Body For Life is one of the most successful weight loss and fitness books ever written, having sold over 3 millions copies worldwide. The book was written by Bill Phillips, who is a well known trainer, author, and former owner of a nutrition supplements company called EAS. Amazingly, the book continues to be a best-seller over 10 years after it was first published. In a trend oriented industry such as diet books, this is rare.
Body For Life is an extensive nutrition, exercise, fitness, and motivation book. The program is for men and women both who want to lose body fat, build lean muscle tissue, and are willing to put some work into achieving those goals. In this review, I want to go over what the Body For Life book teaches.
What is Body For Life
Body For Life is a 12 week nutrition and workout plan. The exercise plan requires you to do 3 weight training sessions each week and three cardio workouts each week. Some people do each workout on a separate day (what the program most recommends) which means that you do a short workout 6 days each week, while others combine the cardio with a weight training session to do just 3 workouts each week. As each cardio workout is limited to just 20 minutes, you don’t spend too much time at the gym.
Body For Life advocates a full body approach: you need to train your entire body, from head to toe. Each week, you will switch the focus of your strength workouts from your upper to lowe body. Your upper body includes the triceps, biceps, back and chest muscles. Your lower body includes your calves, thighs, hamstrings, and buttocks. If you choose to do 6 workouts each week, you will do weight training on one day, followed by cardio on the next, followed by another weight lifting session, and so on.
There’s no doubt that this is a rigorous exercise routine and one which requires a lot of effort, but this is what you need to do to lose fat with this book.
The nutrition plan of the book includes the follwing guidelines:
- Eat 6 meals a day, one every 2 – 3 hours.
- Each meal should include carbs and protein.
- You also need to eat vegetables each day (these are also carbs, but are separated in the book)
- Reduce consumption of alcohol, butter, fast food, and so on.
- One ”free” day each week in which you can indulge yourself in fatty foods.
- Phillips also recommends supplementing your diet with a nutrition shake called Myoplex which used to be manufactured by EAS (the company he used to own). Taking this supplement is supposed to help although you can do without it as long as you keep to your diet.
Motivation and inspiration
The reason Body For Life was and is so successful has a lot to do with the inspiring way Phillips (author of the Transformation Solution Program) wrote the book and how he presents his guidelines. The book includes a lot of motivation guidelines and it gives the reader the feeling that he or she can really change their life from this moment onward.
There is no sugar-coating in this plan. You are expected to train hard and stick to the nutrition plan. However, you also get the tools you need to stick to the program until you achieve you ultimate goals.
Pros and Cons of Body For Life
Pros:
- The program has excellent reviews and testimonials (read some reviews here).
- A complete exercise and nutrition plan.
- Provides motivation and mental training guidelines.
- Cheap and affordable.
Cons:
- Recommends buying a supplement which adds to the cost.
- A very intense training plan which may be hard for some people.
In Conclusion
Body For Life is a highly recommended book. It is well written, easy to follow, and teaches an effective workout and nutrition plan to help men and women both lose body fat, tone their body, improve their health, and change their life for the better.
You can see Bill Phillips in the flesh in this video in which he answers viewer’s fitness questions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl69s0xiJxY
