You are about to embark on a 20-day program, and if you put in the hard work every day, you’ll get the results you’re after. Nutrition is more than 50% of what it takes to lose weight and change your body. How many times a day do you workout? How many times a day do you put food or drink into your body?… a lot more. Everyone is motivated by results, and the fastest way to get the results you want is by locking down your nutrition from the get go. Period.

This nutrition plan progresses as you go through each of the three 20-day phases. These phases are color-coded; yellow, orange and blue, just like the workouts, but I will explain more in the Nutrition Guidelines section later. The first 20-days is a jump-start aimed at creating a few fundamental changes to your nutrition. As you progress into the last 20-days, the recipes will transition from foods with higher carbs, gluten and dairy, to foods with lower carbs, and without gluten or dairy. If you are a carb lover don’t stress about cutting back, you’ll start with healthy carb options in the yellow phase and then gradually scale back in the orange and blue phases. And if you don’t want to go dairy and gluten free, you don’t have to; all the recipes can be modified to have those foods if you choose to. After the final blue phase, if you have opted to go lower carb and gluten free, I suggest adding one serving of carbs in the form of fruit or starch (such as a small apple or ½ cup of brown rice, beans, oatmeal, or sweet potato), one week at a time. This gives your body time to adjust and you will find out what your carb-tolerance is for keeping the results you’ve gotten. I like adding back in a serving of oatmeal for breakfast in the morning, but you decide on what type of carb and when you want to eat it that makes you feel the best.

If you are a vegetarian, you will need to get your protein from high quality carbs and grains. If you are not sure, you should read a book on vegetarian cooking to know what carbs to combine to get a complete protein e.g., rice and beans or humus made with garbanzo beans and tahini seed paste.

To change your body, it starts from within, including what you put in your body. To reach your goals, it takes my workouts and a solid nutrition plan, not one or the other.