Welcome to day three of my summary of my experiences on Marco Borges’ 22-Day Revolution. To find out why I started this vegan diet challenge, and to begin with day zero, click here!
(Click here to be taken to the Amazon page to purchase your own copy, through my affiliate link: The 22-Day Revolution: The plant-based programme that will transform your body, reset your habits, and change your life.
Welcome to day two of my summary of my experiences on Marco Borges’ 22-Day Revolution. To find out why I started this vegan diet challenge, and to begin with day zero, click here!
(Click here to be taken to the Amazon page to purchase your own copy, through my affiliate link: The 22-Day Revolution: The plant-based programme that will transform your body, reset your habits, and change your life.
In the interests of not turning yesterday’s post into a novel, I decided to save my discussion about the cost of this diet for today. Cost is always being bandied about as a major factor in rising obesity levels, as people claim that healthy food is unaffordable. Personally, I’d argue from a slightly different angle: that unhealthy food is just pretty cheap and easy. And, let’s be honest, if you’ve had a crappy day at a crappy job, a plate of chips is a much better treat than a salad. That’s just human nature!
Marco Borges’ diet plan in The 22-Day Revolution is laid out in a very precise manner. Instead of a general recipe section, it’s laid out with recipes for each day, which have been formulated to work with each other to deliver the right nutrients at the right times. This is what appealed to me right away – I wanted a rigid plan I had to stick to, because too much choice for me sometimes leads me very much astray!
(Click click here to be taken to the Amazon page to purchase your own copy, through my affiliate link: The 22-Day Revolution: The plant-based programme that will transform your body, reset your habits, and change your life.
If there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s speculating about new diet crazes and food fads. Life is short, the same old food gets boring after a while, and even though I roll my eyes every time they discover a new superfood, I’m still happy to jump on the bandwagon and give stuff a go. When I saw Beyonce hitting the news for her foreword in Marco Borges The 22-Day Revolution, I was completely intrigued. The concept of the plan involves 22 days of vegan food, based mostly on non-processed, whole foods. (Don’t forget, you could eat chips and Oreos for 22 days and still be a vegan! Vegan doesn’t mean healthy by itself!)
I finally ordered Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution! I’ve been hankering after this for a long time, and I’m so pleased that I finally got around to getting it. It’s very pricey compared to Jillian’s other products (at £99), but I think it’s a worthwhile investment…
The programme lasts for 90 days, and contains 12 different weight workouts and three cardio workouts. The reason I was keen to try this particular programme is that it alternates muscle groups – something which Jillian’s other DVDs don’t do. The idea is that you work one group of muscles, and then give them time to rest so that they can rebuild stronger. As I understand it, when you lift weights, you create tiny tears in your muscles, and it’s the rebuilding process, when your body repairs itself, that actually makes your muscles stronger. With more intensive workouts like the 30 Day Shred, you don’t stop to rest between working out groups. I hope that the Body Revolution actually tones my muscles more than I’ve experienced in the past – but first of all, of course, I need to do the workouts first!
The kit comes with three cardboard sleeves, pictured above, which have the DVD collection inside. There are also various booklets that go with it, including a meal guide for her 7-day kickstart programme.
Inside are a range of meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for you to eat during a week-long period at the start. Jillian is very clear that you only do this once during the 90 days, as the diet is restrictive, and the exercise schedule is pretty intensive.
This is the diet plan I’ll be starting tomorrow, along with the exercise plan. I’m waiting for my shopping to arrive! I’ve bought items to make most of the things listed – the recipes are in the back of the book – so we’ll see how I go from tomorrow… The hardest thing will be avoiding tempting Easter treats! The recipes aren’t low in calories, but I do think they’re very low in carbohydrates. Hopefully there’s enough protein in there to keep me going!
Here’s the workout plan for the first week – I’ve cheated a little bit and I already started yesterday, doing cardio 1 and workout 1. But I aim to start properly tomorrow and then work through until next Friday. Over the weekend I’ll perhaps do cardio again and rest on Sunday, so that I can then start Phase One as it should be on the Monday after Easter.
Here’s what the first month of work outs looks like:
As you can see, it follows a neat pattern which is pretty easy to understand! I really want to make sure I start it on a Monday, because having a real, set in stone schedule is very important to my ability to stick to it. I think that if I alter the schedule in some way, I’ll start making excuses as to why I can put off doing one of the work outs, so I want to eliminate that risk before I even start! Anyway, each block of exercise is approx 30 minutes, which really isn’t a lot to ask in a day!
This is what I’ll be staring at for the next month! This is the inside of the cardboard sleeve for Phase One.
Here’s the explanation of what exercises are on each disc:
I’ll be back tomorrow to review the first day on the Kickstart plan!
One of the easiest ways to stay in shape, or lose weight to begin with, is to use an internet based fitness tracker. I’ve had great success using MyFitnessPal (and have also tried Spark People and JillianMichaels.com) but I was recently contacted about SlimKicker.com, so I decided to check it out.
Unlike MyFitnessPal, which encourages a minimum of social interaction, SlimKicker.com really tries to get you involved in the online community, and uses a point reward system to get you to give your fitness and nutrition a boost. Apart from the obvious bump in motivation, this is a brilliant idea because it encourages you to switch up your routine, and try new things. Turning fitness into a game is a sneaky way to get you to work out without realising it! Today, I decided to take on the wall squat challenge, which asks you to do ten wall squats a day for seven days in order to earn 500 points.
There is even info on the correct form for these squats, and recommendations for how to make it harder – if needed! It might seem simple in the grand scheme of things, but starting off small is the best way to go – how many of us have started ambitious fitness regimes only to see them crumble in the first week? The challenges are divided up into types – willpower, emotional, nutrition, fitness, giveaway and user created. They also have difficulty levels, ranging from 1 all the way up to 20!
You may well ask what the purpose of collecting points is – that’s where the reward system comes in. You post a picture for yourself of your reward, which you give yourself when you reach a certain level. I haven’t quite picked my reward yet, but the website offers suggestions such as a girls’ night out, a cheat meal, a massage, etc.
One of the handiest things about MyFitnessPal was always the app, which meant I could add things easily as I went through the day. Luckily, SlimKicker also has an iPhone app, so I downloaded that right away!
Through the app you can check your profile, log your food, record exercise and weight, and check your progress, as well as manage your challenges and interact with your friends.
As I’ve been lacking a little in the motivation department recently, I’m going to try out this new app for a week and see if it helps me keep on track!
What fitness trackers do you guys use? Do you find they help you keep to your plans?
(Psst, don’t forget, UK readers can enter my competition to win 12 share bags of Popchips here!)
I had to skip a day of the diet on Sunday, as it was my nan’s birthday and we had a lovely roast to celebrate! However, I did follow the diet on Saturday, and I have again today – but I’ll be stopping tomorrow as I have a Hello Fresh delivery coming, and I don’t think they got the memo on what was hip to slim with in 1953!
So, on Saturday, I was following Wednesday’s plan, but with my own, cunning changes. As this was the day after deadline, I had an amazing lie-in – I don’t do anything by halves, and I woke up at about 11am. This meant I wasn’t really hungry until lunch, so I had cheese, biscuits and an apple, and saved the mushroom omelette for dinner – where it transformed into a fried egg and some mushrooms on the side, to go with my gammon, pineapple and tomatoes. Very satisfying and delicious – although I must say, I really miss my carbs. This is purely psychological, as it seems weird to me to have gammon without chips. Sigh…
Today, I did Sunday’s plan. THAT’S RIGHT! It was a liquid fast! I have never done one of these before in my life, and I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised at how easy I’ve been finding it. Yes, I could eat something right now – but I’m not actually hungry, even at half ten. I never thought I’d be able to make it a day without food, because there are times when I get weak and faint if I skip breakfast. Somehow, a combination of the fruit and veggie juices and my usual teas and coffees have seen me through.
At lunch time, I had a bottle of amber juice from Sainsbury’s, which contains white grape, orange, carrot, lemon and lime. Dinner consisted of a glass of tomato juice, and a bottle of purple juice, which contains apple, red grape, beetroot and cherry juice. With my teas and coffees, it’s been a scarily low calorie day for me today – but, I certainly haven’t done anything strenuous, and more importantly, I’ll not be continuing this tomorrow, or making a regular thing of it.
(I really feel like adding this in here – if you find yourself skipping meals, bingeing, fasting, detoxing etc, regularly, you may have an eating disorder. Please seek help if you feel like you even begin to go down this road – do not think for one minute I am advocating regular fasts or liquid diets as a way to boost your health or lose weight. Always talk to your doctor before you follow any dieting plan.)
