -- Jillian shares a shocking statistic on the importance of eating a healthy breakfast. Find out on page 1.
Excerpted from
Master Your Metabolism, copyright 2009 by Jillian Michaels and Mariska van Aalst. Used by permission of Random House. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.
Comments