When classes start I will have access to the campus gym and planned to start weight lifting again. I love the feeling I get from weight lifting, and also love the look when I can start to see muscles. It's been almost a year now since I stopped weight lifting. I was doing great and working out around 5 days a week at my old school doing around an hour or so of weights MWF after a 15 min cardio warm up, then on TTH I would just do a half hour to an hour of cardio (stair machine mostly with a little treadmill thrown in).

Reading the description of BFL it sounds like I can get a great workout far more efficiently which is important when trying to manage a hectic school schedule as well as two small children. I do have a few questions. I know most of these will be answered better by the book, I just don't know when I'll get a chance to read it. I'm going to start by checking the library. I know the local hastings has a copy, but money is severly tight atm.

1. It is recomended to not eat until after workout, then to have a shake or other high protien snack from what I understand. I have to get my son to school and my daughter to daycare, so it will be an hour after waking up before I can even start lifting, though I will do my morning stretches, is that still ok? Are EAS carb control shakes ok for this? I have designer whey, but the EAS ready made would be easier to transport.

2. I would like to still do Pilates. Would this be outside in addition to the program, or would it count as my ab workout on the days lower body and abs are worked? Also I enjoy Yoga. I plan to do my morning stretches, but I also have an hour long rutine for weight loss I want to continue to do. What days would be best to do it, the cardio days, or the weight days?

I know I'll learn more about the nutricion plan when I read the book, but for the most part I plan to stick to Atkins OWL and slowly raise the carb count. I can't stomach dairy, nuts are a tad expencive, and I'm already eating yogurt, so I plan on just eating more yogurt, nut butters, and maybe more low GI fruits and grains. I do have a problem with the 6 meals a day though due to being inclass. Would a shake, or a very small snack be ok? Something I can slip into class and eat without being noticed?

Hi LadyBelle,

I can't really answer your questions because I'm not sure of the answers. But I'll try anyways.

In question one are you asking if it's okay to start lifting an hour after getting up? Heck, I don't get to the gym until about 4 in the afternoon, so I'd say however you can work it into you schedule is fine. On aerobics days I run, so I usually get out about half an hour after getting up. I'd think the EAS Carb control shakes are okay as a replacement for any meal in the day. I wish we could get those here, but they aren't being sold in Canada. I often have a regular EAS shake at work as a meal, usually after my workout.

Good luck and I'm sure someone else will give you better answers.

Arnie

Hi LadyBelle!

I had great success when I was on BFL. My husband and I did it together twice, the first time was Jan-April 2002 and the second time Jan-April 2003. We didn't ever really "stop" doing it either, just had less time to spend at the gym and didn't restrict ourselves as much. Also, each time we finished the 12 week program we had a tropical all-inclusive vacation planned, so we would thoroughly enjoy our holiday in every way and then come back and get back into a mainly BFL regime.

To answer your first question about when you're supposed to eat in relation to your workout - Bill Phillips recommends working out first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. I would never in a million years be able to make it to the gym before work, so hubby and I met at the gym after work, around 5/5:30 ish. So, I would arrive at work (with a breakfast I would bring with me), eat my breakfast around 8 a.m.; Eat a snack at 10:00 a.m. (almost always a lower carb protein bar - I started having shakes but soon got sick of them, and I crave biting into something and chewing, so drinking a shake often didn't satisfy that); at noon I'd have my lunch which usually consisted of leftovers from dinner; then at 2:30/3:00 I'd have another protein bar; I'd have my workout at 5/5:30 (which is 2-3 hours after the latest meal/snack); then we'd come home and have dinner. So, the distance between my late afternoon snack and dinner would be slightly longer than recommended, but it's all my schedule would allow so what can you do. The best part...it didn't seem to hinder me at all. I had awesome results. After dinner, we usually wouldn't have that last 6th meal because our dinner wouldn't usually be until 7:00 p.m. and I never really felt like having anything late in the evening. Sometimes we'd make a chocolate protein smoothie with some decaff coffee crystals and split it, or warm it and put some SF irish cream syrup in it and have a "hot chocolate" in the hot tub because it was winter then, so I always liked our tradition of hot chocolate with irish cream in the hot tub.

So, I guess I could have made that shorter by just saying...do what works with you, as long as you aren't waiting TOO long between your meals (I think 3 hours is ideal) and you don't work out right after a meal/snack (otherwise you are working off your available energy source you just ate, not the stores you want to burn).

To answer the question about Pilates, you couldn't count that as either a cardio day or a workout day, so you'd have to count it as your abdominal portion of your routine. We always changed our routine to be Lower body on one day, Cardio AND abs the next, Upper body the next day, another Cardio and ab day, Lower again then that blessed free day!! So, we didn't do Lower body and abs together (we found we were in the gym too long when we did this) so we combined it with the short 20 minute cardio day.

To make your life easier for preparing for dinners, can I suggest you poach (nice way of saying "boil") a dozen chicken breasts on Sunday night till they're nearly done and store them in a tupperware container in the fridge. That way when you come home after work or workout, you just need to slice the chicken and toss it in a stir fry, or put some sauce on it and throw it on the BBQ, or simmer it with mushrooms and juices, etc. I'd put the centre "root" part of the onion that never gets used, a bay leaf, a piece of ginger root, other spices, etc. to infuse into the chicken to give it a great flavour. Doing the chicken this way also makes it SOOOO tender. I still like doing this. We also would put the rice cooker on and do 6 cups of brown rice on Sundays and put that in tupperware in the fridge too. I'd slice some green onion and mix that in to give it some extra flavour (or use some chic. broth instead of all water). Just a couple of tips I found to save time when we'd be ready to eat as soon as we got back from the gym (otherwise I'd want to pick at nibblies while I cooked!)

As far as having small snacks for class, definitely that would work. Remember, the 6 meals are supposed to be fairly small (but surprisingly, you get used to what is probably closer to the portion sizes that we should always eat!) Atkins bars, Protein Diet bars, Detour bars, etc. were all staples for me. I don't know many other snacks to recommend because I only ate bars for snacks. For breakfast I'd use my braun hand blender and blend a few frozen strawberries with some splenda and 1/2 cup of cottage cheese. You'd honestly think it was cheesecake especially because it was blended smooth. I'd cook a bunch of slow cooking oatmeal on Sunday nights as well and put them in little single serving containers to take to work for breakfasts and put my "cheesecake" overtop of the oatmeal - oooh, I miss that now that I'm on Atkins. You can also pack an apple for one carbohydrate serving. OMG, I totally miss apples!!! Maybe I should go back to BFL!!

Good luck! Trust me, it'll work for you. OH, be sure to take your before pictures. Each time I didn't think I'd come nearly as far as I had so thank goodness for those pictures to really see my results and feel proud of myself!

Lily

I picked up the BFL and Body RX books at the library today. I plan to buy it later if I do decide this is what I want to do. I'm trying to get my SO to do it with me and maybe even try for the couples category in the 12 week challange, but he's already squirming out. Geeze what a commitment phobe, he can't even put 12 weeks worth of comitment in

I havn't read through yet, but this looks like it may be extreamly good for me.

1. The workouts are less then an hour, at least on Cardio days. This means I can go to the gym after getting the kids to school, but before my classes. I can sleep in until 7:00 instead of 5:30 - 6:00 (yahhh!!!!)

2. The small meals throughout the day means I can have small snacks between certain classes instead of trying to scarf down a full lunch on my short break, or be starving in the class right before lunch.

3. I naturally eat lean protiens. Working out at this intensity will allow me to raise carbs comfortably and lower my fat. I think that will resemble more my natural eating patterns then the very low carb/high fat of induciton and early OWL.

4. I love to lift weights. I never know how many sets to do, or at what intensity. I also never knew what exercises I should do, so I would just do them all or what I felt like. My old gymtime was a couple hours. This lays everything out in the pyramid thing and will make it easy on me. I plan to use the pdf someone pointed out to really monitor my progress.

I know between the first few sets you are suposed to take a minute rest. So what do you do in that minute? Just shake out the muscles and change weights? I always felt silly in the gym standing by a machine twiddling my thumbs or walking in circles waiting for time between reps

Hi LadyBelle...Me again!

On the weights days, we were in the gym from 45 minutes to just over an hour depending on how busy the gym was, so it's still a quick workout and it helps SO much to be going in there with a routine in hand, not blindly wandering from machine to machine.

Yes, between the sets you are supposed to wait a minute (except for the last set where you're supersetting). It's easy to waste that minute if you have a workout partner, because they'll do their rep and then it's back to you. If you're gym is fairly busy, you may find people asking to work in on a machine with you, this is another good way to spend that minute...let them do a rep. Or jump in on a machine with someone who'se already on it so you can work in with them.

If you have the equipment all to yourself, I'd just usually take that time to write on my workout sheet, write what you just did, plan for the next one. Sometimes I'd just rest...most people take these rests, so you won't look out of place.

Definitely print those spreadsheets with the workouts from their website though, they're very helpful.

Lily

Thanks Lily, I just tried this for breakfast and damn is it good! I used blueberries instead of strawberries.

Thanks for the tips.
Arnie

Arnie - I'm glad you enjoyed it! I used to leave my braun hand blender at work and bring 2 cartons of cottage cheese to work on Mondays and a ziploc of frozen berries for the week and blend it up when I got to work. People used to say I was making my "PINK GOO!" LOL!! I thought it looked way better than they made it sound. At least they never wanted to try it...I wouldn't have wanted to share!

Lily