The Juice Master: Turbo-charge Your Life in 14 Days

If you think about it, most diets/programmes designed for weight loss and health do actually work, on a physical level at least. If you eat less and exercise more, the end result is usually weight loss – hardly rocket science! Equally, for those looking to gain weight, this can be achieved by eating more of the right muscle-building foods and doing a regular weight-lifting programme. And if you are the correct weight but find your energy levels on the floor, then you know that eating and drinking more ‘live energy’ foods and drinks and doing plenty of exercise will make you feel more energetic – once again, a degree in common sense is not required.

It’s not so much that people don’t know what to do to get a lean and healthy body and mind. Due purely to fear, they come up with a million excuses as to why they can’t do it at this time. And boy will people make excuse after excuse. I call it ‘the but syndrome’. ‘But I can’t because…I’m too old.’ ‘But I can’t because…I don’t have the time.’ ‘But I can’t because…blah, blah, blah.’ People who suffer from the but syndrome usually end up with a very big one – BUTT that is! Whatever ‘but because’ excuses you have, not only do they prevent you from getting what you really want, but I can guarantee they are a load of old rubbish. When looked at, none of these excuses hold any water at all.

The only way to Stop having a big butt is to stop having a big ‘but’!

Please do not make the mistake of looking only at the excuses that apply to you. To do that would be to ignore my most important instruction, to read all of Chapters 1 to 8 in order. You will soon see that if you haven’t used a particular excuse yet, you may have done so in the future. So without further ado, come with me as we totally shatter…

The But Syndrome

‘But I can’t because…I don’t have the time’

Of all of the excuses given as to why people don’t eat well and exercise on a regular basis this is without question the one I hear the most – “I would do, but I just don’t have the time.” It’s funny that the same people who say they don’t have the time to look after themselves seem to be able to tell you exactly what’s happening in EastEnders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Big Brother! They have the time to watch God knows how much TV, nip to the pub for a couple of hours a day, spend ages queuing for a ‘hip and trendy’ coffee, yet seemingly don’t have the time to go for a walk or prepare an apple!

The one thing which we are all equal in is time. Every single one of us has access to 24 hours in a day and, no matter how busy we all think we are, we can always find time to eat well and exercise. It’s simply down to priorities. It’s like those people who say, “I didn’t have time to call you”, but what they really mean is “I didn’t have time to call YOU”. If someone had said, “here’s a number and if you call it the person on the other end of the phone will give you I million pounds”, I can guarantee they’d find the time.

Money Rich – Time Poor

You’ve got to ask yourself just how important you regard your health and well-being and where it fits into your priorities of life. Health and fitness should, without question, be at number one. It should be the very first thing you focus on above anything else, as without the correct nutrition and a good supply of oxygen you are not going to perform at your best. But more and more we are seeing a situation where people are Money Rich and Time Poor; or more accurately, Money Rich – Health Poor. The question really is, what’s the point of earning all that money if it gives you a heart attack in the process? What’s the point of trying to create a better tomorrow for your children if you don’t have the energy to play with them today? There’s nothing wrong with earning money, or working hard – I’m all for it – but it doesn’t mean you can’t look after your body at the same time.

I do realize that time for many people is becoming harder and harder to come by, but the point I’m making is that despite how much we rush around like headless chickens giving the impression to the world and ourselves that we are non-stop busy from morning till night, very rarely is that actually the case.

If we cut through the rubbish we tell ourselves, time is not the reason why we don’t get the body and supreme health we crave. Time is simply yet another excuse people can give themselves to try to justify why they aren’t healthy and don’t have the body of their dreams. But again how much time does it actually take to rustle up a few stir-fried veggies, steam a bit of fish, make a delicious fresh juice or peel a banana? How much time does it really take to go for a walk, run or jump on a mini-trampoline? How much time do you need to push some weights? Yes, it may take some degree of effort to do the exercise part of things and, yes, you ‘can’t be bothered’, but that’s nothing to do with time. Please don’t delude yourself any longer into thinking you can’t do it because of time; we can all make the time if we want to enough.

If you have to be up for a flight at 4am to take you to paradise – you find the time. If someone close to you gets ill and you need to drop things to get to hospital – you find the time. If you crave chocolate and must have some NOW! – you find the time to go and get some. The point is if something’s important enough to you-you find the time. The problem is, up until now, your health, body shape and well-being haven’t been important enough to you. You may think they have, as like most people what you eat and how you look probably dominate a large part of your life – but you haven’t wanted it enough. You haven’t wanted it more than that tub of ice-cream for example!

Remember, if you want to turbo-charge your life, excuses have to go out of the window and not having enough time is just like all the other excuses we come up with as to why we can’t exercise and eat well – complete bullshit!

