Captain Ahab’s BodyBlog

72 – 36 – 12
No these are not the measurements of some wildly out of proportion exotic dancer, but rather they are how many days I followed the nutrition program set out by Body for Life, along with how many weightlifting workouts combined with cardio sessions it took me to achieve my body transformation and also how many cheat days I had during this time period.
I was doing a bit of thinking the other day and it dawned on me that it didn’t really take me the full 12 weeks to get into the best shape of my life and achieve the body transformation that saw me judged 10^th overall in the 2007 Body for Life Challenge. I did a bit of basic math and figured out that of the 84 days (12 weeks) that I was doing the BFL Challenge I was not following their nutrition program each and every day because I was able to take advantage of their built in “cheat” day once every week, to eat whatever I wanted and to satisfy any cravings that I might have been having.
So out of the 84 days of the challenge I had 12 “cheat” days so my math brought me from 84 to 72 actual days of following their nutrition program.
The number 36 was the number of combined workouts (weightlifting & cardio) that it took me to go from what I saw as my “ 36% bodyfat, muffin topped fat body” to my “approx. 10% bodyfat completely transformed best shape of my life body.” I was quite pressed for time, which I am sure many other people are and so I did my one hour of weightlifting and followed that by doing my 20 minutes of cardio right after. This is all that Body for Life asks you to put in for weights and cardio. This really helped me especially in the beginning because I was only working out every other day and had and needed lots of time to recover.
With the Body for Life nutrition program they have you eat 5 to 6 small, protein rich, low (high glycemic) carb, low (bad) fat meals per day. This way you are having something to eat every 2 ½ to 3 hours and really revving up your metabolism and just so that you are not always sitting down to either prepare or eat what I call a “chewable” meal, 2 to 3 of your 5 to 6 meals can and should be in the form of protein shakes. Unlike many other weight loss programs that have you eating less and feeling hungry a lot of the time, what I found with Body for Life was just the opposite, I found that I was watching the clock and I had to actually make myself eat more often than I normally would and never once did I feel hungry. One of the beautiful things (I believe anyway) about BFL is their built in cheat day. One day per week you are allowed to eat anything and everything your little heart desires. If it is Big Mac’s or Whoppers or half a dozen Baconators ( I exaggerate but you get the picture) followed by Blizzards or cheesecake at every meal of the day then go for it. This is totally acceptable. I believe also that this is a good thing because many of us have parties to go to (birthday, anniversary etc.) and this way we can partake of the wonderful goodies people have on hand and not have to bring our own “healthy” snacks. The only requirement is that the next morning and until your next cheat day, you go back to the 5 to 6 meals per day. So I figured out that I used 12 cheat days out of my 84 days following BFL eating program so I only ate correctly for 84 days minus 12 cheat days equaling, 72 actual days.
I did this bit of simple math and used these numbers as an example of how little it really takes to go from fat to fit. I would like everyone who reads this and is thinking that it must have taken an enormous amount of time for me to go from a muffin top to a six pack to see just how easy it is and how little time it does take if you make fitness a priority and follow a good nutrition plan along with weightlifting and cardio.
Hey folks, if I can do it, I know you can too.
 

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.