Thus ends my 1953 vintage diet. Despite what many people think, I don’t believe for one minute that ‘the olden times’ were a golden era for a positive body images, nor a haven from the diet-obsessed culture we live in today. Hollywood stars were famously thin (even Marilyn Monroe, heralded as a ‘size 16’ would be a size 6 or 8 in modern times – you’d have to be blind, or conveniently overlooking her incredibly tiny waist to consider her a patron for fuller figured women, quite honestly). Take a look at movie costumes of the period, and you’ll see that women were under just as much pressure then as now to be skinny – and even Photoshopping had its origins in this era, as airbrushing was just as ruthlessly efficient at removing excess fat and smoothing over blemished skin. Yes, the body shape may have changed, and curvier women certainly had their heyday in these golden decades, before the androgynous looks of the ’90s kicked in, but these shapes were often created with a combination of hefty support garments and strict dieting regimes (read about Marilyn Monroe’s really rather odd diet here, for example).
Cropped screenshot of Marilyn Monroe from the trailer for the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The 1953 diet dispenses with carbs in the evening, just like many modern diets suggest, and have you load up on protein where possible, to keep you feeling full. The concentration on milk, fruit juices and processed bread are probably the area where the diet looks the most dated – fruit juices really are empty calories, and most nutritionists would rather you ate the fruit than drank the juice. Also, having a pat of butter on your toast every morning is hilariously quaint – but again, considering how unhealthy many tout margarine as being, I can almost see this coming full circle in time.
One thing conspicuous by its absence here is advice about exercising. There is one small note prompting readers to write to Diana Day for some exercises to accompany the diet, but there’s really no other advice on the subject. Was this written for housewives doing physical labour all day long, and therefore diet wasn’t needed? You could certainly argue the case. I’ve heard many a fitness guru state that diet is far more important than exercise, though – as Jillian Michaels often says, you can wipe out an hour in the gym with just one slice of pizza.
In short, there’s nothing new under the sun, and there’s certainly nothing new when it comes to dieting. While I think I’m probably far more educated about nutrition than the average 1953 housewife following this diet, we can still learn a lot by looking backwards – as long as we’re not wearing rose tinted spectacles when we do it! Now, you’ll have to excuse me, because all this talk of food is starting to make me hungry…
Yesterday was the third day of the vintage diet, and I was actually on the day that’s written on the sheet! I had to skip Wednesday because the lamb I bought had to be eaten, so here’s what was on the plan:
As usual, I took this as more of a guideline, and had my usual toast and Flora in the morning (146 calories), saving the haddock for lunch. Cooking anything for breakfast is a bit of a nightmare, in my opinion, but I can just about manage toast. It did mean that lunch was pretty darn tasty, though – a bed of spinach, topped with a poached egg and some poached haddock, plus the fruit salad (only 300 calories)!
Dinner was an eccentric proposal to say the least – endive and watercress salad with lamb cutlets? I couldn’t face the prospect of not having anything with that, so I cheated and added some wild rice. This is a pretty big cheat in all honesty, because the idea seems to be no carbs in the evening, but I definitely didn’t have enough lamb to make up for the lack of carbs…
This meal (including the rhubarb, which I bought in a tin) came to about 500 calories, so the day wasn’t too bad at all… Except… Well, let’s just say, I broke down slightly at about half ten, when I was still working on my deadline and feeling pretty sorry for myself, so I ate a packet of Poppets. There may have been some white mice involved too. Either way, I pretty much nixed my calories for the day. But, the only way to be successful at something if you don’t get it right first time is to try again, right? The absolute worst thing you can do on a diet is to give up after a little hiccup. So… ONWARD!
I don’t know about you, but I need to get in shape again after a pretty fun couple of months! Luckily, there’s always a new idea or craze to keep you interested in your regime, whatever that may be – but I decided to go back in time for mine and follow the 1953 diet previously posted at the (AMAZING) Tuppence Ha’penny blog! What better way to get in shape than with some old-fashioned, common-sense wisdom, right?
At first glance, this diet seems to be fairly balanced, but high protein, generally straying under the 1200 calorie mark. Some of the items are a little eccentric, and some of them I’ll definitely substitute (no sliced tongue, thanks!), but generally, I hope to follow this as well as I can!
I’m skipping Sunday’s all-liquid diet – I might try that at the end, but there’s no way I’m imposing that on myself during deadline week this week… Today is Tuesday, so confusingly I’ll be starting with Monday’s meals. Yes, anything to make life more complicated!
Check back later today for my run-down of Day One on the 1953 diet!
Food, Fashion and Fitness 