‘But…I can’t afford to get healthy’

When it comes to your health, the truth is you cannot afford not to do it. I mean, how much is your heart worth? What about your kidneys or your liver, or how about your life? You cannot put a price on health. Four members of my family have died of cancer. All these people would gladly have given every penny they had for a body clear of cancer. It’s times like these when people see clearly that money means nothing compared with health, and start wishing they had taken care of their bodies earlier.

My number one priority is to make certain I have good quality ‘live’ nutrients flowing through my system on a daily basis, no matter what the cost. Fortunately, despite what you may think, it doesn’t cost any more to be healthy than it does to get sick. In reality, it’s often cheaper! Regardless of your income, everyone can afford to exercise and get healthy.

How much does it actually cost to buy a bag of fruit or get up and go for a walk? It’s funny how the same people who say they can’t afford to eat well and exercise seem to find money for cigarettes, alcohol, going out and junk food. The average drinker will now spend in the region of £100,000 on alcohol in their lifetime; an average 20-a-day smoker will get through £65,000.

People think that getting fit and healthy means joining an expensive gym or buying organic ingredients, but you don’t need those things to get fit and healthy.

All you need is a pair of trainers, plenty of water, some nutrientrich foods and the right mental attitude.

Even juicing fruits and vegetables doesn’t need to be expensive. Anyone can nip down to their local market at the end of the day when bargains are plentiful.

Despite what we have been conditioned to believe, we don’t require a large quantity of food to thrive. One of the main reasons people overeat is because their bodies are suffering from malnutrition and ‘false hungers’. When you burden your system with loads of junk food, your body will try its level best to extract whatever it can in order to survive. With so few nutrients contained within each plateful, the body soon cries out for more. This is why when you begin supplying your body with the ‘live’ nutrients it craves, you will find that you eat much less yet feel more satisfied.

‘But there’s nothing I can do about it because…fat is in my genes’

You may have fat in your jeans; but not in your genes! Of all the bullshit excuses I’ve heard as to why people can’t lose weight, this has to go in at number one. It is true that depending on your genes you can have a predisposition for many illnesses including weight gain, but this doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it.

My father didn’t give me much, but one of the things he was generous with was his buggered-up genes. He managed to pass on a predisposition for asthma, eczema, psoriasis, hay fever and weight gain – nice! This means it takes less wrongdoing for me to get these ailments than someone who is not predisposed to them. So yes, if your mother or father was overweight then it might be possible – unlikely, but possible – that they have passed on a gene which makes you gain weight easily. However, unlike asthma, eczema, psoriasis and hay fever, all of which can have other contributing factors, weight gain is only caused by one thing – eating too much of the wrong kinds of foods and not moving your body enough. People often say, ‘My mother was fat so that’s why I’m fat,’ but chances are that’s not even down to a predisposition; it’s simply that they lived in the same house, ate the same food and watched the same amount of TV.

If you really want success on the slim, trim and energy-driven front, and have been hiding behind the rather convenient ‘but it’s in my genes’ excuse, you’d better face up to the fact that once again it’s all rubbish!

I don’t care who you are. If I were to put you on what I call the David Blaine diet, where you are elevated in a glass box near Tower Bridge for 44 days with nothing to eat or drink except water, trust me, you’d lose weight. Equally, if I put you on a diet consisting only of water-rich live foods, fresh fish, lean white meat and freshly extracted ‘live’ juices, trust me again – you’d lose weight.

The predisposition for fat may indeed be in the genes of some people, but to suggest for a millisecond that even if these people ate well and exercised daily that their genes would prevent them from losing excess weight is absolute rubbish. I am so confident on this issue that I am willing to be challenged by anyone in the medical profession who thinks otherwise.

This programme doeswork…if you stopthe bullshitexcuses and just do it.

‘But I don’t understand it because…I never eat anything’

I’m sure you’ve all heard this one. People who are the size of a house complaining about the fact they have got that way by complete fluke as they ‘really don’t eat that much’. You may be able to be a secret smoker, but it’s very hard to eat in secret if you are predisposed to weight gain – IT SHOWS!

I’m teasing slightly as not everyone who is overweight is scoffing their way through bucketloads of chocolates and chips, but to say ‘I don’t eat anything or very little’ is usually about a mile from the truth. It’s true that many people don’t realize how much they are eating. After all, if you eat anything standing up or from someone else’s plate, it doesn’t count! This is why when someone writes down what they eat over a week it often comes as a massive surprise. The problem is that many people often reach for food out of sheer habit, so the conscious brain doesn’t take it in.

