Body For Life is written by Bill Phillips who has been doing this for a long time. One thing I like about this book is that it has lots of pictures of before and after. It is just amazing transformation for many people. They have a website, Body For Life that I check out every now and then. It is a pretty good website and I find a couple of things to download especially their charts. The book has two parts, the exercises and the meal planning.
The exercise itself has two parts as well. The strength training (weight lifting) and cardiovascular training. The strength training is broken down to two sections, the upper body (shoulders, biceps, triceps, back and pecs) and the lower body (calves, quads, hamstring and abs). The schedule is set up to do weight training 3 times a week, one week it would be Monday and Friday for upper body, Wednesday for lower body, then next week would be Monday and Friday for lower body and Wednesday for upper body. It may look like not enough training to make a difference, but let me tell you...the schedule is set up so that your muscles can develop during the resting period because of repairing and all that. Each part of the body gets 6 sets of weight lifting, Set 1 has 12 reps of light weight, Set 2 has 10 reps of a little bit heavier weight, Set 3 has 8 reps of a bit heavier weight than Set 2. Set 4 has 6 reps of the heaviest weight. Then Set 5, you go back to weight you used for Set 3 and do 12 reps. For Set 6, you change different exercise for same muscles and do 12 reps (I usually use the weight I used in Set 2.) This may be a bit confusing, just read the book because it explains the program much more better than I can.
The 2nd part is meal planning, it has 2 components, authorized food and meal replacements/supplements. Bill wrote in his book that the meal plan needs to be 5 to 6 small meals, and each meal has one serving of fat, carb and protein, and the thing is that he has a list of authorized food. I am not sure if the list is on the website but it is in the book. Also in the plan, Bill endorses meal replacements designed to meet the 1/1/1 servings per meal. He also encourages people to take supplements such as vitamins and minerals because we can't really get it all from the food we eat. One good thing about his meal plan, 1 day is free day where we can eat anything we want. That is a bit scary because knowing myself, the free day would be all binge-out kind of day. I am not following the meal plan because my dietician and I developed a meal plan that allows me to have enough carb during the day where my blood sugar won't spike and crash and cause me to eat more.
The exercise itself has two parts as well. The strength training (weight lifting) and cardiovascular training. The strength training is broken down to two sections, the upper body (shoulders, biceps, triceps, back and pecs) and the lower body (calves, quads, hamstring and abs). The schedule is set up to do weight training 3 times a week, one week it would be Monday and Friday for upper body, Wednesday for lower body, then next week would be Monday and Friday for lower body and Wednesday for upper body. It may look like not enough training to make a difference, but let me tell you...the schedule is set up so that your muscles can develop during the resting period because of repairing and all that. Each part of the body gets 6 sets of weight lifting, Set 1 has 12 reps of light weight, Set 2 has 10 reps of a little bit heavier weight, Set 3 has 8 reps of a bit heavier weight than Set 2. Set 4 has 6 reps of the heaviest weight. Then Set 5, you go back to weight you used for Set 3 and do 12 reps. For Set 6, you change different exercise for same muscles and do 12 reps (I usually use the weight I used in Set 2.) This may be a bit confusing, just read the book because it explains the program much more better than I can.
The 2nd part is meal planning, it has 2 components, authorized food and meal replacements/supplements. Bill wrote in his book that the meal plan needs to be 5 to 6 small meals, and each meal has one serving of fat, carb and protein, and the thing is that he has a list of authorized food. I am not sure if the list is on the website but it is in the book. Also in the plan, Bill endorses meal replacements designed to meet the 1/1/1 servings per meal. He also encourages people to take supplements such as vitamins and minerals because we can't really get it all from the food we eat. One good thing about his meal plan, 1 day is free day where we can eat anything we want. That is a bit scary because knowing myself, the free day would be all binge-out kind of day. I am not following the meal plan because my dietician and I developed a meal plan that allows me to have enough carb during the day where my blood sugar won't spike and crash and cause me to eat more.
posted by Tomas at
10:18 AM
