FITNESS CONFIDENTIAL by Vinnie Tortorich, Dean Lorey Read Free Book Online Page A

happen?
    One word.
    Remapping.

Chapter Six
    REMAPPING
    I’ve always been a fan of motorcycles. They’re great for commuting and saving on gas but, let’s be honest, the real reason I like them is that they’re fun. And you know where they’re really fun? On a racetrack, where you can open them up full tilt.
    My favorite track is Willow Springs on the way to the Mojave Desert in California. At certain times, the track is open to the public as long as you have the right gear.
    The first time I went there, I saw these guys working on laptops that were plugged into their bikes.
    “What are you guys doing?” I asked.
    “Remapping the system,” one of them said.
    I’d never heard that term before.
    They explained that a combination of state and federal laws restricts the way that bikes can perform on public roads, but the racetrack is the Wild West. No restrictions there. Which is why they were using their laptops to reprogram the computers in their bikes, allowing them to burn more fuel and go faster. By removing these restrictions, they were unleashing their bikes to do what they had been created to do—roar down the track like mechanized beasts.
    They called the process “remapping.”
    I realized that this is exactly what I do every day with my clients. They usually come to me after trying to get fit by following one crazy diet after another, not realizing that those diets have been restricting their potential. They’ve cut back on their fuel, which left their metabolic engines sputtering along instead of becoming the speedy machines they were designed to be.
    By simply changing the way they ate, I improved my client’s metabolism, taste buds, energy and hunger. It helped them and now it’s going to help you.
    Once you start eating this way, your metabolism will change from a flame that flickered in the breeze into a roaring fire. Remember those calories that you used to count religiously, trying to keep the number as low as possible? Not any more. They’ll now be consumed in that newly remapped metabolic furnace.
    You know what I hate about a lot people in the health and fitness industry? They forget that they’re dealing with humans. Just because some study or test was done in a controlled environment doesn’t mean that you live in a controlled environment. We live in the real world and you know what’s in that world?
    Red velvet cake.
    Spumoni ice cream.
    Cannolis.
    And, yes, even crullers.
    We live in a world filled with delicious things and there are people who have to sell those things in order to make a living. What, you want them to go broke? How cruel are you? Look, I’ve just introduced you to a new and better way of eating but that doesn’t mean you can’t ever cheat a little. In fact, I want you to cheat so that you won’t feel like you’re missing out on anything.
    Let’s say there’s something you really don’t like to eat. For me, that would be cantaloupe. Don’t ask me why. I like all the other melons, even cantaloupe’s evil cousin, the honeydew. But if you told me I could never have cantaloupe again, suddenly I’d be dreaming about eating it.
    Bottom line, we want what we can’t have.
    You may notice the four treats I mentioned—cake, ice cream, cannolis and crullers—have sugar or wheat in them and you might be thinking to yourself “isn’t that stuff forbidden?” I’ll tell you what I tell my clients when they ask me things like that.
    It doesn’t matter what you eat between Christmas and New Years, it only matters what you eat between New Years and Christmas .
    I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t ever enjoy a red velvet cake or spumoni or cannolis or even a cruller, and I don’t expect you to live in a world like that, either. Just don’t do it every day. Make a treat out of it, not a habit. Remember back when treats used to be just that—treats? Something you enjoyed rarely enough that, when you had it, you called it a “real treat”?
    So treat