First I’ll say this; you will not be bored on this blog! You could spend a day on it reading a wide variety of articles ranging from “How to Give Up Coffee” to “The Meaning of Life.” The articles are generally well written and are frequently backed with Steve’s experience on the subject.

One of the articles I found particularly interesting was “30 Days to Success.” It’s one of those things that you read and think, “It’s so simple! Why didn’t I think of that?” Basically Steve suggests that major changes in your life should have a 30 day trial period. Have you been thinking of starting a new diet? It can be a daunting task to change the way you eat forever, but if you just want to stick with the diet for 30 days, it becomes much less of a mental hurdle. The beauty of this principle is that new habits take about 30 days to form so if you find that you’re reaping health benefits from your new diet after the 30 day mark, you’re much more likely to continue. See what I mean? The principle presented is simple, yet powerful.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some things Steve writes about that I’d recommend a lot more research on before trying. One such idea is polyphasic sleep. Polyphasic sleep is taking many naps throughout the day rather than sleeping in one long span of time. Steve suggests that this is possible because you train yourself to enter REM sleep faster. That statement caused little alarms to go off in the part of my brain that holds a psychology degree. I remember reading that a person will go directly to REM sleep if they’re sleep deprived and exhausted. I don’t think people trying this sleeping method are really training themselves. I just think they reach a point where they’re so exhausted they go right into REM sleep. Polyphasic sleep also seems to ignore thermal fluctuations that your body goes through during wake/sleep cycles. For me, polyphasic sleep left too many questions.

The truth is you don’t have to agree with everything Steve Pavlina writes in order to benefit from his site. There are plenty of good ideas there and it’s definitely worth your time to check it out and play around for a couple of hours. Who knows? One of Steve’s ideas may change your life!

1. Preparation
Like in anything you’ll do in your life, preparation is always a good step, physically and psychologically. Confidence is a huge factor in how you’ll be able to accomplish the task that’s awaiting you.

Resume: Eat enough, try to avoid fast food at all cost, eat correctly (not too much), drink plenty of water (8 x 8 oz).

2. Daily Routine
The daily routine will make sure you get into a good physical cycle by keeping you working each and every day. Cardio activities such as jogging or rope-jumping will help you burn the fat and will also improve your heart muscle. If you’re looking to burn fat, you should do low intensity cardio which means you jog at 65%-75% of your maximum heart beat for the longest period of time. You should know that dropping 2-3 pounds max/per week is safe and higher will cause loose skin.

Resume: Warm up, cardio, Cooling down.

3. The Workout
Working on every muscle separately is a great way to improve your fitness. Not only will it improve your health in general but it will allow you to perform a lot better in the sports you do.

Resume: The 5 BX method will get you to work muscle everyone wants to be in shape: pectorals, abs, legs and arms. The exercises will take you less than 11 minutes to accomplish and are done in a specific order which will produce the best results. (no warm up needed as it is part of the work out)

4. The Sport
The sport is the best way to enjoy your strenght and agility while having fun at the same time. Sports also improve our fitness in many way and increase our coordination.

Resume: Do a bit of cardio to warm yourself, some stretching (specifically dynamic movements related to the sport) and cool down at the end of your session. Don’t forget to drink water before and after, water in-between can result in cramps.

5. Stretching: all covered
Stretching is an important part of any physical activity. You do not want your muscle to rip while performing your activities. Stretching allows you to improve the range of your movements and also prepares your body to physical performances.

Resume: Stretch should not fatigue you. Try doing the morning routine if you’re looking to improve your flexibility.

6. Supplements
Since only eating cannot provide all the nutrients our body need, we have to look somewhere else for that amount we carve in. Post-workout shakes are the best method to get your body back in shape after and hard and long period of work.

Resume: Post-workout shakes will give your body the nutrients he needs to repair the micro-tears in your muscles. As proteins is the main ingredient to muscle reparation and growth, a shake containing an high amount of it will give your body more than enough to repair and grow (exactly what we’re looking for).

Stay motivated

Our mind control everything about us. Staying motivated is the most important step to your workout and your sport since it will keep you doing it. Find ways to enjoy these activities and what is their return into your life. Logging your progress is a great way to keep you motivated especially in times where you think you’re going nowhere. Look back at your log each time you feel no more confident about yourself and you’ll see that results are still showing up.

Conclusion

The program comes to an end. I hope you’ve enjoyed the information I gave you through the whole 7 days and that you will continue to work with your body because it is the only thing we’ll own until our death so we must take care of it. Physical health will ameliorate your life in many way and will result in a more interesting lifestyle. Enjoy it.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

SUPPLEMENTS

Post-workout shakes recipe (Protein shakes)
BodyBuilding Protein shakes recipes
When: After your workout (post-workout)
Benefits: Provide the nutrients the body needs to get your muscle to grow, especially useful after after muscles have been worked out.

