Every single program comes with a nutrition guide. My best guess is that most people get a program with the best of intentions, but most people don't take a lot of time looking at the nutrition guide. The exercise programs work...but NOT if you only do HALF of the program! By that, I mean only the exercise part. The exercise is great and will definitely improve your health, don't get me wrong...but there is one sentence that needs to be emphasized...YOU CAN'T OUT WORKOUT A BAD DIET! In a REALLY good workout you'll burn between 500-1,000 calories. That's in an intense workout. There are other things that happen to your body other than burning calories...but my point is easy to demonstrate with numbers. So let's say you do a super good workout and you just burned 700 calories. Then, because you're working out so hard, you justify a big dessert at dinner. Let's say it's a piece of chocolate cake. That ONE piece probably has somewhere between 300 to 600 calories, depending on the size and the amount of frosting. What about the rest of the food you ate that day. Was it good fuel? Maybe you had some fries at lunch too. That doesn't seem like a big deal right? Well there goes the calories you burned in your workout. The problem though, isn't in eating ONE piece of cake occasionally, or ONE serving of fries occasionally. The problem lies in consistent small decisions made every day.
There are 2 books that I LOVE that go into detail about this concept and how it applies in all areas of life, not just health. One is called "The Slight Edge" and the other is called "The Compound Effect". Success is not an event. Let's use Michael Jordan as an example. You might say that he won the title of MVP in the NBA finals on the days that he was voted MVP (multiple times). The truth though, is that he started winning that title as a little boy. His lifetime of small consistent daily decisions led him to that point. Every time he made a good decision, he was earning that title. Every time he woke up early to practice basketball or get an extra workout in. Every time he chose to eat healthy instead of eating crappy fried foods. Every time he did ANYTHING that improved his athletic ability, he was earning that title. The actual day he got the title was just the RESULT of all of his daily, seemingly insignificant decisions made over the course of a lifetime!
In health and fitness, this is easy to demonstrate. I'll use my own situation to demonstrate it. I spent 7 or 8 years complaining about being out of shape but I never did anything to fix it. In 2014, I started doing Focus T25 but I decided that it would be pointless to do the workout if I don't follow the diet plan. So I did it...and got AMAZING results! Here's the thing though; I didn't lose 30 pounds on day 60 of the program. I didn't lose it in day 1. I lost a little bit every single day through a combination of proper portions of healthy food, and exercise. Every time I chose to eat baked fish instead of fried chicken, or to eat an orange instead of a cookie, I was earning the result. I didn't skip a day of exercise...but if I had, it wouldn't have destroyed all of my work. It would have set me back a little but not that much. However, if I had skipped a day 30 times in a row, well then the result would have been a LOT different! The same principle applies to me now. I'm in the best shape of my life and if I skip a day of working out, I'm still going to be in the best shape of my life tomorrow. Or if I eat a piece of cake, I'm still going to be healthy tomorrow (although it may make me feel sick if it's as much as I used to eat). But if I start skipping workouts regularly and making poor eating decisions every day, well, then I'll get right back to where I was a year ago REALLY QUICK! It's the small things that we do that lead to big things.
Ok, now to get back on track...
All of the beachbody programs are designed for a specific time frame. That does NOT mean that after you do the 21 Day Fix for 21 days that you can just go back to your old habits that created the problem in the first place! It's intended to be a tool you can use to jumpstart your results and a guide to follow for the rest of your life! I finished Focus T25 on a Friday. I started P90X3 the following Monday. Then I finished that and started with Body Beast the following week. Then the same with P90X2. Now I'm doing Insanity Max:30. My point is, I made a LIFESTYLE change. Once I finish with Insanity Max:30 I might go back to one of the other programs I've already done. If I only had Focus T25, I'd be doing the entire program over and over again every 60 days and adding in other activities like running and cycling and rock climbing, etc...All of these small decisions are really easy to do every day. Losing 30 pounds in a day without cutting part of your body off is impossible. Losing a few ounces a day, totally possible. It's easy to do...but it's just as easy NOT to do!
It took a lot of discipline to follow the T25 nutrition guide and do all the workouts for the whole 2 months! I had never done anything like that before so it was a big shift! Why would I do that and then go back to my old habits just to ruin all the hard work I had put in? It makes no sense!
Sure the programs work great for someone that wants to just lose weight for a wedding or some other event...but they're intended to help people TRANSFORM THEIR LIVES!
That is who I'm looking for! I'm looking to help anybody that wants help, but more specifically, anybody that wants to change their lifestyle LONG TERM!
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