PiYo Review

Wow! I can’t believe I’ve finished my THIRD Beachbody program already. I love PiYo but not for the reasons that you may think. PiYo is a melt of Pilates and Yoga, and suitably named. Prior to this program I had never taken either type of class and, I’ll admit, I’ve skipped the stretch and yoga sections of both T25 and 21 Day Fix because I thought they were less important. I figured that these types of things would never help me reach my goal because my goal at that time was specifically to lose the baby weight. However, after reaching my goal weight I decided to work on improving my flexibility and though some PiYo would be a big help (plus it was on sale! So I really couldn’t say no). PiYo is a 60 day program and, like all Beachbody programs, comes with a schedule and a nutrition plan. The schedule starts off easy and then gradually introduces workouts that make you really thankful for child’s pose! The nutrition plan is very similar to the one for 21 Day Fix with the exception of the containers and the addition of a “secondary grains” food group.

Why I will forever be in love with PiYo:

1. Flexibility – I can put my hands on the floor WITHOUT bending my knees! What?!? Yes this is huge for me. Now, I didn’t take before pics of my flexibility (because really who thinks to do that??) so I’ve taken pictures of about where I was before and where I am now. AMAZING! I danced for 14 years of my life and have never been this flexible. It works.

Before

After

2. Strength – Specifically core and shoulder strength. I can actually hold a plank for longer than 2 minutes. One day I will grab a magazine and time how long but I got bored the last time I timed it and gave in at the 2 minute mark.

3. Great party tricks – There’s one move that Chalene tells you you can use to show off at a party and be like “I bet you can’t do this”. And I always thought, who on earth would actually do that?? The answer, ME! Ok so maybe it wasn’t a party, but I did show it off while at a friend’s house for supper!

4. Easy, but hard – I have an internal battle with this. It always seems like such an easy program compared to the other programs I have done and yet I sweat more and gain more strength than I did with the other programs. If you want something that makes you reap the benefits of working out but doesn’t feel like working out, this is it!

5. Pain relief – It’s not like I have chronic pain or anything like that but I do seem to continually have a sore back. You know the usual stress points that always have giant knots that you just can’t seem to lose. Well PiYo got rid of them for me. I found myself asking my husband for way less back rubs while I was doing the PiYo program and now that I haven’t done it for a week my knots are all back. Time to get back into it I think!

The not-so-great parts:

1. Portion Tracking – I think I was spoilt by 21 Day Fix. PiYo doesn’t come with a chart to track how many portions of what you have eaten each day. It’s a small downside but it caused me not to really follow the nutrition plan like I should have. I also think I could have easily made my own or found one on the internet. This was pure laziness on my part.

2. Results – Pretty sure this one is all on me… I didn’t have any definition results like I was hoping for but I also didn’t follow the nutrition portion of the program. Afterall, abs are made in the kitchen! Next time around I will be sure to follow the WHOLE program and not just do the workouts.

3. Length – Once again spoilt by T25 and 21 Day Fix I was shocked that the workouts range from 25 minutes to 50 minutes! This is something that I’m just going to have to get used to since I plan on starting BodyBeast next which has hour long workouts.

I will definitely be continuing this program. I plan to combine PiYo with any program that I do in the future, mostly for the pain relief aspect. The flexibility that it’s given me and the tension that it’s relieved has given me a passion for PiYo that I never thought I could have.

If you would like more information on my experience with PiYo just comment below or send me an email! If you are ready to commit to this program or any other Beachbody program, click here.

Focus T25 Review

The title says it all, so let’s get down to it! This was the first ever Beachbody program that I bought and completed. Actually this was the first ever fitness program that I have ever completed. Now that’s saying something! Here’s the quick breakdown of what you get: The program is 10 weeks long and comes with a schedule of workouts. Each workout is 25 minutes long (on the nose!) with a 3 minute cool-down, aka stretch, on top of the 25 minutes. You workout out Monday – Friday with an option to do a double workout on Fridays. Then there’s STATurday where you record your results for the week and Sunday is a relaxing stretch routine. The program comes with a “nutrition plan” which basically tells you what the best food choices are but nothing specific. 

