The Joehoo Fitness Plan
Have you ever wished you could get past all of the experimentation and tackle your fitness goals head on? Have you ever wished you could finally just get down to what works and have results that are as quick and easy as possible, but also realistic and cost-effective?
What if you had the wisdom of someone who has tried all the gimmicks, all the fads, all the plans, and will just narrow it down to what works?
Well now you do. Let me give you a brief overview of my qualifications. I’m not an expert, nor am I a nutritionist. I’m just somebody who was in really good shape in college, got really fat in graduate school, made it around 80% of the way back to my college form 18 months ago, and was hovering around there for the past 18 months, when I finally figured it all out and started to get amazing results.
What I came up with is a system that will get you the quickest, easiest, and most real results possible. This plan is more about what you are getting than what you are avoiding. This plan is about not only losing weight, but also feeling relaxed, balanced from a hunger standpoint, strong and vital. No more starving yourself, no more staggering through a diet that gives you a “free day” and just trying to hold on all weak until the moment at which you can pig out.
The biggest thing this program is about is finally saying, “no more gimmicks, no more BS, no more quick fixes,” and actually doing what you probably knew you should have been doing all along.
The Body For Life Lie
I can’t speak for others. I know that two things are true regarding my fitness cycle and me. First, I’ll never deny that Body For Life can’t produce great results the first time you do it. Second, I won’t try to tell you that you or someone else can’t have amazing, continuous and permanent results with Body For Life. Of all the programs, fads and everything else out there, Body For Life is the only program I’ve tried, or that others I know well have tried, that kind of works.
The principles of Body For Life, in a nutshell, and in case you aren’t familiar with the program, can be narrowed down to the following:
1. Work out 6 days a week, three days you lift weights, three days you do an aggressive twenty-minute session of cardio. If you’re reading this now and you don’t have an elementary understanding of working out, I recommend you use Phillips’ books, or a number of other qualified books to pick the basics up. You wouldn’t want to hurt yourself or have your arms or legs flailing around in lifts that do nothing.
2. Eat six meals a day, comprised of authorized foods. In these meals you should attempt to get one reasonable portion of good carbohydrates and one reasonable portion of good protein. By good I mean, you should stay away from fatty proteins or bad carbs such as corn syrup or flour-based products. You should also avoid more than necessary amounts of fat. Stay away from butter or creams/dressings. Phillips also recommends that you get one or two vegetables daily.
3. One day a week you don’t work out or eat based on any plan. You relax and eat whatever you want.
4. You can supplement a meal any time during the week with a shake called myoplex, which gives you a lot of good carbs and protein.
When you don’t have a handle on your fitness life, and you’re not ready to make a total, seven-day-a-week commitment, Body For Life is about the best there is. Don’t mess with diet pills, you’ll lose muscle and you could end up in the hospital. Don’t get into diets based on processed food meals that are loaded with sodium and chemicals and have had the goodness sucked out. I don’t care what football player is on TV to tell you how great it is. Don’t do South Beach Diet or Atkins. I mean you can, I’m certainly not going to get into the legal mess of telling you that I know for a fact they don’t work, but I can honestly tell you that there just isn’t a way to do this while also getting all the foods you want.
Believe me, I’m a guy’s guy. I like chicken wings with ranch dressing, pizza and beer. If there were a way to get in shape and stay in shape with a gimmick that allows you to eat tons of fat, in my opinion, I would have found it by now. I’d love to sit here and tell you, “man, I was 185 lbs. of solid muscle in college, got up to 330 in law school, and now I’m back down to 230 and getting back in great shape rapidly, and I did it by eating cheese pizza and avoiding fish.” If you happen to try that and you have proof that it works for someone who isn’t a genetic freak, please, send me the plan. I’d love to switch once I have proof.