I think people genuinely believe that they ‘don’t eat that much’, but this is only because they delude themselves. Often they’re part of the, ‘I don’t usually but…’ gang. You know, the group of people who are always saying, ‘I don’t usually but…it’s a special occasion’ or ‘I don’t usually but…oh why not’. When you add them up, the ‘I don’t usuallys’ soon mean a hell of a lot of extra calories. I’m not saying that after you read this book you won’t genuinely have the ‘I don’t usually but what the hell it’s a special occasion’ moments (we are all human after all!). I’m just saying that if you are overweight and have somehow deluded yourself into thinking you really don’t eat much, just write down EVERYTHING that passes your lips for a week and I think the evidence will be clear.

You’ve also got to remember that it’s not just food which causes weight to stay on. Sugar-loaded drinks also play a massive part. If you are eating three balanced meals a day and drinking 2 litres of fizzy pop then you’re not going to see a great deal of movement (on every level!).

Stop deluding yourself. If you are overweight you are clearly eating too much for your body’s needs.

If you believe you can do nothing about your problem you will sit around getting fatter and sicker until the magic weight-loss pill has been found. The magic pill is in your mind, and once you stop the excuses and use the power of your mind, success is there for the taking.

‘But it’s much harder for me because…I’ve got a slow metabolism’

Yes, you’d probably like to think so. This is one excuse I used to use all the time, and I honestly thought it was true…to some degree at least.

One of the biggest myths about metabolic rate is that some people who are overweight have a slower metabolism than their slim friends.

They believe it’s this ‘fact’, and not their intake of food and drink, which is causing their inability to lose those excess pounds. However, the reality is the complete opposite. The heavier you are, the faster your metabolic rate. Heavier people actually burn more calories than lighter people. This makes sense when you think about it, as it obviously takes more energy to move a heavier body than a lighter one.

It may seem that because of your metabolism, ‘you only have to look at food’ to gain weight. I’m afraid the truth is that if you only looked at it, all would be well!

I will repeat this until I’m blue in the face –

Eating too much of the wrong kinds of food and not moving your body enough on a regular basis are the only true reasons why people are overweight.

Not NASA stuff I know, but that’s about it. It has not a jot to do with your metabolism – glad that’s clear.

‘But I’ve tried it all before and…it doesn’t work for me’

I was desperately trying to come up with another word to the one I’m going to use but there is simply no other word in the English language that captures what I want to say in response to this excuse – bollocks!

People who say, ‘I’ve tried it all before’ and ‘nothing works for me’ are basically talking rubbish. However, they’ve probably said it to so many people – and to themselves – so often that they have started to believe it.

What they really mean of course is, ‘I’ve failed to follow what was being suggested’, but of course you’ll never hear that. All you’ll hear is a load of excuses as to why that particular programme has failed them.

Just like the ‘but it’s in my genes’ excuse, this one doesn’t wash.

It doesn’t matter who you are, or how big or small you are. If you eat nature’s superfoods, move your body until you sweat on a regular basis, do some resistance training, think positively and get some fresh air – ‘IT’ will work.

The truth is there is no ‘IT’ – IT IS YOU! ‘It’ will work if you do ‘it’. If you fail to do it, then IT hasn’t failed – YOU HAVE! If you want success, if you really want to take charge of your health and your life, you must understand that you’ll never have the body or life of your dreams if you keep coming up with ‘but’, ‘but’, ‘but’.

‘But it’s hard for me because…I eat as a response to emotion’

So many people believe that they will never be able to change because they are ‘emotional eaters’, and as life will always be full of emotion, what’s the point of even trying to change? On the surface this may seem true – again, I would often use this as an excuse – but once looked at, it just doesn’t wash.

You may well think that you are one of those people who eat purely as a response to emotion, but I will tell you now that you eat certain things as a response to emotion. I’ve never heard anyone saying, ‘I’m really pissed off today. I need a grape’! People never turn to things like steamed fish and stir-fired veggies when they’re bored or upset. When people look to feed an emotion they always turn to ‘foods’ containing refined sugars, fats or a combination of the two, such as chocolate, fast food, muffins, bagels, cakes, breads and ice cream.

People ‘use’ refined fats and sugars in much the same way as people ‘use’ drugs, and the excuses for taking them are pretty much the same.

