Body-For-Life FAQ

Does it work?

Yes. Any program that combines weight training, aerobic exercise and a restricted diet will work.

How does it work?

It combines weight training, a reasonably low calorie diet and aerobic exercise. The program is designed to make doing all of this a lot easier than it sounds, which is a huge part of its success. Your time is treated as highly valuable, so you may be surprised by how little time you spend doing exercise. There are also lots of support resources, and one day a week is free from the program, which helps enormously.

How do you set your fat loss and muscle gain objectives?

This is a bit tricky, if you don't have access to people who have completed the program. Some of the success stories have this information, but often people report not what they lost in a 12 week period, but what they lost over a longer time. If you take all the advice and do your exercises in the morning, follow the plan properly and work hard at the 20 minute exercises, Bill Phillips says you can lose about 10 kg or 25lb. Use this as a starting point.
Allow yourself four weeks learning curve: revise your objectives after this time.

How do you measure your fat loss? Body fat measurements are the biggest help here. Your gym or personal trainer can probably do this for you, or like many people, you may buy calipers for home use. At the start of this program my body fat was high, over 24%, so I needed to get calipers more accurate than the Accu-meausure calipers. I decided on Body Calipers: see www.bodycaliper.com. Electronic bodyfat meters seem nice and convenient, and they're expensive, so they must be good, right? Well, they don't have a good reputation. The overwhelming consensus is to use skin fold calipers.

How do you design your program: what weights do I use? When do I increase weights?

I found the lack of guidance in this area the single biggest problem with the Body-for-Life book. I still have not mastered the intensity idea. I am looking around at other resources for program design. Meanwhile, I don't want to offer any advice on this topic, because I am still experimenting. I'm getting results, but since I'm a beginner I don't attribute that to any specific advantage of the program I am following. My current weights program is now simplified: I do sets of fixed reps, and don't change the weight much apart from the warm up set. This simpler approach makes it much easier to concentrate on progress, which means increasing the weight.

What is my opinion of the role of supplements and meal replacement powders in this program?

Firstly, meal replacements, such as the EAS product Myoplex: Myoplex serves as an "authorised meal": that is, a low-fat serving of protein and a serving of carbohydrate. There is nothing magical about the product: it is equivalent to one serve of protein (or 1.5 serves really) and one serve of cabohydrate. These products are very convenient. In addition to the carbohyrates and proteins, Myoplex has lots of vitamins and other compounds that are good for you. It doesn't contain anything that really makes it count as a bodybuilding supplement as far as I can tell.

Myoplex is low in fat. It tastes ok good (I've tried the Vanilla Cream, Strawberry Cream and Chocolate Cream flavors), and it's easy to add fruit and other ingredients (try a fresh cup of coffee in the Chocolate Cream mix), but I really got sick of it. Unfortunately, it is low in fibre, and it is expensive, at least outside the US. I am also confident that it is not necessary to use Myoplex; it just requires more planning and meal preparation. The choice is cost vs convenience, and the choice is yours. There are many compliant meals that are very quick. Add in some good multivitamin pills, and you've probably covered the Myoplex.

Secondly, supplements: Body-building supplements are really for advanced body builders. Nearly all serious body builders use supplements, so if that's your direction, you will want to find out more about them. EAS makes available for free download a large Sports Supplement Guide (see my resources page for the URL). This book contains material on advanced nutrition for body builders. Note that in the Body For Life book, Bill Phillips says he is only taking one supplement, in addition to his two to three servings of Myoplex. If you're a beginner, you have lots of easy gains ahead. It doesn't hurt to use creatine; I started using it after the first seven weeks, and I stopped a few weeks later, when I read more. It's probably not dangerous (no long term studies yet) but it is also a bit silly for beginners to use, and the gains wash away when you stop using it. If you are in a rush to win the competition, you have to use it. If you in this for the long haul, the arguments look a lot weaker.

Where can I get more information on creatine?

Creatine is probably the first serious supplement to look at. Almost no one has anything bad to say about it medically, and it is clinically proven to do what is claimed for it. Here is a good creatine FAQ: http://www.huskerpower.com/CreatineFAQ.html

However, if you are a beginner, I wouldn't get too carried away with supplements. We weight training novices will improve strength quickly through simple things like improving our technique. Creatine's advantages wash away when you stop using it, so it is hardly a sustainable benefit, which rules it out for me.

How touchy-feely, "New Age", spiritual, Californians-sitting-under-magnetic-north-aligned-pyramids-facing-the-rising-sun is Body-for-Life?

This is a reasonably low-bullshit program. There are constant references to science (published university studies in particular), and while research results inherit a lot of flexibility from the statistics that underlie them, as a philosophy it keeps the Body-for-Life program well grounded. There is nothing radical or unorthodox about Body-for-Life. Some people object to the emphasis on supplements found in the culture surrounding Body-for-Life; the book itself doesn't cause many objections.

Is the exercise program too intense for complete beginners?

"Too intense" is feedback I've had from some well meaning souls around the gym I joined. I don't agree with them, mainly because thousands of beginners have had success with this program. However, I think it is too complicated. Juggling different weights and different rep numbers per set while trying to measure your intensity is too hard. A simplified program (constant rep numbers) is probably a good fall back if you, like me, find the intensity method a source of never-ending frustration.

When do I see fat loss?

Could take up to four weeks. It depends on so many things. If you are not seeing fat loss after the first four weeks, you are probably doing something wrong. This would be an excellent time to investigate the support resources (you can start with my page on resources). You can measure fat loss with skin calipers, as mentioned in the book. It doesn't hurt to supplement more low-intensity exercise, as simple as walking more each day.

What is the calorie and nutritional profile of the diet?