How it finally happened to me
On July 25th I was 246 lbs. and I was just starting back on a modified version of Body For Life after having fallen off the wagon for three weeks, prior to which I had done Body For Life for three months and gotten down to 230 lbs. I’d lose 10 lbs. during the week and gain 8 back on Sunday. But I had very little energy. I was avoiding all the things Phillips told me to avoid and all week long I would just Jones for that free day so that I could pig out all day on fatty sandwiches, pizza and steak. By Thursday I was usually a physically and mentally drained wreck that had a stomach that growled loud enough to be heard for miles.
Well, this time I was three days into the plan, and on that day, 16 days ago, I happened to have a picture taken of me by a relative. When I saw the picture, my jaw dropped. My face was fat and I was this fat lifeless person I didn’t want to be, and this was after 12 of the last 15 weeks had been devoted to Body For Life. In those 12 weeks I had gone from 255 lbs. to 232 lbs. I sat there at 246, just getting mad and thinking that this isn’t someone I want to be at all anymore. I mean, I used to say, “at least it’s not the 330 I was in law school, but now I was just tired of it.” I decided 17 days ago that I was going to go balls to the wall and that I wasn’t taking another free day until I was at least 205. Part of me was laughing at myself. I mean, thus far it had been hard for me to go seven full days without a free day.
Well I weighed in at 232.0 lbs. this morning after 17 days, not 12 weeks. More importantly, I have more energy and a more relaxed feeling than I ever have, and I don’t even crave my free day anymore. In fact, I don’t want it period. On Sunday I happened to smell some French toast and it made me nauseous. Who needs a free day? I’ll take one after I’m wearing 34” jeans, weighing a solid 205 lbs. with my fitness troubles so far in the rearview mirror, they seem like another lifetime.
How I did it
I decided to give myself a few rules other than the free day.
1. All of my carbs come from vegetable juice, berry juice, steel cut oatmeal or wheat pasta. And I have at least one glass of juice made from kale, greens, celery and carrots and one glass of juice made from blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries every day.
2. All of my protein comes from egg whites, chicken, lean pork, fish, or a protein supplement like Isopure.
3. If I want to have a nice meal to keep my sanity, it’s fine, but it must be no more than 400 calories, it must not be later in the day, it must be organic and it must have at least 20 grams of protein in it.
4. All of my food in general is organic. My friend Vijay said it today. While there are tons and tons of benefits of unprocessed foods, most people believe that there are many benefits we don’t know. Go to Whole Foods. They have steel cut oats, organic berries and green veggies, organic meats, chicken and egg whites. And if you’re smart you don’t have to spend much more there than you do at the regular grocery store where you end up buying food that may momentarily feed your stomach, but will leave your body screaming at you that it is hungry for a boatload of things you aren’t getting.
5. Low sodium. I want to stay away from any artificial sodium because it makes you retain water.
6. Whatever combination I decide to go with of the aforementioned foods, I try to zero in on making sure I’m getting lots of kale, blackberries, steel cut oats or whole grains, and egg whites.
7. I modified the Body For Life program from the workout perspective. I now work out seven days a week, still lifting three times, but now instead of three sessions of cardio I do two, and then I do two days of abdominal workouts, concentrating mostly on my oblique region.
The results of these six rules are phenomenal. I’m stronger than I ever have been, I’ve lost 14 lbs. in seventeen days, and at the rate I’m going I could easily lose 30 lbs. between July 25th and September 1st, which would put me at 216 lbs., a weight that I haven’t been within ten pounds of since 2002. More importantly, because I’m controlling my insulin by eating fruits that send it up slowly and keep it up longer (berries as opposed to say apples or oranges which spike your insulin quickly and leave you much hungrier much faster), I no longer feel hungry or unbalanced in terms of energy.
And I have flexibility. The staples are there, but I can change it up and drink a lot of protein supplements on a busy day, or if I have more time, I can go heavy on the oatmeal and cooked meats. I can make one pitcher of veggie juice to last me a week, I can cook up a bunch of chicken breasts and refrigerate them over the course of a week. Basically, just doing the things you do when you want to say, “no more of the BS, I’m ready, for anything my fitness life is ready to dish out.”
I’m going to be posting as often as I can to continue to track my results.