If you ask a smoker why they are smoking they may say it’s because they’re bored, stressed, relaxed, sad, happy, lonely, anxious, angry, excited, upset, nervous, and so on. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be an emotion which isn’t in some way linked to their smoking. If you ask a cocaine addict to come up with ‘reasons’ as to why they are taking that drug, you will hear the same list of emotional excuses and the same goes for heroin, crack and other drugs. The fact that most of the emotional excuses completely contradict one another doesn’t seem to occur to those trying to justify their actions. Equally, those getting their fixes from refined sugars and fats will also blame any number of emotions:

 ‘I ate the chocolate bar because I didn’t get the job and was consoling myself’

 ‘I ate the chocolate bar because I did get the job and was celebrating’

People eat rubbish food when they’re sad and when they’re happy, when they are stressed and when they are relaxed; when they’re bored and when they’re ‘on the run’. The sad truth is they have been saying how certain foods help certain emotions for so long that, like smokers and other drug takers, they have ended up believing what they’re saying; but it’s all nonsense. If you’re bored you can shove as many cakes in your face as you like but you’ll still be bored. If you’re upset, all the ice cream in the world will never console you. If you’re stressed, squashing a large piece of pizza in your mouth will not calm you down and if you’re feeling lonely, eating bucketloads of rubbish foods will not fill the gap in your life. In fact, not only will your emotions not be helped at all by eating drug-like refined sugars and fats, but on top of the boredom, stress, loneliness or whatever, you will now have to deal with feeling guilty, anxious and fat!

What would you think if you saw a monkey stuffing loads of rubbish food into its mouth and then trying to explain its actions by saying, ‘I’m a bit anxious today’? Yes, you’d think, ‘stone me, a talking monkey’! But seriously, wild animals have more stress and more anxiety on a daily basis than we are ever likely to experience. Now you may well argue with that, but often their lives are a 24/7 battle to find something to eat or to stop themselves being eaten. You may have to pay your bills, go to a job you don’t like, or have to put up with traffic for hours on end – but you probably know exactly where your next meal is coming from and you’re not about to be eaten! Imagine how much more stressful and anxious wild animals’ lives would be if they had substances entering their system which created additional feelings of stress and anxiety to the ones they are already experiencing.

People who consume rubbish foods and drinks all the time are more stressed and anxious than people who don’t.

This is because refined fats, sugars and drinks like caffeine all create empty withdrawal-type symptoms which are similar to normal emotions like anxiety, stress and boredom. Like drug addicts, people then try to deaden those feelings with more of the same. Initially, the refined junkie foods appear to help, but that’s only because they have taken the edge off a low caused by the last dose.

You cannot feed an emotional hunger with food – you can only feed a physical hunger. Anything you eat when not genuinely physically hungry will be stored as fat!

I will explain more about this in the Seven Deadly Dietary Sins, but for now, if you keep saying you are an ‘emotional eater’, please stop the bullshit and remove this ‘but’ from your life.

‘But, do you know what?…I’m “fine” as I am’

Fine, which of course stands for

Freaked-out Insecure Neurotic & Emotional

Most of the time when you ask people ‘How are you?’ and get the response ‘I’M FINE, thank you’, it usually means they’re feeling either ‘Freaked-out’, ‘Insecure’, ‘Neurotic’, ‘Emotional’ or a combination of the lot. ‘How’s your diet going?’ ‘Oh, fine’ – meaning ‘It’s making me feel insecure, I’m getting a touch neurotic about the whole thing, I’m a bit emotional and it’s beginning to freak me out – so as you can see, I’m fine!’

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spend my life feeling ‘fine’. I don’t even want to just feel ‘good’, although good is clearly better than fine. I want to feel pretty damn incredible most of the time, or as my good friend Martin says, ‘outstanding’.

The problem is most people settle for a life of ‘fine’ or ‘alright’. ‘How’s your relationship with your partner?’ – ‘Oh, fine.’ ‘How are your finances?’ – ‘Oh, fine.’ ‘How’s your health?’ – ‘Oh, fine.’ ‘How’s your job?’ – ‘Oh, fine’. ‘How’s your life?’ – ‘Oh you know, it’s OK, it’s alright…I’m FINE!’

The idea behind turbo-charging your life in 14 days is to move way beyond settling for a level of health and vitality and a body that’s simply ‘alright’ or ‘fine’ – it’s about setting ourselves new standards, raising our expectations of ourselves on a daily basis.

‘But it’s hard because…I have children’

It doesn’t matter if you have one child or a football team’s worth; there is no reason on the planet why having children should prevent you from eating well and exercising.

Why does having kids, even being a single parent, prevent you from eating some fruit, making a juice or doing some exercise? And why does having kids mean you have to stuff your face?

When you think about it, it surely takes longer to make toast and cereal than it does to prepare a delicious melon – there’s even less washing up!

But the minute you say something like that you get hit with another but; ‘But it’s difficult because you have to make food for the kids.’ Yes, and so what? It is true that you do have to make the kids’ food, but you don’t have to make them unhealthy food, and even if you have little terrorists who rule the roost in terms of what’s for dinner, why does this prevent you from making a healthy meal for yourself? In fact, having children gives you a reason to shop and prepare for mealtimes.

If you say you are unhealthy, overweight and lethargic because you have children, you are inadvertently blaming their being born for your health demise.