After the Challenge–What Then?
by: Michael Harris  3/19/2007

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So, your results were good, and you’re looking forward to living a “normal life” now. Only one thing is bothering you–you’re not sure what that is going to look like. You are also more than a little worried about your ability to hold onto this newfound you, right?

First, the “good news.” It never takes as much effort and suffering to maintain good health as it does to get it back. You won’t have to work out quite as hard, nor will you have to eat quite as strictly to maintain your physique. Now, the bad news–you’ll have to figure out how to do it on your own!

Continuing to eat the six smaller meals a day helps make your new life easier. Since the whole purpose of eating six small meals a day is to stabilize insulin levels and blood sugar levels, which minimizes cravings, mood swings, and fat formation, it makes sense to keep that up. If you lost weight and burned fat while on the six small meals regimen, and you are now at or below the weight you want to be, then you’ll need to add a bit to each meal. Eating 42 meals a week, you really only need to adjust upward about 50 to 100 calories to stop the weight loss cycle. As an example, if your “meal” is a Myoplex, all you would need to do is add about 3/4 of a tablespoon of flaxseed oil to the shake and you would add about 100 calories to that meal. Just an ounce more meat or a slightly larger carb would accomplish the same things. So, whatever you do, don’t go back to eating plates full of food at each opportunity. Make very small dietary adjustments, or you’ll be trying to catch up with the gigantic swings that can take place!

You’ll know when you get there with the diet. It will feel right. The key is to still stay away from the “trigger foods” that cause you issues, and to allow for the usual free day excesses as well. Sugary snacks should probably always be strictly a free day activity for all of us.

And what about exercise? Once again, you’ll need to find your plateau. I am sixty now, so I recover more slowly than most of you would. So, what I do in maintenance stage is work each body part every 6 or 7 days, and that takes about 30 to 40 minutes four days a week. Now, that means an extra workout day a week, but that’s not a problem since I work out at home. For me, working out each muscle group one day a week nicely maintains both mass and injury-free joints if I’m careful. I really don’t think anyone who is happy with their body needs to work out with weights more than a couple of hours a week, but if you enjoy it, and you still want to try to add mass, go for it! As far as cardio, I still do the 3 HIIT sessions a week, early in the morning on an empty stomach, and that will never change.

May I emphasize once again, because this does take trial and error, that the key is “small adjustments” so you don’t have huge swings. You will know that things are basically staying the way you want them by your weekly weigh ins and waist measurements, and if either gets more than 3 pounds or 1/2 inch out of where you want it, then make those adjustments and see what happens next week. Get your checkup regularly and keep tabs on those blood lipid levels.

Don’t let the maintenace phase get you down. It’s no different than owning and operating an auto. Checking the tires, the fluid levels and the operating systems are part of that responsbility, as are the same kinds of things with your body. This IS Body for LIFE, remember?

Getting the Most out of Your Time Between Transformation Challenges
by: Michael Harris  3/18/2007

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Are you planning another challenge after finishing the one you’re in now? If so, the material that follows should be of some interest and some help to you. It seems like roughly one-half of those who start and complete a 12 week transformation challenge are planning on going into another one in order to get into the shape that they want.

The first thing I want to ask you–actually I’m begging you–is to NOT GO IMMEDIATELY from one challenge right into the next one without a break. Here’s why. Whether you really feel like it or not, a transformation challenge takes a toll on you. The early rising, strenuous exercising and relatively strict dieting are good for you–but over 12 weeks time they can also wear you out. You deserve AND NEED a week or more of rest before you get back into the gym. Think about this: If you go right from one challenge to another, what you’re really doing is taking a 24 week challenge. That’s nearly 6 months, and it’s longer than most should be doing. Most second and subsequent challenges that occur without a break between tend to be very unproductive and unhappy experiences. They also tend to be more often plagued by injuries, illnesses and overtraining effects.

My favorite fitness author, Albuquerque attorney Clarence Bass, coined the phrase “active rest.” That’s what you need to do between challenges. What you need to do, for at least one week and preferably two, is to stay clear out of the gym and away from the weight lifting routine entirely. And don’t worry about losing muscle mass, you won’t. The phenomenon called muscle memory will put you right back into the groove very quickly once you are rested. In fact, you might actually pick up some muscle mass due to the well-deserved rest. Your joints will thank you for it too.