I'm linking the previous only because I'll be chronicalling the end of my 3 year long battle:
Have you ever wished you could get past all of the experimentation and tackle your fitness goals head on? Have you ever wished you could finally just get down to what works and have results that are as quick and easy as possible, but also realistic and cost-effective?
What if you had the wisdom of someone who has tried all the gimmicks, all the fads, all the plans, and will just narrow it down to what works?
Well now you do. Let me give you a brief overview of my qualifications. I’m not an expert, nor am I a nutritionist. I’m just somebody who was in really good shape in college, got really fat in graduate school, made it around 80% of the way back to my college form 18 months ago, and was hovering around there for the past 18 months, when I finally figured it all out and started to get amazing results.
What I came up with is a system that will get you the quickest, easiest, and most real results possible. This plan is more about what you are getting than what you are avoiding. This plan is about not only losing weight, but also feeling relaxed, balanced from a hunger standpoint, strong and vital. No more starving yourself, no more staggering through a diet that gives you a “free day” and just trying to hold on all weak until the moment at which you can pig out.
The biggest thing this program is about is finally saying, “no more gimmicks, no more BS, no more quick fixes,” and actually doing what you probably knew you should have been doing all along.
The Body For Life Lie
I can’t speak for others. I know that two things are true regarding my fitness cycle and me. First, I’ll never deny that Body For Life can’t produce great results the first time you do it. Second, I won’t try to tell you that you or someone else can’t have amazing, continuous and permanent results with Body For Life. Of all the programs, fads and everything else out there, Body For Life is the only program I’ve tried, or that others I know well have tried, that kind of works.
The principles of Body For Life, in a nutshell, and in case you aren’t familiar with the program, can be narrowed down to the following:
1. Work out 6 days a week, three days you lift weights, three days you do an aggressive twenty-minute session of cardio. If you’re reading this now and you don’t have an elementary understanding of working out, I recommend you use Phillips’ books, or a number of other qualified books to pick the basics up. You wouldn’t want to hurt yourself or have your arms or legs flailing around in lifts that do nothing.
2. Eat six meals a day, comprised of authorized foods. In these meals you should attempt to get one reasonable portion of good carbohydrates and one reasonable portion of good protein. By good I mean, you should stay away from fatty proteins or bad carbs such as corn syrup or flour-based products. You should also avoid more than necessary amounts of fat. Stay away from butter or creams/dressings. Phillips also recommends that you get one or two vegetables daily.
3. One day a week you don’t work out or eat based on any plan. You relax and eat whatever you want.
4. You can supplement a meal any time during the week with a shake called myoplex, which gives you a lot of good carbs and protein.
When you don’t have a handle on your fitness life, and you’re not ready to make a total, seven-day-a-week commitment, Body For Life is about the best there is. Don’t mess with diet pills, you’ll lose muscle and you could end up in the hospital. Don’t get into diets based on processed food meals that are loaded with sodium and chemicals and have had the goodness sucked out. I don’t care what football player is on TV to tell you how great it is. Don’t do South Beach Diet or Atkins. I mean you can, I’m certainly not going to get into the legal mess of telling you that I know for a fact they don’t work, but I can honestly tell you that there just isn’t a way to do this while also getting all the foods you want.
Believe me, I’m a guy’s guy. I like chicken wings with ranch dressing, pizza and beer. If there were a way to get in shape and stay in shape with a gimmick that allows you to eat tons of fat, in my opinion, I would have found it by now. I’d love to sit here and tell you, “man, I was 185 lbs. of solid muscle in college, got up to 330 in law school, and now I’m back down to 230 and getting back in great shape rapidly, and I did it by eating cheese pizza and avoiding fish.” If you happen to try that and you have proof that it works for someone who isn’t a genetic freak, please, send me the plan. I’d love to switch once I have proof.
How it finally happened to me
On July 25th I was 246 lbs. and I was just starting back on a modified version of Body For Life after having fallen off the wagon for three weeks, prior to which I had done Body For Life for three months and gotten down to 230 lbs. I’d lose 10 lbs. during the week and gain 8 back on Sunday. But I had very little energy. I was avoiding all the things Phillips told me to avoid and all week long I would just Jones for that free day so that I could pig out all day on fatty sandwiches, pizza and steak. By Thursday I was usually a physically and mentally drained wreck that had a stomach that growled loud enough to be heard for miles.