Recommanded proteins

Optimum 100% Whey Protein
Flavors:Chocolate, Chocolate Mint, Cookies N’ Cream (not recommanded), Rocky Road, Strawberry, Tropical Punch
and Vanilla

I’d recommand you buy the 5 lbs deal because of the low price per portion and also because you might/will want to change in the future.

Here are the information about the 5lbs of whey from Optimum Nutrition
Price per portion: 0.38$
Number of servings: 77
Price: $43.99 $28.89

Best source of whey supply for the lowest price: BodyBuilding.com

BodyBuilding.com recommands
1. Optimum 100% Whey Protein
2. Higher Power 100% Whey Power
3. Prolab N-Large II
4. CytoSport Cyto Gainer
5. Dymatize Elite Whey

You can use their protein finders, which is a simple search engine on their website which allows you to filter by price, grams protein, grams carbs and grams fat. They also have an advanced search feature which allows you to filter even more specifics.

Water

Even though water isn’t a supplements, I’d like to remind you that you should drink at least 8 glasses of it daily. This will help you keep your inside clean while preventing things such as fatigue. If possible, you should also add things which are high in fiber such as apples. They will help your intestine remove all the toxins and will allow you to absorb more water which will also help you remove toxins and bad stuff in your blood which is filtred through the kidneys.

See you tomorrow for day 7.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

To begin our journey, we must follow some important guidelines. I’ll try to keep it short and give you the most important things to consider.

1. The most important thing about exercising is what you eat and when you eat.
1. If you don’t eat enough

If you don’t eat enough, well, you’ll have trouble going through exercising as you’ll feel tired quite fast. Exercising burn your fat, but it also burns your calories first, this is why there are some joggers who jog in the morning before eating. This way, they run on an empty stomach which will help them burn calories and then they’ll eat, generally a protein shake or something which contains lots of energy.

2. If you eat unhealthy food aka Fast Food

Fast Food is known to be the biggest cause of obesity in America. The problem with Fast Food mentality is that it fills one primary need: it has to be quick. But we have to pay the price: all the stuff that is used to allow fast food cooking is not good for our health.

What I would suggest, like many dietist would, is that you stop as much as possible to take Fast Food. This might be something really hard for many but it is a step to take in order to make sure you’ll be on the way to get a better body.

3. If you’re always eating

If you’re always eating, there’s a problem. Your stomach needs time to digest and if you keep food coming in, it’ll have problems filtering the junk stuff and keeping the good stuff. Like a muscle, it needs time to recover and prepare itself for the next food intake, but if it’s constant, it’ll get tired and that’s when you’ll feel tired too.

4. You have a low water intake

This one is crazy. Most of us think we don’t need to drink water if we don’t feel thirsty but in fact we should take around 8 glasses of water of 8 oz per day. There’s a simply formula to calculate approximately how much water you should take based on your weight:
Weight/16 = Number of 8 oz glasses of water OR Weight/2 = Number of oz of water

So for somehow who weight 128 pounds, he’d be taking 8 glasses per day. Note that there are some modification when the weather is hot or for various reasons. This should be a basic guideline.

5. Recommanded

Eating is just a question of portion control, containing carbs, proteins and good fats. Being awake generally for 16 hours, you should eat every 3 hours, which is about 5 (small) meals per day. This will give your stomach enough time to digest and it will give it at the same time the opportunity to absorb everything from each meal. Don’t forget to drink water everyday.

Good food would be:
Protein: lean cut meats, eggs, fish, dairy
Carbs: whole grain breads, brown rice, oatmeal, yams, sweet potatoes, cream of wheat
Good Fats : olive oil, canola oil, fish and flax seed oil, hemp seed oil, almonds, egg yolks

In order to know what should be your daily consommation, we’ll use the Harris-Benedict formula, which is available in a calculator format.

2. Motivation is one of the biggest reason people stop exercising

So in order to prevent anything related to motivation I’d recommand you fix yourself goals that you know can be reach soon (those will be called short term goals) and goals which will be on a long term period (long term goals). The reason we have to use short term goals is because we are all looking for quick gratification, so in order to get some, we’ll fix ourselves some easy goals. It doesn’t need to be “I want to lose 10 pounds in the next month” but something like, I’ll drink a water of glass each time I wake up in the morning” or “I’ll wait 2 hours until I eat once again”. When you’ll realise you’ve been able to do these, you’ll be amazed at your capacities and will want to progress.

Physical training is hard without any motivation, pretty much like anything else. I’ve once heard this: “If I were to give you 1 million dollar to do some thing you really don’t like to do, would you do it?” Well, pretty much everyone would do it? Here’s another one: “If you had to run as fast as you could in order to not get killed by wolfs, would you?” Those questions pretty much answers themselves. This is the mentality you want to have. You want to be able to tell yourself, “I can and I WANT to do this until the end, no matter how easy or hard it will be because I want the results!” Now we’re talking the same language

These are the basic pre-requisites you must follow if you want to see results fast. They should be respected at least for the 7 days you’ll follow this course and if possible, for the rest of your life. They will help you maintain a good health without having to stress yourself too much with the hows and what to eat.

See you tomorrow for day 2.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7