15/21 Quickstart: lose up to 15 pounds in 21 days with this crash-course eating program - really! - Cover Story

Trouble ahead. In three weeks, you'll be on Waikiki Beach, but the shape you're in now, your gut will arrive minutes before you do. Your Aloha shirt has been handpicked to hide the spread around your stomach.

Why the need for camouflage? Well, to start with, there were the beers you chug-a-lugged last Friday night. Then there were the beers you had the book-ending Thursday and Saturday. Oh, and the 12-inch pizza you're prone to wolf down right before resolving to hit the cardio trail bright and early next morning, which you damn well would've done had you not overslept--again.

Busted vow after busted vow has left you a defeated mess, eyeing with distaste the ever-inflating Michelin around your middle. Before you considering shortcuts such as liposuction and stomach stapling, we've got a cheaper, safer and more option.

The 15/21 Quickstart program, designed by certified trainer and nutrition consultant Philip Goglia, help you lose up to 15 pounds in 21 days--hence the name. You don't have to starve yourself, and you don't have to rent a cot at your local gym, either. Goglia supplies the eating plan, but you have to apply the commitment, determination and necessary to enable the program to deliver on its promises.

YOU & YOUR GUT

So, you've acquired some fat and have little time to lose it. What we're offering you is a powerful tool for losing weight quickly, but is in no way a substitute for a sound, long-term nutrition regimen. Promise yourself that once you finish the 15/21 Quickstart program, you'll adjust your diet appropriately to maintain and improve on the fat loss you achieve over the next three weeks.

Now let's focus on your immediate crisis. A vacation, class reunion or some other event is rapidly approaching, and your physique will certainly raise eyebrows, but not in admiration. Does your solution call for food deprivation and marathon cardio sessions? It shouldn't.

Exercise itself doesn't change your physique; it only creates the opportunity for change. When you work out at the gym, you tear down muscle tissue. To complete the transformation, the muscle must be rebuilt, and that happens only through getting proper rest, eating sufficient calories in correctly balanced macronutrient combinations, and drinking plenty of water.

Heedless of these scientific realities, and failing to see any change in your body from the increase in cardio, you grimly step up your workouts further and cut back even more on calories. But without enough calories on which to operate properly, your metabolism slows down and your body goes about doing the exact opposite of what you want it to do: It hoards fat to protect itself from what it perceives as a severe famine. So much for noble intentions.

THE PROGRAM

The 15/21 Quickstart plan divvies up your daily calorie intake among five or six meals to help you create a consistent calorie-burning pattern. If you're not eating at regular but relatively brief intervals, you're not stoking your metabolism with the steady supply of calories it needs to generate enough heat to release fat as an energy source. You'd be surprised how just the simple act of establishing a consistent caloric intake will do wonders to alter your body composition.

The Quickstart daily meal plans include protein-source foods for muscle building (and for muscle retention), carbohydrates for fuel, fats for energy and health, and vegetables to aid digestion and deliver a significant amount of micronutrients. Carbs, your energy foods, are loaded in the morning to power your day's activities.

Conversely, your protein-heavy meals are eaten later in the afternoon and into the evening to enable your body to repair muscle tissue at night while you rest. Additionally, the increased protein intake further juices your metabolism.

THE BOTTOM-LINE COMMITMENT

Since the program is short-range, there's little room for deviation. Following a go-ahead from your medical practitioner, you must commit to its every step without fail.

Foremost, to see results, you must eat every meal (each spaced between two and three hours apart--no more, no less), and you must eat the meals in the prescribed order. If you skip meal 3 or scarf a Snickers bar for meal 6, you upset your daily pattern, significantly disrupting the intended goal of keeping your metabolism in white-hot fat-loss turf. Not only do you lose the benefits of that single day as a result of your dietary lapse, but you'll need the next two days to restore the pattern. So, ultimately, you'll have lost three days. Disrupt the pattern twice in a single week and you're toast, thick, buttered toast. So do yourself a favor and approach these next three weeks with a no-nonsense attitude: If 15/21 Quickstart says you're eating peanut butter in the afternoon, come hell or high water, you'd better eat peanut butter in the afternoon.

HOW TO JUDGE PROGRESS

Evaluating the success of this program, or of any dietary strategy, is not all about the bathroom scale. You need to look at the whole picture. Muscle weighs a lot, but doesn't take up much room; fat doesn't weigh as much, but takes up 4 1/2 times more space.