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Slingshot Technique gives your body extra rest and nourishment that allow it to recover from three weeks of carb cycling.
Capitalize on Exercise
    Any successful weight-loss plan includes exercise as a central component, and my carb-cycling program is no exception. I’ve designed two types of quick workouts to
accelerate your weight loss
: muscle-building and cardiovascular. They go with carb cycling perfectly because they compound itseffects! Every weekday morning you do special muscle-building workouts. I call them 9-Minute Missions because in only nine minutes they move your metabolism-boosting mission forward. To accelerate your fat loss, do your customized cardio exercises anytime after your 9-Minute Missions. I call them Shredders because they tear through fat like nobody’s business. Chapter 5 , “Shape Your Body, Shred Your Fat: The Exercises” shows you everything you need to know; this is just a preview.
    What to Expect: Things to Look Out For
    So you’re carb cycling away, eating the right foods at the right times. How do you know you’re getting anywhere? You do a weekly weigh-in each Saturday (no more often than that, as your weight fluctuates from day to day!), but sometimes from week to week
you might not see a change in that number on the scale
. Don’t worry about it—it doesn’t mean you’re not making progress! In fact, you’re most likely burning fat as your body develops new muscle—which burns fat faster. There are other, more reliable, signs to show that your body is responding exactly the way it should:
      The fit of your clothes (they should be getting looser; this is the very best indicator of where you’re at)
      Your physical and mental energy level (you’ll notice extra energy on high-carb days)
      Your appetite and craving levels (just a heads-up: cravings
might
be higher on low-carb days)
      Water retention (you should be peeing more on low-carb days than on high-carb days)
      Sleep quality (you might fall asleep faster after a high-carb day, but you should feel better rested after a low-carb day due to the increased output of growth hormone)
    9-Minute Missions to Shape Your Muscles: Muscle-shaping exercise, also known as resistance training, heats up your metabolism by increasing the size of your energy-hungry muscles—the number one calorie users in your body. (It also shapes up your muscles so your body takes on its most attractive contours as you lose weight.) I’ve streamlined basic resistance training into 9-Minute Missions that can easily fit into your day.
    When you’re carb cycling, the 9-Minute Missions make the biggest impact if you do them first thing in the morning—before you eat breakfast—because they prime your metabolism to run at its peak for the rest of the day. I like to roll out of bed, do my Mission, and step right into the shower before sitting down to eat. However, if your schedule will not accommodate training first thing in the morning, any time of day will still give you phenomenal results.
    Keeping it simple and natural, I’ve built the 9-Minute Missions around some of the human body’s most basic movements: running, jumping, pushing, pulling, crunching, and squatting. Every exercise in these workouts uses a movement that your body is naturally designed to do. All of these movements are truly functional: They’re downright
necessary
for human mobility and survival!
    Since it’s engineered to run, jump, push, pull, crunch, and squat, your body responds fastest to exercise based on these movements, as opposed to exercises that force it into movements it’s not intended to do. This means you get better results with less effort than you would on some of that insane equipment at the gym or fitness studio. Which reminds me: You can do your 9-Minute Missions at home, without any expensive, space-hogging gear.
    In Chapter 5 , “Shape Your Body, Shred Your Fat,” I introduce you to thirty muscle-shaping exercises that we use to create our