Bill Phillips encourages participants not to count calories. His advice is to concentrate on portion sizes, and the definition is automatically scalable: a portion is the size of your palm or of your first, depending on the nature of the food. Each meal is one portion of carbohydrate and one portion of protein, plus vegetables. This works for most food in the plan. It doesn't work very well for egg omelette, but the book has a recipe for that (four egg whites and one whole egg). The advice of not counting calories is quite good, and is the sort of thing you'll see in other well respected diet programs (eg, the food pyramid idea is based on portions).

Now, I'm the type of person who does like to count things, so after a few weeks, I analysed my diet.

The summary is that for me, a 172cm tall male, my BFL diet is about 1900 kCalories per day. Each meal is around 300 kCalories. My Body-for-Life diet is about 40g fat, 160 g protein and about 160 g carbohydrates. By the way, protein over and above 2g for each kg of body weight is simply metabolised by your body as a food source (so excess protein will end up as fat, just like excess carbohydrates. Protein calories count.) There is absolutely no scientific evidence that excess protein stimulates muscle growth. However, most bodybuilders scoff at this, and eat much more protein. On this point bodybuilders and nutritionists lose credibility with each other ... I've put a separate question on the protein topic below.

My resting metabolic rate is around 1700 kcal, and I estimate my total energy burn to be around 2700 kcal per day now (for the first few weeks of the program it was about 2400 kcal; now I do a little walking each day). An 1900 kcal diet with good levels of carbohydrate and protein, and with adequate levels of fat, is regarded by nutritionists as a sensible fat loss diet for someone with my profile. We only diet six days a week on this program. I should lost about a pound of fat, or half a kilogram, each week with this energy deficit. This has been what I've achieved, with the exception of weeks six and seven, which saw my fat loss stop because my calorie intake increased. In fact, it was this apparent plateau which caused me to learn more about diet and nutrition, and to analyse my diet.

I don't think it hurts to analyse your diet like I did, after a few weeks.

How do I scientifically analyse my diet and my metabolic rate (for troubleshooting)?

Please see this page.

How much energy deficit do I need to burn one pound of fat?

3500 kcal. Over six days of dieting, you want a deficit of 600kCal, and you'll lose about one pound of fat each week.

How much protein does a weight lifter or bodybuilder need?

For people doing intense weightlifting, I have not found even ONE nutrition expert who recommends more than 2g protein per kg of weight (That's about 0.9g per pound). There has never ever been a controlled experiement that has found more protein beneficial. Protein in excess of this level is simply metaboised by the body and burnt or stored as fat. Protein metabolism can be hard on the kidneys, but there is no evidence that healthy people drinking lots of water will suffer from excess protein; while eating excess protein is useless, it is harmless.
Some links: http://www.naturalstrength.com/protein.html, http://www.nutritionist.com/protein.html

A typical wholefood meal from the Body-for-Life program contains for me about 20 - 25g protein and about the same amount of carbohydrates. With two Myoplexes per day, I get to sufficient protein. Without protein supplements (or the Myoplex) I would probably not be getting sufficient protein in this diet. Note: this only applies if you feel you are doing intense weightlifting.

What skin calipers should I buy?

Accu-Measure seems to be satisfactory for people are are not very fat to begin with. If you are over 20% body fat then Body Calipers are more accurate. The website www.bodytrends.com has a decent buying guide. Having skin calipers is a very good idea, because there is no point measuring your weight loss on Body-for-Life: you need to measure your fat loss. If you live outside the US, buy your Body Calipers direct from their site, because they will ship via ordinary airmail if you ask.

What should I do to get started?

Buy the book, and read it. Plan your first week of meals, and if you want to use Myoplex, discover where you can buy it. Apparently, people who live in the US will get 25% discounts from EAS if they officially join the competition (which is free).

Set your objectives by reading success stories, and visiting the web resources mentioned here, and go through all the preparation tasks in the book.

Buy skin calipers to help with monitoring your body fat.

Take your before photos. Ask your spouse to pick up the photos, a true test of love!

Consider buying a book like Weight Training for Dummies, to give you practical advice about gym ettiquette, a different perspective on the exercises and independent advice about nutrition and exercise matters. You will be reassured by how often this independent advice matches the program.

You'll need to find a gym. Weight Training for Dummies is a very good book, and has advice on this topic. Try and give yourself more than one gym option to help with your negotiations. There are three rules about choosing a gym. You can break one of them, but not the other two:

If possible, get one within 10 minutes walking. You will mainly be using free weights, so the gym does not need to be very sophisticated. Personal trainers are nice, but old hands you'll meet in the gym are just as good. This was how people used to learn ...

If you don't live near a gym, set up a home gym.

Read all the Q&A on the official websites (see here).

I don't live in North America. Does that matter?

Well, I never received my kit to enter the competition, despite several requests submitted to the web site.

Should I register and join the contest?

Why not? If you are serious about winning, you'll want to consider which 12 week period you submit. I would expect to use at least the first four weeks as learning time, maybe longer.

How much does it cost?

You pay for gym membership and food supplements. You save on lower food costs (you will probably eat out less, and when you do, it will cost less).

Overall, I estimate the program will cost me about $SGD 1300 for the first 12 weeks, but my gym and supplement costs were high; the price of living in Singapore. Directly converted to $USD, that's about $900. As a rule of thumb, I think an American should allow about $600 as a rough guide. I will publish my budget here to help you know what things to include in yours. Later ...

How can I search the web for information about Body for Life

As you have probably discovered, searching the web for Body for Life can be difficult because the words are so common.Here is a search that works quite well.

Tim's Body-for-Life™ FAQ

What is Body-for-Life™?