Chris Powell's Choose More, Lose More for Life by Chris Powell Page A

able to splurge on her favorite foods helped her curb cravings, because she knew that if she couldn’t have a cupcake or ice cream today, she could have it tomorrow. It was easier for her to stick with the program because to her, it didn’t really feel like a diet.
    Day by day, Rachel’s confidence grew and she saw great results. After she lost her first one hundred pounds, medical tests showed she was perfectly healthy. Within a year, she lost 161 pounds! She hit some bumps in the road as she neared her goal weight—she couldn’t afford groceries, so she ate with her family; her progress plateaued—but her expanding knowledge and self-esteem helped her conquer the problems.
    Rachel’s down to 208 pounds, and she’s maintaining her weight. Carb-cycling has actually simplified her life! Nowadays she eats when she wakes up and then every two to three hours after that. She tries to drink a gallon of water daily. Her favorite low-carb foods are Ezekiel 4:9 brand breads and tortillas—they even make her feel like she’s cheating! Sweet potatoes and baked potatoes are her favorite high-carb foods. As a binge-prone eater, she keeps things realistic by enjoying cheat meals three days a week.
    It’s a lifestyle that goes far beyond diet. Rachel’s learned how to balanceher work life with her social life and personal life. Plus, she’s become a certifiable gym rat! She goes first thing every morning and whenever she wants to celebrate an accomplishment or blow off stress. When she’s angry, she puts on her pink boxing gloves and hand wraps and beats the bag. The adrenaline junkie has reemerged, and she’s trying all kinds of new things, like bungee jumping, that scare her. When faced with a challenge, she takes it on. And she loves meeting new people.

    Rachel feels like she took a lump of dirt and created a masterpiece. Her story is an amazing example of what a healthy diet and a little exercise can do for you: It can change your life! Success like Rachel’s is within your reach. Before she started carb-cycling, Rachel was scared and overwhelmed—she didn’t think it was possible to transform her life. But in her moment of clarity she decided that she was worth the extra effort, the hard work, to give herself a happier, healthier life. When you open them up, the human mind andhuman heart are amazing things! That’s exactly what Rachel did, and because she did she’s proven that anything is possible.
    The moment of clarity, when it happens, is different for everyone. For some it may be when they hit a brutal rock bottom, for others it may simply emerge from curiosity about what a better future might look like. When you have yours, the desire for a new lifestyle will spark to life within you. Your desire will grow and grow, finally bursting forth as motivation. That’s what will turn your clarity and desire into action. That’s when you’re ready to get going with carb cycling. That’s what will make your transformation journey a fantastic success!
Changing It Up
    So what’s the big deal about carb cycling? In a nutshell, it’s a way of eating that
alternates days of high-carbohydrate meals with days of low-carbohydrate meals
—and allows you to reward yourself regularly along the way! Carbohydrates come from plants and are the major component of foods like bread, potatoes, pasta, corn, beans, fruits, vegetables, and sugar-heavy “bad carbs” such as soda and candy. Carbs have certainly gotten a bad rap over the last couple decades, but there are profound benefits to eating good carbs! They’re the fuel source that your muscles and organs prefer.
    Carbs fire up your body’s calorie-burning metabolic furnace, and you can
make the most of that process
by carb-cycling. On days when you eat more carbs, you stoke the furnace, and on days when you eat fewer carbs, your furnace burns fat like crazy. The high-carb/low-carb pattern tricks your metabolism into burning hot even on days when it doesn’t get many