Well, this time I was three days into the plan, and on that day, 16 days ago, I happened to have a picture taken of me by a relative. When I saw the picture, my jaw dropped. My face was fat and I was this fat lifeless person I didn’t want to be, and this was after 12 of the last 15 weeks had been devoted to Body For Life. In those 12 weeks I had gone from 255 lbs. to 232 lbs. I sat there at 246, just getting mad and thinking that this isn’t someone I want to be at all anymore. I mean, I used to say, “at least it’s not the 330 I was in law school, but now I was just tired of it.” I decided 17 days ago that I was going to go balls to the wall and that I wasn’t taking another free day until I was at least 205. Part of me was laughing at myself. I mean, thus far it had been hard for me to go seven full days without a free day.
Well I weighed in at 232.0 lbs. this morning after 17 days, not 12 weeks. More importantly, I have more energy and a more relaxed feeling than I ever have, and I don’t even crave my free day anymore. In fact, I don’t want it period. On Sunday I happened to smell some French toast and it made me nauseous. Who needs a free day? I’ll take one after I’m wearing 34” jeans, weighing a solid 205 lbs. with my fitness troubles so far in the rearview mirror, they seem like another lifetime.
How I did it
I decided to give myself a few rules other than the free day.
1. All of my carbs come from vegetable juice, berry juice, steel cut oatmeal or wheat pasta. And I have at least one glass of juice made from kale, greens, celery and carrots and one glass of juice made from blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries every day.
2. All of my protein comes from egg whites, chicken, lean pork, fish, or a protein supplement like Isopure.
3. If I want to have a nice meal to keep my sanity, it’s fine, but it must be no more than 400 calories, it must not be later in the day, it must be organic and it must have at least 20 grams of protein in it.
4. All of my food in general is organic. My friend Vijay said it today. While there are tons and tons of benefits of unprocessed foods, most people believe that there are many benefits we don’t know. Go to Whole Foods. They have steel cut oats, organic berries and green veggies, organic meats, chicken and egg whites. And if you’re smart you don’t have to spend much more there than you do at the regular grocery store where you end up buying food that may momentarily feed your stomach, but will leave your body screaming at you that it is hungry for a boatload of things you aren’t getting.
5. Low sodium. I want to stay away from any artificial sodium because it makes you retain water.
6. Whatever combination I decide to go with of the aforementioned foods, I try to zero in on making sure I’m getting lots of kale, blackberries, steel cut oats or whole grains, and egg whites.
7. I modified the Body For Life program from the workout perspective. I now work out seven days a week, still lifting three times, but now instead of three sessions of cardio I do two, and then I do two days of abdominal workouts, concentrating mostly on my oblique region.
The results of these six rules are phenomenal. I’m stronger than I ever have been, I’ve lost 14 lbs. in seventeen days, and at the rate I’m going I could easily lose 30 lbs. between July 25th and September 1st, which would put me at 216 lbs., a weight that I haven’t been within ten pounds of since 2002. More importantly, because I’m controlling my insulin by eating fruits that send it up slowly and keep it up longer (berries as opposed to say apples or oranges which spike your insulin quickly and leave you much hungrier much faster), I no longer feel hungry or unbalanced in terms of energy.
And I have flexibility. The staples are there, but I can change it up and drink a lot of protein supplements on a busy day, or if I have more time, I can go heavy on the oatmeal and cooked meats. I can make one pitcher of veggie juice to last me a week, I can cook up a bunch of chicken breasts and refrigerate them over the course of a week. Basically, just doing the things you do when you want to say, “no more of the BS, I’m ready, for anything my fitness life is ready to dish out.”
I’m going to be posting as often as I can to continue to track my results.
I'm linking the previous only because I'll be chronicalling the end of my 3 year long battle:
