Christopher Guerriero’s Maximize Your Metabolism
Christopher Guerriero’s Maximize Your Metabolism publication is, not surprisingly given the title, almost entirely dedicated to increasing your metabolic rate.
Why should this interest you?
Well, the metabolic rate is the measure of the speed at which your body burns calories. The faster your metabolism, the more calories your body burns, the slower, the fewer it burns. It’s pretty obvious… a faster metabolism benefits anyone who wants to lose weight.
Problem is, if you’re a regular dieter who typically undergoes extended periods of extremely low caloric intake, there’s a very good chance your metabolism is shot.
Periods of caloric restriction tend to slow your metabolism to a crawl. This means that the less you eat, the fewer calories you require. It also means that the more you eat, the fatter you get. This cycle of starving to lose a few pounds and then gaining it all back “with interest” is typically referred to as “yo-yo” dieting.
By elevating your metabolism, you can increase the number of calories you burn at rest, reduce the likelihood that additional calories are burned as fuel and not stored as fat — generally becoming more efficient at utilizing your calories effectively. Since your total metabolic rate is based on three factors…
- Basal metabolic rate (BMR): The number of calories your body requires to perform the basic activities required for life — maintaining heartbeat, body temperature, circulation, and so on (MyFitnessPal.com has a free tool to determine your BMR. Click here to compute your BMR!).
- Physical activity: Obviously, the more active you are, the greater your caloric requirements.
- Thermic effect of food: This is the energy the body requires to eat, digest, and metabolize food.
… Christopher’s program focuses on introducing tactics to elevate caloric burn in each of the above three elements of the metabolism (yes, an effective exercise regimen plays a big part in this program).
The basics of the diet are quite simple — slowly remove fatty foods and starchy carbohydrates from your diet. Replace them with lean proteins, and raw (yes, raw) fibrous fruit and vegetables. (Before beginning the diet, Christopher recommends a digestive cleanse — a one day process where juiced vegetables and fruits and mild soups are recommended).
At this point, things get a little more complicated, as there are 3 different diets/meal plans introduced, which are cycled through a 7 day period. After the initial 30-90 day period, the program becomes a little more lenient.
Because of its fairly rigid guidelines, Maximize Your Metabolism will probably require a some effort and planning on the part of any dieter (although the results are sure to be worth it). This is probably why a good part of this publication is dedicated to building positive self image — through affirmations and subconscious programming and “laser visualization”.
There is plenty of extremely motivational material here, as well as practical doable exercises you can complete to eliminate the possibility of failure and build a better self-esteem. Believe it or not, deep breathing exercises are taught as well.
Personally, I found this element of the publication to be the most valuable, and have made some changes to own life, implementing some of the tactics to program the subconscious in a positive manner. Here are a couple of quotes from Chris’ book to give you an idea of his overall mindset…
“Forget about learning to eat ‘in moderation’. Moderation is the straightest, surest road to mediocrity and weight-loss failure that has ever been invented.”
And…
“Forget about losing weight the long, slow ‘sensible’ way: It is my opinion that the long, slow, moderate approach to permanent weight loss will never work for most overweight people. The business of bumping along, losing a pound this week and a half-pound the next through simple restriction in caloric intake, might work for a few iron-willed Victorians, but it will never work for the vast majority of people, simple because they don’t have the willpower or the time.”
While I liked Maximize Your Metabolism, and am going to give it a try myself, I felt the publication was a little long winded. This PDF file is almost 400 pages long, so I’d highly recommend you have this printed to read in your favorite easy chair as opposed to on your screen.
I also felt it lacked a bit in concrete measures of tracking a rise in metabolic rate — this is easily done by maintaining a log of your body temperature upon waking, and looking for an upward or increasing trend. There’s a ton of great theoretical material here, but it’s a little light on the practical end of things.
Nonetheless, if you’re a dedicated sort chances are you’ll find real value in Christopher’s program. According to the material on his Web site, over 300,000 people have used, and benefited from his program.
I wouldn’t be surprised.
You can learn more about Christopher Guerriero’s Maximize Your Metabolism here!
Ooops, almost forget to mention that Maximize Your Metabolism comes a with a ton of quality bonus files. Great news!
