The No Carbs after 5pm Diet: With the new step counter plan

The first thing to do is acknowledge them by writing them down in the Challenges section of your Preview chart, and perhaps to adjust your walking goals and times when you can commit to doing your abdominals. Remember, the 28-day plan is about building on a Template of Success. Over-committing yourself will only make you feel like you have failed.

Next, tick which of the following categories you think the following week will fall into: ‘progressive’, ‘maintenance’ or ‘damage limitation’.

A progressive week is one where you feel 95 per cent confident you can complete all the aspects of the plan you have committed to on your Preview chart. You feel good about yourself; you feel motivated that you have planned ahead and happy that you can deal with any little blips that may come your way that week.

A maintenance week is one where you feel 75 per cent confident that you can complete your programme goals for the next seven days. You feel you may not be able to achieve all the daily walking goals, and you may have a few things to deal with that could make it difficult to follow the plan exactly, but you feel you can give it your best shot. You are confident that these little blips are not going to make your efforts lapse.

A damage limitation week is one where you feel your life is not conducive to following the plan – perhaps the children are breaking up from school, the washing machine has flooded the floor, it’s your time of the month, you have major hassles at work and you have guests all weekend. Damage limitation weeks happen – you do need to acknowledge that – but rather than thinking ‘I’ll drop the plan this week, have a complete rest and pick it up again next week’, DON’T! Limit the damage and pick one thing on the plan you can do all week. Perhaps it’s your Carb Curfew or your daily accumulated walking targets, completing half the daily walking goals instead of all of them. Think carefully and plan – you can limit the damage, and this is all part of building that Template of Success The first step to limiting the damage is acknowledging it is a damage limitation week on your Preview chart.

“I am not the most motivated of people so I found the weekly review and preview helped keep me on track.”

Navigating all the challenges life throws your way is actually a success. OK, you may not always be able to complete the daily walking goals but the aim is for you to do something each day and feel good about it. This is success and this is building on your Template of Success. Many of my clients have blips on the programme when they aren’t able to do all the daily walking goals they wanted or perhaps slipped off the eating principles, but the trick is not to let a little lapse become a collapse. Even if you have a lapse, you will still see a huge difference in your body if you stick with the plan (see Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)).

Review Charts

These allow you to look back over the past seven days and see how you did. They encourage you to give yourself a pat on the back with your progress but, equally, to assess whether what you are expecting from yourself is realistic. Perhaps you ticked that you would do your abdominal exercises every day in the previous Preview chart on day 7. When you come to review it on day 14, however, you find you didn’t actually do your abdominals once. This means you need to reassess how you fill in the Preview chart for the following week. The Review and Preview charts act as a reality check, keeping you on track and building a Template of Success. You’ll find lots of ideas on how to deal with challenges and to stop a lapse becoming a collapse in Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo).

THE ENERGY GAP

If you want to lose weight you have to create an ‘energy gap’ – put simply, you need to create as big a gap as possible between the number of calories you consume through food and drink and the number of calories you expend through moving your body. The amount of calories you consume through food and drink needs to decrease while the amount of calories you expend through moving your body has to increase. The bigger the energy gap you create on a consistent basis, the greater your success. The No Carbs After 5pm Diet will help you create an energy gap, with simple-to-implement exercise and eating principles. This will help you to lose weight and inches, and at the end of 28 days your body will burn more calories even when you are sleeping!

3 The Eating Principles (#ulink_791aafd3-7331-5f0d-9018-0bad1e44c3e7)

The No Carbs After 5pm Diet is based on a number of eating principles. Knowing the logic and science behind the diet will help you understand how and why it works. To make things simple, all the meal suggestions and recipes in the book put these principles into practice for you.

PRINCIPLE 1: CARB CURFEW

This is your Golden Rule.

Carb Curfew means no bread, pasta, rice, potatoes or cereal after 5pm for your evening meal. You can eat them for breakfast, lunch and snacks but you can’t eat them after 5pm. You just say no at this time! But don’t panic: you aren’t going to feel hungry as there are still plenty of satisfying foods to eat. For your evening meal you can choose from a variety of nutritious foods including lean meat and fish, fruit, vegetables, pulses, dairy products and essential fats. You will find a whole host of delicious and easy Carb Curfew recipes in Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo). Once you’ve got the hang of my Carb Curfew you’ll soon see how easy it is to adapt some of your favourite meals.

“I noticed almost immediately that cutting the carbs after 5pm meant I was not nearly so hungry, and my cravings disappeared. This gave me so much confidence.”

Why Does Carb Curfew Work?

Carb Curfew is a tool. It’s not about saying carbs are bad for you. Carb Curfew does three essential things that help you get the inches off and the weight down simply and easily:

1 It helps you get a better balance of nutrients.

2 It helps you cut your calories without having to try too hard!

3 It reduces uncomfortable tummy bloating.

The Food and Drug Administration in the US recently reported that people are consuming significantly more calories than they were 20 years ago, and that these extra calories are coming from carbohydrates. Any excess calories you consume will be converted and stored as body fat if they are not burnt off through increased physical activity. Simply cutting out the carbs after 5pm will automatically help you reduce your calorie intake without having to count calories continually, or deprive yourself of some of the important carbs you can enjoy at breakfast and lunch. In addition, consuming slightly more protein than usual will help you stay fuller for longer.

Putting Carb Curfew into practice will also help you get a better balance of nutrients. Not only will you get more essential vitamins and minerals from fruit and vegetables in your evening meal, helping you to hit the recommended five portions of fruit and veg a day, but the whole plan is designed to optimize your nutrition without you having to work too hard.

Reducing tummy bloating is one of the quickest benefits you will notice with my Carb Curfew. Eating carbs after 5pm can cause uncomfortable bloating for several reasons:

As your body digests carbohydrates they are broken down into glucose and either stored in the form of glycogen in the muscles or converted into fat and stored in the fat cells. Your body prefers to store these starchy carbs as glycogen but to do this it has to store three units of water with every one unit of glycogen. The net result is a bloated, puffy tummy and uncomfortable clothes.

Bloating can also occur when you have gone too long without eating. When you do give your body some food, your digestive system goes into shock, there is a surge of excess enzymes and the pH balance of your digestive system is distorted, creating abdominal discomfort.

Without stating the obvious, bloating can also occur simply because you have each too much too quickly. One reason individuals overeat is because they are too hungry, and when they start to eat their body does not have the ability to register when it is satisfied as opposed to over-full.

Following the Carb Curfew eating plan will take care of your bloating for you. It has been designed so you do not go too long without eating. Your energy levels stay elevated as your calorie intake is more evenly distributed, giving your body the energy it needs when it needs it. This means you will actually burn off more calories when you exercise. Many people have marvelled at the fact that they no longer crave biscuits and sugary processed snacks. If you follow the plan I am confident you will feel the benefits too.