Instead of lifting weights, do one or two of your favorite non-resistance training types of exercises. I do lots of calisthenics such as pushups, pullups, and squat jumps. I also do some bike riding or stair climbing. I take very long walks with my dog. Others enjoy things like swimming, mountain climbing, hiking, or even chopping wood and heavy gardening activity. This gets you out of the old groove, works different areas of your body, and still gives you plenty of fat-burning and fitness forming activity.

As for the diet, stick with the six meals a day. But, add in a bit of red meat if you are inclined, and experiment with some non-typical foods. This might be a good time to try a little of that natural peanut butter you’ve been craving. I eat a fair amount of non-tropical fruits and berries as carb portions during my rest periods. And I eat some lean red meat which has lots of creatine in it. Don’t make your two weeks off a two week free day or you’ll regret it.

Consider your two weeks active rest a working vacation. You’ll be amazed at your renewed strength, your enthusiastic outlook, and your youthful appearance following your time off. If you don’t do it, you’ll feel like you’re dragging a 100 pound anchor around with you for the next twelve weeks. Which one sounds like the best bet to you?

THE UNRECOGNIZABLE BODY FOR LIFE ROUTINE!Tweaks are a common occurrence and usually a common cause for discussion on this forum. Over and over, it is debated whether the “latest and greatest” science is the way to go, rather than that which is in a book from 10 years ago. The debate rages both in the areas of exercise and diet. The most common “tweaks” are to add cardiovascular activity, or to work abs every day or every other day, or to work out each group of muscles every other day. In each one of these cases, the trainee lacks faith that the program as outlined in the book will produce the results they desire as quickly as they desire them to occur. Once the tweaks start, especially if there are several of them, the program becomes less and less recognizable as body for life. Someone doing daily cardio, working abs every day, eating a low carb diet, and also trying to work in some other routine such as kick-boxing, or jazzercise, or P90X is spending most of their spare time doing exercise routine after exercise routine. Eventually, it gets down to the point that about the only thing they share with the original routine in the book is that they still say they are “doing body for life.” The book has simply become the impetus for all this activity rather than the template for it. Is this bad? Is this good? I think it all depends on the trainee. For me, exercise and diet are a means to an end. They take up little of my time, only about 4 hours for exercise, and very little time for food prep, and they allow me to enjoy life. Not that I don’t like working out–I do–but certainly I’d rather be doing other things most of the time. So, body for life really works for me best if I do it by the book. For those who desire to spend much of their times in a gym, or pounding the streets in running shoes, or bouncing around a kick-boxing class, good for you! But, I came to body for life because it is efficient; it’s good science; and it really works. I’ve stayed with body for life because it’s efficient; it’s good science; it really works; and it has transformed me both outside and inside as well. It has enabled me to become a better person, to enjoy life more, and to prioritize my life in a way that works best. So, when I think about tweaks, I think, “why mess up a perfect system?” And I don’t!

Here is a rerun of a blog I did for the Body For Life website, in late May 2007.  It is right where I am today, coming back again and again to the basics of this program. So, I thought I would share it with you readers!

The Simplest Program There Is!
by: Michael Harris  5/30/2007

Body for Life, it has long been said, is a simple program, but not easy. The only way it gets complicated is if YOU complicate it. Most “tweaks” to the Body for Life program, in order to try to speed up its results, or to exceed its results, are futile in the end. Most people don’ tweak the diet, but many of those who fail do cheat at it. Most tweaks are to the exercise program. Here’s why you shouldn’t even think seriously about tweaking it during your twelve weeks.

First of all, while it is a one size fits all program, it does work perfectly for everyone who has not dieted and exercised regularly within the last year. That is because if you are that deconditioned and that far off from normal eating, virtually any organized activity that causes you to work at or near your maximum ability in lifting or in cardio activity will produce an adaptive response by causing muscles to grow, and burning fat in the case of cardio. So, since the program really is optimal for about 95% of those who need to use it, there is no reason to suppose that you are someone or something special and therefore need to “tweak” it. It works just as designed, with three heavy workout sessions per week, alternating between upper and lower body workouts, interspersed with three high intensity cardio sessions twenty minutes long. Assuming you will switch to different exercises every 4 weeks or so during the 12 weeks, you should continue to improve both in the amount of weight you can lift, and in the changes to your physical composition.

This program as outlined above works perfectly because it provides a great opportunity to grow lean muscle which raises the resting metabolic rate, because muscle burns calories even at rest. It works perfectly because if followed correctly the diet provides the right amounts of quality proteins and low glycemic carbs, along with small amounts of good fats, so that it is possible to actually grow muscle mass while at the same time burning fat and losing scale pounds.

Further, the changes in body composition along with the body becoming accustomed to eating and using the right foods, cause the body to leave its status as a weak,flabby, fat storing and sugar-craving machine, and to become a strong, lean and healthy, fat and sugar burning machine instead. The way your body uses the food you eat will completely change if you do this right.

In the end, you will have a completely different and more productive body composition that will allow you to eat more than you used to, and yet continue to stay lean and even grown leaner. You will have a stronger immune system, a healthier attitude and outlook on life, and a desire to excel in all you do. Are these extravagant claims? Not really. They are exactly the results that most everyone who sticks it out will get some measure of in the end.

There are really only two ways you can lose while doing body for life. One is to just quit, or never get started. The other is to get so distracted, so desperate for change, that you are unable or unwilling to take the challenge from beginning to end as it is intended. No one can predict exactly how you will end up if you start modifying the BFL program, but certainly you place everything at risk by doing so. How? Well, mainly because you run the risk of an overtraining effect, which may cause you to get weak, to produce cortisol which reduces muscle mass, and even to get ill due to a compromised immune system. Don’t risk all this for such a small potential benefit. It’s just not worth it. Do the challenge as intended and as written. You won’t be sorry.

So simple, so profoundly effective, yet so difficult that it may well be the most challenging thing you’ve ever done! That’s Body for Life. What are you waiting for?

 

This blog is actually just a guestbook post I wrote recently on the Body for Life guestbook.   Its purpose was to inform others that anyone can do a championship level challenge, but that sudden enthusiasm or a quick attempt to catch up on missed opportunities is not going to work.

Whenever anyone does an excellent job, like [name removed] just did, everyone wants to know what they did “differently,” meaning how did they “tweak” the program. The inference is that because someone did it better than most of us, they must have some big secret to getting better results than the rest.

However, the 12 years of history of this challenge demonstrate rather clearly that there really is NO SECRET for an excellent challenge, and that the results are achieved by those who work harder, diet more strictly, and do not delude themselves and others into thinking that they are doing this “to the T” when in fact they are on cruise control instead of in a race. No amount of inspiration or excitement will last for long enough to produce results. Extra cardio, fat burners, trendy gym memberships, and all of those kinds of things might help just a little bit, for a very short while, but there is simply no substitute for rugged, gut-busting workouts, and for gritty determination when the going gets really tough. Doing a terrific transformation in just twelve weeks is simple–but it’s certainly not easy–and often it’s not even pleasant. It’s key to stay focused, to stay prepared, and to stay on task.

And the only way that will really work is to make the challenge the number one priority in your life for the next twelve weeks. Those of us who spend the 12 weeks bickering with family about our diets or our workout times, or who spend time telling themselves they are doing everything they are supposed to, while they are grabbing little nibbles out of the snack bowls at work, are really just wasting their time. This actually takes dedication that most people will not muster. We are ALL capable of it, but few are willing to put themselves through what it takes to excel. Stay strong, stay steady, and stay focused, and you’ll do fine. But if you try to stay enthusiastic for the entire twelve weeks, or you look for some instant miracle here, you’ll be joining soon the ranks of those who just thought this would be easy, and found out otherwise.

Just so you know, I’m not talking about ANYONE on the guestbook as I make all these comparisons between others and champions. I’m just drawing on my 7 years on the guestbook, and my own experiences in doing challenges prior to my championship challenge in 2006. So, don’t get paranoid and think that somehow I’m talking about a certain person. The problems that keep us from achieving a good challenge are just the problems that most of us who live disorganized and uninspiring lives pick up along the way. The cures for them are just hard work, focus and commitment.