4squareviews

This is a continuation of the series of posts on Bill Phillips’ book Transformation, a component of his Transformation fitness program, which I started back in July.

Chapter 1 of Bill Phillips’ book on the Transformation program dealt with goal setting. Chapter 2 of his book was about setting up the exercise component of his program.

This post resumes reviewing the 18 chapters of his book, each of which corresponds to a theme which you should keep in mind while you are going through the 18 weeks that his program takes.

I’m on week 6, so I have a couple of weeks to catch up on. By the way, I can attest that the program works: I’ve lost 10 lbs and 4% body fat in the first 5 weeks of the program!

Today I’m reviewing Chapter 3 of Bill Phillips’ book Transformation, which is about the nutrition component of his program. You MUST do both the exercise and nutrition part of the program in concert if you want its full benefits.

1. Intro

It’s probably not a shock to many of you to realize that 70% of Americans are overweight. It should be considered a medical epidemic in this country, because being overweight can trigger problems of diabetes and heart disease, among others.

The cause is not that Americans eat too much; it’s that we eat too many calories and too few nutrients, a phenomenon Bill refers to as “calorie toxicity, nutrient deficiency.” The body craves nutrients but gets empty calories instead. It reminds me of the popular image in China of the “hungry ghosts”, those unfortunate denizens of the afterlife who have huge, swollen bellies and therefore ravenous appetites, but mouths that narrow to a very point so that they can never eat enough food to satisfy those appetites.

2. Problem with restrictive diets

When people try to lose weight by having a restrictive diet, they are like people that try to hold their breath underwater—they can do it for a short period of time, but when they finally come out of the water, they gasp for air. When the body eats after having been temporarily starved, it may eat more than it actually needs, leading to a weight gain rather than a weight loss.

3. First, concentrate on nutrients

Here are the 7 nutrients your body needs:

4. Organic foods, macrobiotic diets, vegetarianism

Bill Phillips talks about many of these dietary movements (or fads, if you will), and says that with the last two, the most important thing is to get adequate protein intake, which can be helped by using protein powders made from vegetable sources such as soy. He also recommends supplementing your diet with vitamins, particularly B vitamins.

5. Frequency of meals

Rather than watching what you eat and counting calories, the key to success in following Bill Phillips’ program is to watch how many times you eat. Ideally, you should be eating six times a day, which is why my favorite nickname for the nutrition program is called the Hobbit Diet, based on the legendary creatures of J.R.R. Tolkien’s imagination from The Lord of the Rings who were renowned for their frequent meals.

If you eat six smaller meals, in the form of two snacks of mid-meals, as Bill likes to call them, in between breakfast and lunch, and between lunch and dinner, respectively, plus a post-dinner dessert, you will end up having a faster metabolic rate than those who ate just three larger meals daily.

If you follow this nutrition plan, you will reduce your “bad” cholesterol levels by nearly 15%, your stress hormone levels by 17%, and diminish your insulin levels by 28%, if your results are like those found in a study by the New England Journal of Medicine.

6. Protein + carb at every meal

One of the typical things for Americans is to get up and eat a bowl of breakfast cereal that is rich in sugar. If the grains that make up the cereal are not whole grain, but refined grains, then you have two sources of “bad” carbohydrates. This is a recipe for a quick rush of energy followed by a crash later on in the morning.

However, if you switch to “good” carbohydrates (whole-grain breads or breakfast cereals) and eat protein at the same meal, you will gain the benefit of the proteins which will provide you with longer, slower-burning energy, but the protein intake will slow the metabolism of the carbohydrates down, causing them to burn at a slower rate as well. In other words, your energy will last longer throughout the morning.

7. Post-workout meal: nutrition shakes or meal replacement bars

Combining exercise and nutrition is done in the following way: whether you exercise in the morning or afternoon, make sure you have a snack or, preferably, a protein-based nutrition shake (whether whey or soy protein is up to you). This will contain both protein and carbs and is the perfect recovery vehicle for your body. Many nutrition studies show that consistently exercising and consuming nutrition shakes or meal replacement bars per day will help you lose weight and keep it off.

8. CONCLUSION

One of the reasons why I am doing the Transformation program is because it reminds me of what Mark Twain said about quitting cigarette smoking. “Why, it’s easy! I’ve done it thousands of times!” Last summer, before I started the Transformation program for the first time, I saw my sister while I was visiting my Dad for his birthday. I told her I lost 40 lbs. She looked at me skeptically and said, “I’m sorry, but you don’t look like you lost 40 lbs.” I assured her that it was true, saying, “I did lose 40 lbs. I lost 10 lbs since January 4 different times! Well, I did gain it all back after each time, but …”

The Transformation program is your key to a PERMANENT transformation of your body. Exercise is one half of the Transformation program’s DNA; nutrition is the other. Only when you intertwine them together, will your body’s true weight-loss potential come to life!

Filed under: Uncategorized |