What Is Body for Life?

Body for Life is the diet and exercise program created by noted fitness guru Bill Phillips, and is based upon the premise that you’re more likely to stick with a diet and workout program if you see results quickly. His program is quite challenging as it involves training with weights for 45 minutes three days a week, alternating with aerobic exercise for at least 20 minutes three days a week.

On the dieting side, you are required to eat six small meals of healthy foods such as vegetables, brown rice, poultry, and fish each day ( a common theme in many diets these days) for six days a week. On the seventh day, you are free to eat anything you like and to take a day off from the rigorous workouts.

In the best-selling Body for Life book and on the website you will see some before-and-after photos of people who went from flab to fab – they really do look terrific. Their chiseled muscles and six packs in the “after” photos are in stark contrast to the “before” pictures that look, well, like most of us. But to be honest, don’t expect to look like the “after” pictures in just 12 weeks, workout intensity like this will produce both functional and a cosmetic results, but very few people would be able to attain these bodybuilder muscles just by following the basic program for 12 weeks. This would take more advanced training over a longer period.

However, if you can stick to the 12 week program, you will definitely achieve noticeable improvements in your weight and musculature.

Costs and Fees

The Body for Life book retails for around $20.00, although you can manage to get it cheaper from various resellers. There is also another book published by Bill Phillips, namely “Eating for Life“, plus the Body for Life website, which is free to join.

Body for Life

Bill Phillips. William Morrow 1999,

Hardcover, 201 pages,

List Price: $29.99

Our Price: $3.98

Diet Features

The Body for Life program requires you to eat six moderate-sized meals a day, with each meal consisting of a fist-sized portion of protein – lean mean, poultry, fish, egg whites, or cottage cheese — and a fist-sized portion of carbohydrates such as potatoes or brown rice. You must eat two portions of vegetables at a minimum, drink 10 glasses of water each day and round off your daily diet with a tablespoon or two of healthy oil (such as flaxseed).

Shakes (as meal replacements) and other nutritional supplements (manufactured by a company originally started by Bill Phillips) are also recommended (plugged), but not essential.

The diet breaks down to about 45% protein, the same for carbohydrates, and around 10% of fat.

Body for Life provides you with a list of authorized foods to choose from:

Worksheets are provided so that you can monitor your daily calorie intake.

Fitness Features

Many would consider that the primary focus of Body for Life is the exercise program which appears to be quite rigorous or intense.

You train with weights for no more than 46 minutes, 3 times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday and perform 20 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 times per week, first thing in the morning on an empty stomach on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

You alternate the training of the major muscle groups from one day to the next and you perform 2 exercises for each major muscle group.

The majority of the weight training exercises can be performed with minimal equipment – a set of dumbbells and an adjustable dumbbell bench are all that would be required.

Once again, worksheets are provided for you to monitor your daily workouts.

Does Body for Life really work?

The foods allowed in the Body for Life program tend to be lower in calories than standard American fare, and by eating fist-sized portions, you should be consuming fewer calories, even if you are eating six meals a day. When you “graze” as opposed to eating large meals, you change how your body handles energy intake. When you eat a few large meals, you tend to use stored fat as energy when you “graze”; whereas eating many meals makes you more efficient and you tend to use the stored fat as energy.

Also, the intense weight lifting will increase your muscle mass, which will increase your metabolic rate for the entire day. So by exercising strenuously six days a week, you will certainly burn a lot more calories throughout the entire day.

Support

Community support is provided by way of the Body for Life website:

• Guestbook
• Blogs
• Events
• Recipes