Red Bikini Society
It looks like Michelle Lee, one of the 2004 Body for Life Champions, has a new endeavor: The Red Bikini Society. Red is not my color and I am certainly not ready for a bikini (aside from update photos) but I love the concept, in a shameless “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” kind of way. Go Michelle!
On one of the message boards I read for women doing Body for Life there has been discussion about “how long of a break to take between challenges”. I do not really understand the concept. I like 12 week challenges and did fill out packets and mail them to EAS for my first two 12 week cycles in the same way that I buy a Powerball ticket when it hits 100 million. That is, the chance of my winning is remote, but if I do it would be pretty neat. But, I really do not understand the concept of taking a break for a few weeks between the challenges. Why in the world, after working so hard to develop good healthy habits would you want to take a few weeks of free days to undo it. All of the weight will not come back but I fear that for me this would cause me to treat the basics of Body for Life (6 balanced meals a day, a balance or resistance and aerobic training) as a DIET rather than a LIFESTYLE. Is not the real point to develop lifetime healthy habits and not just see how much temporary progress you can make in 12 weeks? I can understand taking time to rest the body, where you go easy on the training to allow for full muscle recovery, between periods of training with specific goals (cut, bulk, marathon, etc). However, I do not understand the concept of just taking a few weeks off of everything between cycles of healthy behavior. How is this good? Maybe I am missing something.
The RBS is such a fun idea! I wish I DID have a lipstick red bikini to wear, lol.
With regard to the breaks between challenges, I believe that a lot of research stresses the importance of taking a week off from training periodically. Some people recommend every 4 weeks, others at least every 8 to 12 weeks. The key is that they say TRAINING, not healthy eating.
Maybe some BFL’ers who haven’t quite made the transition to the “lifestyle” mentality yet just threw in the “eat whatever the heck I want for a week or two and don’t exercise” part to make the program fit in with family vacations or something. 😉
I usually take a one week break between program cycles where I will stop the usual resistance/cardio workouts and just chill out with some soft core girlie stuff like yoga and pilates while eating pretty much as usual–6 meals a day, close to maintenance level.
Next week will be my first P90X recovery week. They factor in a recovery week every fourth week of the program where the strength training workouts are replaced by core and flexibility workouts. I’ve never taken a “break” like this after only 3 weeks, but I guess we’ll see how it works out in two more months.
Thanks for the feedback Maggie. In my mind at least doing a recovery week of suppleness training isn’t really “taking a break” as described on the message board so much as letting the body heal up.
For example, I did a very light week (low mileage, low resistance) this week because I have residual knee & joint issues that I want to heal before I start marathon training in earnest. So while this was kind of a rest week (more like straight BFL with lighter weights), my nutrition was on target. Next week hubby and I will be on vacation. I’m sure that my workouts will be fine, as I picked a hotel with a nifty fitness center, but eating may be a bit more lax with respect to portion size. So for me, while these two weeks might not be “perfect” it’s not like I’m abandoning the program either.
I guess for me it is just so much easier to build bad habits than good ones that I would be terrified to go back to my old habits for any amount of time. The message boards are filled with people whose first post will say “I did BFL with great success a few years ago and have now gained it all back & more….”. I really do not want to become one of those.
Maggie is dead on with her explenation. You really need a week of of the serious hard-core training of HIT and HIIT. But you don’t need MORE than that. And you certainly don’t need a break from healthy nutritional food.
I think, as always, give people an inch and they run a mile with it. So many people think this means throwing it all over their shoulder and setting up shop in a McDonald’s for weeks on end, and acting like a sloth. *sigh* It’s our society of excess. And it is those people who pitch is all who likely are the ones who come crawling back after 6 months with a dazed “what happened??” kind of thing. I never pitch it all in and go beserk for a whole week, unless it’s a set special vacation (I’m sorry, but carrot sticks in disney world just doesn’t work for me…) but then I am able to view it as something unusual, and get back on track the moment I come back. It’s the thought of doing that without….there being a reason, ya know? Because if you do it for no reason, then you do it just because you can – and then you start to think, “well, I CAN!” and then you are back into your old habits. Soooooo not worth it.
I like the idea of the RBS, but I don’t see me wearing a bikini…er…. EVER…… 😉
I do agree with the girls too. Taking a week off from weight training and cardio is a real nice gift that we are giving to our body for having a good recuperation and as well for deconditionning our muscle which in return will respond much more better when we will be back on weight training. For the eating plan and everything, I would say that it is a good thing eating at maintenance calories level but not eating junk food and I hope that people will try to keep their eating plan as clean as possible.