I am participating in a challenge on Instagram this month, so I’ve been sharing workout photos (read: photos of me flexing). Here are a couple of them:
Because of this, several people have asked me what I’ve been doing.
Below is an email I wrote to one of those people. It is a basic overview, but please feel free to ask me more and I can go into more detail.
Dear Friend,
It’s taken me a while to figure out what type of diet and exercise works BEST for me, but what really helped me were the people of Metabolic Effect (metaboliceffect.com). The founder (Jade Teta) is a naturopathic doctor and a trainer.
They have a couple of books: Lose Weight Here is the most recent and is basically what I am doing. The authors had an online program called Metabolic Prime, and that’s what I’m on my second round of. That is here: http://www.metabolicprime.com/ (I don’t know how much it costs now; I got it at an introductory price.)
But…Jade Teta is the guy you want to listen to. (Note: His wife Jill Coleman of JillFit.com is also very helpful. It is her challenge I am participating in this month.)
Couple questions to answer:
- Why are you looking to get fit? For me, answering this question was super important. At one time, my “why” was getting fit enough to run a marathon. Now it’s changed to getting leaner and stronger, so I can be all-around fit.
- Is there a type of exercise you like to do? This was important to me because at one time I loved running long distances. But after several years of that, I realized I didn’t like it as much anymore, and I had to find something else I liked, which ended up being lifting weights and walking. If you like what you’re doing, you’ll be more successful.
Eating
I eat high protein and veggies, and moderate to lower fat and carb. I am on a gluten-free diet right now because of a thyroid thing. I do keep track of what I eat on the My Fitness Pal app (you can find me @momvsmarathon), but I’m less concerned with calories, and more interested in my ratios: 40% protein, 30% fat, 30% carb.
Basically, I just try to have more protein than carbs or fats on a good day. For carbs, I try to eat whole food carbs, such as sweet potatoes or rice, and not as much starchy white carbs (like hamburger buns). I eat a lot of egg white omelettes and protein smoothies.
Eating is like 80% of the equation! People always get so focused on exercise, but diet is the thing that will make the biggest difference.
Exercise
I try to get 10,000 steps per day total and that usually means I need one or two longish walks. The My Fitness Pal app tracks it for me.
I usually do a 20-minute metabolic workout with dumbbells 3x/week and on the other days I sprint 2-3x/week (I sprint for 20-30 seconds and then walk to recover and then sprint and then walk and then sprint and then walk for a total of 20 minutes).
I typically take 1-2 rest days where the only “workout” I do is trying to get my 10,000 steps (usually just a couple longish walks).
For example, my week might look like this: Metabolic Workout with Weights M, W, F; Sprinting T, Th, Sat. Walking every day. No hard workouts on Sunday.
The key here is that the “tough” workout is only 20 minutes. It’s so do-able.
HOWEVER, my husband has been able to drop a lot of weight through simply getting 10,000 steps every day and paying attention to what and how much he eats with the My Fitness Pal app. He’s not interested in building a ton of muscle like I am. He simply needed to move more. He also eats high protein and veggies, and moderate to lower fats and carbs.
I hope this helps! I feel like I could write so much more, but this is the basics.
I think it’s important to pick one thing to start with. Pick walking 10,000 steps a day and start with that, for example. Do it for a couple of weeks, then work on diet.
When you do a bunch of changes all at once, it’s super hard to stick with anything because it’s so overwhelming. But if you change one thing every couple of weeks, eventually you’ll have changed a bunch of things and made a bunch of healthy habits. Does this make sense?
Send me your questions! I love this crap!
5 comments
This is great, thanks for sharing! I am especially drawn to your workout schedule because you’re obviously getting amazing results without tons of time in a gym. It looks like the 20/20 challenge was just for August, will you go back to the metabolic prime workouts after the month is over?
Hi! I’ve been doing both this month! But I’ve been careful to use Metabolic Prime as my main workout and then just choose a leg-specific workout or sprint workout from Jill’s 20×20 challenge in between. I’ve also made sure that I’m eating more while I’m doing this! If I don’t eat enough and workout a lot, I will not get any results or even put on fat. I will continue with Phase IV of Metabolic Prime in September after a week-long vacay starting tomorrow! And I will probably do Metabolic Prime again after that. I really like it. Or I may do Jill’s treadlift program as I got that before I discovered I was iron deficient, so I couldn’t do it (it’s a bit more intense than MP). The nice thing about MP is that it eases you into the more intense workouts. Basically, it “primes” your body for each phase. Each phase (there are four) has a specific goal. It’s like base-building. The MP program also comes with information about nutrition and lots of great recipes. Hope this helps!
I sent you a friend request on mfp…oulyndsey….I’m looking for more protein options
Okay! Sounds good. What kind of protein options are you looking for? Recipes or ideas? 🙂
I’m certainly no expert at any of this (obvi), but the one piece of “start excercising” advice I got that stuck with me is this: don’t try to boil the ocean. 10,000 steps a day is A LOT if you aren’t already there. It is between 4.5-5 miles per day. Figure out your average number of steps with a tracker for one week, and then add 500-700 to that average and make that your goal. As that goal gets easier, increase again, and again until you get to 10,000. The number actually creeps higher and higher without much thought. My totally unscientific $0.02.