Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Auckland, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa), Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa • Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Copyright © 2013 by G-Unit Books Photographs by Pavel Ythjall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada Most Avery books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. Special books or book excerpts also can be created to fit specific needs. For details, write Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Special Markets, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 50 Cent (Musician) Formula 50 : a 6-week workout and nutrition plan that will transform your life / 50 Cent with Jeff O’Connell. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-101-59838-2 1. Physical fitness. 2. Exercise. 3. Weight loss. 4. Nutrition. I. O’Connell, Jeff II. Title. GV481 A126 2012 2012037786 613.7—dc23 Neither the publisher nor the authors are engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the authors nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book. While the authors have made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the authors assume any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. For Chris Lighty Contents 1 | Introduction 2 | 50 Reasons You Should Start Working Out Now 3 | 10 Fears That Can Lead to Failure 4 | Why MRT Is So Smart 5 | Nearly Everything You Know About Dieting Is Wrong 6 | Prepare and Repair: Your Pre- and Post-Workout Tools 7 | Formula 50, the Beginner Plan 8 | Formula 50, the Meal Plan 9 | Formula 50, the Advanced Plan 10 | FAQs That Will Arise During Formula 50 11 | What Happens Next? It’s Up to You | Acknowledgments | Index I 1 Introduction DROPPED A LOT OF WEIGHT IN 2010, WHEN I TOOK A ROLE in a movie called All Things Fall Apart, playing the part of a cancer-stricken football player who would lose 60 pounds because of his illness. Scaling down from my usual 215 would mean running 15 miles not once but twice a day and surviving on a liquid diet for 10 weeks. Folks in my inner circle said I was crazy. They know I love to eat and didn’t want to have to deal with me hungry. But sometimes you just have to challenge yourself. Folks who know me best call me “The Machine.” I may have gained fame singing about sipping Bacardi and hanging out in the club but, truthfully, my greatest vice is overwork. I go hard all the time and thrive off being strong, being successful, being fit, and ultimately being the best version of Curtis Jackson that I can be. Why? Coming up hard the way I did, I used to equate success purely with dollars. After Get Rich or Die Tryin’, I bought Mike Tyson’s house in Connecticut on the spot. That was my confirmation of success. I walked into the house and was like: I can buy this? I wanted it not because I needed it, but because I could have it. So I moved out of a room in a basement to a 55,000-square-foot mansion with swimming pools. I still get a rush off money, but I now realize it can serve a higher purpose: helping others. But unless you are physically strong and mentally tough, you can’t go out and make that money to enjoy it with the ones you love, or for whatever purpose you have in mind. Besides, I just love winning. In The 50th Law, which I wrote with Robert Greene, I taught readers the ten laws of strategy and success. Those laws have made me who I am today. Ultimately, the message boiled down to my essential creed: “Fear Nothing.” The book sold well, but I am even prouder of how it changed lives. I decided that every book I write should do the same—change people’s lives in some way. That’s certainly true of the book you’re reading now. Formula 50 builds on The 50th Law with an ambitious 6-week mind-body plan that can transform anyone serious about shaping up. My music, acting, business, and philanthropy cross all boundaries and barriers, and my fitness program applies to everyone too. All of you will see some version of yourself in this book. Not only your current self but the person you hope to become. The basic 6-week plan targets beginners. Those with more workout experience under their belt can do the more advanced 6-week plan. Ideally, you’ll progress through both plans over the course of 12 weeks, ending up where I am today with my fitness and body—good enough to hang with the world’s best boxer, Floyd Mayweather Jr., during his training for championship bouts. I’m not promising that you’ll be able to train with Floyd, but follow the instructions I’m giving you here, and you’ll not only look a lot better but feel a whole lot better too. You’ll be ready for whatever challenge life throws your way. Fat, you don’t stand a chance against Formula 50. Trust me, it’s fire. You might legitimately ask, “Who are you to preach about fitness? Aren’t you the guy who dropped joints like ‘High All The Time’? Hardly seems like a fitness anthem.” I don’t drink and I don’t use drugs, and I didn’t back then either. I put that joint on the first record because I saw artists consistently selling 500,000 with that content. Styles P, “Good Times (I Get High)”—that was on his gold album. Method Man and Redman were selling the same stuff. There was an audience that would accept it because they were actually high when they were listening to it. Plus, everyone was getting high around me, and that was actually what helped me decide not to. So I set off on a different course, one that depended on physical strength and fitness as well as inner strength and business smarts. Today’s up-and-comers do the same thing. I hear ’em mentioning Bentleys and Rolls-Royces and Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Well, I’m just getting to a point now where I can have those things with no problem. So they’re lying. They don’t have them. They have these bracelets and these rings but them diamonds ain’t real in there. That’s fake shit on ’em. It takes time for someone to reach that point. Here, you’re after something that’s much more valuable than bling, fake or real. My point is that real results won’t come easy; you need to put in the time and the effort, just like with anything worth doing. But in defining your body, you will develop a much clearer picture of what you’re made of inside. Cutting-Edge Fitness That Works My music is collaborative, and so was my approach to Formula 50. In deciding to write a fitness book, I obviously based it on my own extensive experience with working out. Only that wasn’t good enough. I put the best minds in the health, fitness, and motivation world on the case. I wanted a program that would work for everyone and that everyone would want to follow. The perfect plan poorly executed or left on the shelf is worse than the average plan perfectly executed. It can be the most brilliant regimen in the world, one so effective that everyone doing it would be walking down the street with six- packs. Yet if only 50 percent or 10 percent of the people stick with it, I consider that program to be a failure. The first rule of fitness is this: Show up for the workout. The workouts in Formula 50 represent the cutting edge of exercise science and nutrition, but they’re no good if you don’t follow them. I don’t want you to read this book; I want you to use it! The reverse is true as well. Some so-called experts amp you up to such a degree that you’re ready to run through a brick wall, only they never deliver a plan that will get you through to the other side. That’s cold. You’ve gotten people to buy in and work out, but the tools you gave them weren’t up to the job. What a letdown. Formula 50 is a detailed workout and nutrition plan that will guide your fitness efforts over the course of 6 life-changing weeks. The carefully chosen array of exercises and meals form the foundation, but Formula 50 is about more than that. It’s about learning how to become mentally as well as physically strong. You can never be happy with the workout you just had. If you can’t outdo yesterday, you won’t be better tomorrow. These are the same tactics I use every day in my personal life. Fans know they work. My inner strength is rooted in surviving a spray of nine bullets to my face and legs, only to rebuild my body and mind into a superior force. Almost 120 million folks watched my “In Da Club” video on YouTube. The bat crunches I did with Dre and Eminem became one of the most iconic images in rap. Suddenly, everyone was eager for my methods: How can I look like 50 Cent did in that video? They’ve caught glimpses before, but never the full plan. You’re holding the plan in your hands: Formula 50. I’m now rich and famous, but I still go harder than the next guy, whether on stage, in the boardroom, or in the gym. I never coast, only accelerate. You have it within you to do the same. This is your guidebook. The Formula 50 Plan So here is the promise I’m making: Follow my Formula 50 program, and your body will improve by 50 percent in 6 weeks. Body fat will decrease by 10 percent, energy will increase by 20 percent, and strength endurance will improve by 20 percent. The numbers can add up to 50 percent in a variety of ways, but your gains will total at least 50 percent. Fifty by 50. Why are these measures so important, considering all the measures of fitness out there? Let me start by saying that there are dozens of ways to measure “fitness.” There’s power—that can be measured by your vertical or long jump. Flexibility can be tested by a straight-leg hamstring test. Cardiovascular fitness can be measured by comparing the difference in your resting heart from the beginning to the end of the 6 weeks. You’ll improve on every one of these tests over the course of Formula 50. Having said that, I figure that virtually everyone who picks up this book will want to do three things: (1) drop some body fat, (2) have more energy, and (3) become stronger in the way that matters most—muscle endurance rather than brute strength. You may not care what you can lift for one all-out repetition on the squat, but wouldn’t you love to carry around your young child without feeling old and broken down? Or take grocery bags from the store to your car without feeling like you just did an Ironman? Those percentages I mentioned aren’t pulled from thin air. They’re totally legit. I’ve crunched data with leading exercise physiologists to ensure that the program will deliver those results. Your Secret Weapon: MRT So how are we going to accomplish all of these physical improvements at once? Through metabolic resistance training (MRT), a workout system that breaks down the barriers between weight training and cardio. It’s the fastest way to go from out of shape to in shape. We’re not talking days—but we’re not talking many months either. We’re talking weeks. But to reach that goal, there’s no fooling around. We’re going to bump some major workouts on this program, designed by me and Joe Dowdell, CSCS. No yakking with your boys in between sets or grinding at one pace on the treadmill; nothing but heat. Rest periods separate many sets, but you’ll need to spend them sucking down as much oxygen as possible. What’s more, those rest periods often shrink from week to week, making the workouts progressively more challenging. The manipulation of rest periods is one of the keys to the program. MRT burns fat at the same time it builds muscle and lung power. Instead of tapping 25 percent or 30 percent of the body’s change capacity, you’re maximizing its full potential. The metabolic forces unleashed work even while you sleep. Such round-the- clock improvement makes it possible to improve by 50 percent in 6 weeks. Better yet, you can shift those percentages depending on whether your personal target is more strength, energy, or fat loss. However, they’ll still add up to 50. These multiple goals make the plan unlike anything the mainstream fitness world has seen. It’s fluid, it’s flexible, and it allows you to shape it according to your own needs and goals. It focuses on the attributes that truly matter in life: leanness, strength, and energy. Abs come as a bonus or byproduct, but they come because you’re doing everything else right, instead of wasting your time doing crunch after crunch. The abs symbolize something greater. There needs to be something more. Previously, only elite coaches to high-level athletes applied the advanced training and nutrition concepts in Formula 50. My team and I aim to make these concepts understandable and accessible to everyone, allowing you to achieve optimal results from a transformation program. A basic plan will apply to beginners, as well as to those returning from a layoff. In each of these 6 weeks, you’ll do MRT-style resistance training three times a week and cardio twice. But none of this simple back-on-this-day, chest-on-that day junk. No workout will focus on isolated body parts. Is that how you move, with just one arm, or just your lat muscles? That’s old-school training and deserves to be stowed in the attic. Do you still dress like you did in the 1990s or dial a rotary telephone? So why do you still train that way? A more advanced version of Formula 50—think of it as the remix—adds an additional day of energy system training, among other demands. This phase targets those of you already closer to my current fitness level. These are some serious workouts. You need to be in good shape already, or go through the first 6-week program if your fitness level trails where it should be. Look, I’m at my peak, and yet I’ve been in the game long enough to show that my body and my career are both built to last. I wrote Formula 50 for the same reason I produced a vitamin-water product and now seek to address hunger in Africa through Street King, an energy shot with a built-in charity component connected to the United Nations World Food Programme, aimed at providing 1 billion meals over the next 5 years. I want this program to fill the desperate need among people of all races and economic classes to retake control of their body through improved health and fitness. True power comes from sharing knowledge and opportunity, and we need more of both. “Before I Self Destruct” may have been the title of one of my recordings, but it shouldn’t describe America’s lack of fitness and overall health. Too many workout programs leave people tired rather than energized, defeated rather than victorious, depressed rather than uplifted. Formula 50 isn’t going to exhaust you; it’s going to leave you amped by causing metabolic shifts that will burn through layers of fat and encourage muscle growth. I bring energy to everything I do, and if my body is the motor, my workouts are the fuel. Without them, I couldn’t do what I do in any aspect of life. Never is this truer than when I go on tour and play for crowds. Ninety minutes on stage means I have to train as if I’m preparing for a heavyweight fight, only there’s no bell—the rounds just keep on going. Nonstop effort requires strength, endurance, flexibility, and mobility. My workouts are designed to improve all those capabilities. Throughout this book, I’ll be urging you to stay with me on this transformation journey. Your motivation may not be the same as mine. You may not have a concert tour coming up—but you might have a wedding or a high school reunion. Something in your life can motivate you to want to lose weight. I’ll help you find your own transformation trigger, things you might want to try in your own life. There usually isn’t just one, by the way; there might be ten that can be identified in each person. You just need a system for identifying them. I’ll provide that. Some fitness works devote a single chapter to the mind, but motivation drives Formula 50 from start to finish. I’ll constantly help you quell the urge to quit. I’ve been there myself. I was the fat kid when I was younger! I know what that’s like. Even today, I find myself in situations, like training with my buddy Floyd Mayweather, the world champion boxer, where he’s kicking my butt all over the boxing gym. Can I keep up? For a while. Maybe. Am I getting an amazing workout even when I fade before Floyd? Of course. Someone can always train a little harder than you. Someone’s genetic blueprint might be a little more ideal for fitness than yours, but that’s just a random twist of DNA. What matters is what you do with it. Your goal and my goal are one and the same: to become the best version of ourselves humanly possible. This whole process of working out and being fit carries great meaning for me. Sure, people who look fit are easy on the eyes, but my physical training gives me the discipline to conquer life’s challenges. It gives me strength to apply leverage, power to influence, energy to execute. It elevates me while at the same time grounding me. My entire career and life have been based on a series of principles. These include the importance of power, leverage, strength, and energy; the need to embrace change and chaos; and the foolishness of thinking you can succeed without a well-thought-out game plan. Even my workouts never occur at random. From these principles come the laws I live by. Formula 50 will not only embody those laws but also create new ones that apply to working out and shaping up. These laws are designed to lead you down the shortest path to the best results. Through trial and error, and through meeting with leading experts in exercise science, I’ve figured out what works, and just as important, what doesn’t work. You ready? Fifty’s Laws of Fitness Law #1 Where there’s a will, there’s a way. When people caught a glimpse of Internet images of me preparing for All Things Fall Apart, playing the part of an emaciated, cancer-stricken football player, rumors swirled that I was seriously ill or even dying. That’s how quickly I lost weight doing marathon runs on a liquid diet. I needed to lose almost 60 pounds, and I did, because the role demanded that of me. We tend to give up too quickly when it comes to working out and eating right. But in Formula 50, I don’t complain about that tendency. It is what it is. I acknowledge it and offer a program and motivational support that allows you to succeed despite that tendency. I’ve interviewed a number of leading motivational experts and sports psychologists to pinpoint where and why people are most prone to trip up on transformation programs. Once you know the trouble spots, you can see them coming and have the last laugh when you blow past them. Law #2 Just because there’s a way doesn’t mean it’s the best one. It turns out that running 10 to 15 miles twice a day and starving yourself isn’t the healthiest way to lose weight. Yes, it worked for me in that situation. But I could have done it more efficiently using circuit training and other forms of metabolic resistance training, high-intensity interval training (HIIT), and other techniques. That’s what I do now. I still pour every ounce into my workouts, but I train smarter. I’ve even learned how to be stronger now than I was when I was bigger. Formula 50 brings together leading exercise physiologists and nutritionists to present not only the best workout and diet plan but also the most efficient one. If everyone ran 30 miles a day, everyone would lose weight. Only no one would stick with it, so what would be the point? Not a good program. People buy in to what you’re preaching and stay the course when they know you’re offering them not a shortcut, necessarily, but the most direct way to transform. Law #3 Your most important muscle is your heart, so train it accordingly. I’m gonna shine until my heart stops, like one of my best-known songs says, but I don’t want it to stop for a long time, which means doing plenty of cardio. The heart is a muscle, and you want for it to be your strongest, best-conditioned muscle of all. A hallmark of the Formula 50 program is that your body will improve according to many different measures, and not just those included in the formula. The ability of your heart and lungs to keep blood and oxygen flowing through your system will also improve dramatically after 6 weeks. In many respects, this is the best measure of all for “fitness.” This sort of conditioning is also essential for long-term heart health, so the dividends keep on coming. I’m particularly excited about bringing HIIT-style cardio to the masses. HIIT achieves better results than regular steady-state cardio and in much less time. Plus, it’s a good acronym for any recording artist to hang his hat on, right? Law #4 Learn to embrace chaos in the gym. Turn it to your advantage. Change is constant in Formula 50. You’ll never do the same stuff for very long. Surprise your body and you can expect to achieve major results: more muscle and less fat. With my program, it works every time. This has to be fun even when your brow is pouring sweat. On the Formula 50 program, you’ll do weights one moment, interval cardio the next, and even the intervals can be done using almost any kind of technique or apparatus: sprinting, elliptical, bike, heavy bag, rower, hitting the mitts like I do with Floyd, power cleans, and so on. You’ll be on your toes! Once the