CoachBioArt

You’ve gotta try this… these shakes are amazing. They pack a whole bunch of nutrients/vitamins, w/ very little calories and great taste! It also feels you up pretty well.

Contact me if you want to find out more about Shakeology. I drink it every day and feel better than ever!

Take a look at this video. Beachbody has another component to it’s business and that is coaching. It basically builds on the fact that the products work so well that you become a walking infomercial (as it happened to me). When people ask you how you did it, (which happens all the time to me), you have a chance to earn some money based on the referrals and word of mouth… In addition, it is important to note that beachbody actually sends customers your way… that’s kinda cool on its own…

It’s not Amway… you are not selling detergent. It’s not a pyramid scheme. The products are tangible and they work. Finally, it’s not a scam, these people are really great and just want to help you get fit!

Contact me if you want to find out more about Beachbody and the coaching opportunity!

Trainers: Drop the ‘tude, give us your all – CNN.com.

Good article on CNN about trainers and working out. I agree with most of the points.

The only thing I would add is that you don’t need a live trainer. Any BeachBody video starring Tony Horton or Shaun T will have the same effect. They are great trainers and give you the flexibility of doing things on your time and at your pace. The videos are always available and cost a lot less than live trainers.

One of my favorite blogs, In The Pipeline deals with the pharma industry and often talks about interesting discoveries.  He has a very nice write up on a research paper published in the journal Nature.  In that paper, the authors looked at the effect of calorie restriction on lifespan and fertility in fruit flies.  This has been done in the past, but the interesting thing is that they started adding back nutrients to their diets to see what the effect was.  The conclusions are very interesting, in that adding carbs did not affect lifespan, but that adding methionine (one of the essential amino acids) had a more significant effect than adding anything else.

Now, Don’t go out and start overeating carbohydrates… those are still things to keep in check for diabetes/etc., but it is likely that you will see reformulations of supplements to include less methionine and other amino acids.  Very cool stuff, good to keep an eye out for…

These pictures are 1 year apart.  I started doing P90X after Christmas, so they represent 9 months of hard work (and 50 pounds of weight lost)

Do the programs work? you bet… are they hard? sure, but… is it worth it? YES!

I did it!  I survived 60 days of INSANITY!

I’m not going to surgarcoat it… it was hard!  It took my body about a week to recover at the end so that the deep muscle pain would go away… That being said, the results in my fitness level are impressive.  Check out the improvements in the fit test on my previous post.

In terms of visual improvement, check out my continuing progress… The first 6 pictures are from the first rounds of P90X and P90X+/1-on-1.  The last 2 are after 30 and 60 days of INSANITY!.

I didn’t lose that much weight (~10 pounds), but the change in my legs and arms is pretty nice (lost between 2 and 4% body fat).  I can run faster than I ever could and push-ups are a breeze .  It is important to note that I did not follow the INSANITY! diet on purpose.  I was already doing a 1750-2000 calorie diet and my goal wasn’t necessarily to lose weight, but to significantly improve my aerobic fitness.  I’m sure that if I followed the diet, I would have lost more, but again, that wasn’t the goal.

In terms of the program, it was great.  The workouts were entertaining, and didn’t take that long.  I figured that I would be spent after every workout, and I was half-right.  It was physically exhausting, but I felt great after each one.  The Intervals were very well done. My HR was up when it had to be and it was easy to do the three different levels… here’s an example workout as recorded by my Polar RS800CX monitor.

HR Max: 176, HR Avg: 146, ~880 cals in 1 hr – WOW!

The workouts really picked up after the first month.  Not only were they longer, but they were more intense… Even the warmups got harder.  I’ll admit that on more than one occasion, I really wanted to quit during the workout (even during the warm-ups a few times), but I stuck through with it and felt so much better because of it.

BTW, Shaun T’s cues are great, you can tell he is working hard and its fun to see the rest of the players push it too.

I did have to make a few changes at the end.  I was pushing hard enough that I had to take a day of rest here and there during the week, but that allowed me to continue.  In addition, once Rugby season started, I had to do YogaX or XStretch the day before the game, otherwise I would have nothing left for the games.  That “rest” day payed off, My speed and agility were unequaled… I was everywhere on the field! It felt great, I no longer had to think about pushing to get there, I just got there.  I’ve never had so much fun!

One thing I miss is the lifting, since I lost some of the P90X strength.  I am now (after 1 week of taking easy), restarting P90X as a P90X/+/1on1/Insanity Hybrid.  I will do weight training 3 days a week and a Max INSANITY workout or other interval training twice or thrice a week.  I will also do one of the Yoga workouts once a week as a recovery workout.  Stay tuned…

The fit test consists of doing each exercise for 1 minute and counting the number of reps.

For some of the exercises, a rep consists of more than one move. For example, the globe jump is 4 jump squats: right-back-left-front

The first number is how many I did on day 1 of the program (after doing P90X/+ for about 6 months). The second number is how many I did on the last day of the program, which was about 65 days later… what can I say? the program kicked my butt, but it got me in great aerobic shape!  Full review and before and after pics coming soon!

• Switch Kicks – 40:70
• Power Jacks – 40:60
• Power Knees – 85:132
• Power Jumps – 20:46
• Globe Jumps – 7:12
• Suicide Jumps – 10:16
• Push Up Jacks – 24:40
• Low Plank Obliques – 45:65

That Late-night Snack: Worse Than You Think.

Interesting article on the ScienceDaily site.   Basically they examined the effects of timing of food intake on weight gain.   Finding the optimal time for eating is almost as important as what you eat!

From the writeup: “Our circadian clock, or biological timing system, governs our daily cycles of feeding, activity and sleep, with respect to external dark and light cycles. Recent studies have found the body’s internal clock also regulates energy use, suggesting the timing of meals may matter in the balance between caloric intake and expenditure.”

The question is, what is the right time?

There’s an interesting article on the NYTimes Well Blog about how fatty foods can affect memory on laboratory experiments (on rats).  So, if this holds for humans, Atkins will help you lose weight, but should affect your mind.  Interesting thing is that I felt the same way when I was doing Atkins… I felt a little cloudy most of the time (like a fog of war for those of you gamers).  Sure, the low sugar will do some of that, but since switching to a more balanced diet, I am certainly more alert and I can do a lot better on my high-intensity workouts!

Don’t get me wrong, a high fat burger or other fried delicacy is good every now and then, but the point is to keep it to “every now and then!”….

The image below makes me sleepy just looking at it.  Look closely… The carbohydrate overdose will cause an insulin coma and according to the article, the fat will make you slow and senile.  At least you’ll have a smile on while eating it, but is it worth it?  If you are like me, you’ll want to indulge every now and then, but trust me… Run to the gym right after eating it (or 1-2 hours later if you are responsible for cleanup duty where you work out, in case you lose some it while working out!).

You’ll regret it more if you don’t.

Having lost enough weight to be considered in fair shape, I hate that according to the Body Mass Index (BMI) calculators, I’m just going from obese to oveweight… hey! I have a lot more muscle than the average american, and although I’m not thin, I’m not on the upper limit of being overweight or even worse, obese!  The BMI calculators are meant for a general audience that doesn’t really work out as much as I do (6-7 times a week for at least 30-60 minutes).

I finally found a BMI calculator that is corrected for lean body mass in the formula and is shifted so that it does not just assume you are pear-shaped… check it out:

Body Mass Index – Lean Body Mass

Here’s another calculator that also takes into account your waist size and gives more info than just the BMI number