body grows accustomed to the same workout, which doesn’t take long, the workout loses its effectiveness. Stagnation is bad. Change is good. Growth is better. Law #5 The gym is a place to build muscle and burn fat, not waste time. The gym setting will produce the best results from training. If you’re aiming to improve 50 percent in 6 weeks, you’ve got to be willing to go there for workouts. But the Formula 50 plan won’t have you training in the gym for hours on end. Getting in and out means you can’t take extended rest periods and joke around the whole time. The sort of metabolic shifts I already mentioned for fat burning and muscle building depend on you keeping rest periods tight. You need to enter the gym, do your weights and cardio efficiently, and then, boom, leave. This efficiency reflects workouts that are dense and action-packed. They compress a lot of activity into relatively short stretches. As I explain how to use these techniques, I’ll also share some of the research behind them. You’re putting your faith (not to mention your body) in this program, and I hope you’ll stay the course when you see it’s legitimately supported by science. Fifty’s Laws of Clean Eating Law #1 The best tat you can ever receive is a sculpted body, and if weights are the needle, your diet provides the ink. You have to eat right to look good. There’s a big difference between dieting and eating right. A lot of you who don’t eat well may think of a diet as something exotic that they go on a certain number of days to produce a certain outcome. Instead, you should view healthy eating as something that can be followed lifelong for good health. Formula 50 teaches healthy eating, not “dieting” in the short-term sense that it’s often used. Pair your workouts with the right eating habits, and the gains will come fast. Fueled properly, the body can change, maybe not overnight, but in a matter of weeks. Realize that your optimum fuel mix may differ from mine, and from the next guy’s or girl’s too. Together, we’ll figure out your ideal mix. We know what works: Every man and woman who competes in a fitness or bodybuilding show follows some variation on certain parameters to shape up. You’re probably not going to take your diet to the extreme that they do, but the same principles apply. In Formula 50, I make it all easy to understand. Law #2 Following the same old diet seldom works for a very long time because you get sick of the same old diet. Your nutrition can benefit from change much like your workouts. Change keeps your head in the game. If you’re being served chicken breasts and broccoli every day, your body might respond well. In fact, it probably will; those are great foods. But your mind will start to cave. At a certain point, you’ll begin to cheat; eventually, your whole diet will collapse. So I look at the bigger picture, working with experts to fashion meal plans that satisfy not just your stomach and muscles but also your mind. So you’ll keep right on following those meal plans. Formula 50 won’t provide a 1-day meal plan and then ask you to repeat it for weeks on end. The meal plans change just like the workouts. Law #3 Since my program is all about boosting your energy, finding your body’s proper fuel mix is essential. It turns out that you aren’t what you eat—you are what your body does with what you eat. Because you’re going to be kicking butt on the Formula 50 program, your body will have energy needs specific to not only working out but also working out according to my plan. The Formula 50 nutrition plan is high in lean protein, is somewhat high in healthy fats, and contains moderate amounts of carbohydrates. But healthy carbs—not the kind you pull out of vending machines. We’re setting an ambitious agenda for these 6 weeks, so you’ll need to be popping when it come to your nutrition. Beast mode. Ultimately, results provide the best motivation. Just like when I’m recording an album, my madness has a method. Law #4 Skipping meals is just as bad as having too many cheat meals because one leads to the other. In my line of work, I can spend a lot of time in rooms without windows, and the day can fly by so fast that I’ll turn around and, bang, it’s over. I can grow so wrapped up in my work that I even forget to eat when I should. I’ve come to realize just how unhealthy that is. After a work day spent without food, being famished makes you eat like an undisciplined crazy person instead of like someone sane and in control. So I have to stay on the grind when it comes to eating and drinking like I should. Part of not skipping meals is following the detailed diet plan outlined in Formula 50. We’re not going to be starving you here; you’ll be guided to eat three to five meals a day, spacing them every 4 to 6 hours apart. My science team will explain why eating more frequently doesn’t provide the metabolic boost purported by so many fitness coaches. It’s an urban legend. In fact, the latest evidence suggests that eating a little less frequently may be more metabolically beneficial than eating more frequently. The reason you should eat up to five times a day is to feed your muscles. But don’t do it to boost your metabolism. Law #5 I’m no angel, period, but that’s especially true when it comes to my diet. I’ll be doing this along with