Here’s what I love about Focus T25:

1. 25 minutes – Seriously who doesn’t have 25 minutes in their lives that they can spare?

2. 5 days a week – this one is killer for me. I love my weekends. I can get up at whatever time you want me to during the week (these days it’s 5am) but on weekends I want to sleep as long as my little darlings will let me (like 6:30am, don’t laugh at me! That’s a whole 1.5 hours extra sleep!). So when I found a workout program that let me sleep on weekends I was totally game for that!

3. STATurdays – this quickly became my favourite day of the week. Tracking my results every week gave me the motivation I needed to keep going and push harder.

4. Results – WOW! I was losing 1-2, sometimes even 3, pounds per WEEK! And inches galore! T25 uses a technique called HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) that ramps up your metabolism and keeps it high for HOURS after you’ve finished your workout. So essentially I was working out for 25 minutes but my body thought I was working out for hours.

5. Two sets of discs – Just as I was nearing the end of Alpha, the first 5 weeks, I began getting a bit bored with doing the same set of workouts. But then alas! There was Beta and I had a whole new set of interesting workouts to do!

And, since no one can love everything about a program, here are the cons:

1. The “Nutrition Plan” – I use “” because really I’m not sure anyone would really call this a nutrition plan. It showed pictures of foods that you should be eating, calculated your calories, and gave a couple recipe ideas but there was no real guideline for how much of what you should be eating. If you want to work on your nutrition, this program is not going to help you there.

2. Plyometrics – A really big word that basically means jumping around. This may be some people’s cup of tea in a workout but not so much mine. Two reasons: 1) I have bad knees and it hurts to do this much jumping and 2) I was working out while the kids slept which doesn’t bode well when there’s a 140Lb woman jumping around in the next room. Luckily the modifier does low impact so that helped but it would have been nice to say I could keep up with the hot shots.

3. Shaun T – Sometimes he gets that crazed look on his face and you think he’s going to jump out of the screen and punch you in the face if you don’t listen… Ok, not really a con, but had to fit Shaun T in here somehow! Sidenote: A lot of women would put him in the “loves” list as easy on the eyes but to me he’s just the guys that kicks my butt and that person doesn’t even make the friends list haha.

Overall, this was my soul mate program. The workouts kicked my butt but the results were totally worth it. I would recommend this program to anyone and everyone. When I started I was extremely out of shape and I was still able to handle the intensity of the workout. So if you think you can use your “I can’t keep up with them” comment as an excuse, don’t. Give it two weeks and you won’t even need the modifier, unless, of course, your kids are sleeping! You get out what you put in, but in the case of T25 you get out twice as much as you put in.

If you would like more information on my experience with Focus T25 just comment below or send me an email! If you are ready to commit to this program or any other Beachbody program, click here.

21 Day Fix Review

As I’m sure you’ve gathered from this blog, I’m a Beachbody coach. (If you haven’t gathered this then you really need to explore around the blog a bit more… go on… this post can wait…) So naturally you would think that I would be promoting every single Beachbody product as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. This is not that kind of a post.

For the past three weeks I’ve been following the 21 Day Fix program. Here’s a quick overview: The 21 Day Fix is a program created by fitness trainer and bikini model Autumn Calbrese. It combines an easily laid out nutrition plan with 7 separate 30 minute workouts. You calculate your caloric intake, use the colour coded containers to ensure you are eating the proper amount of food for each food group, consume 1 Shakeology per day, and complete one 30 minute workout per day. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Here’s what I love about this program:

1. Weights - Autumn incorporated weights and tailored the timing to suit a weight lifting workout. When lifting weights you want to do reps with rests in between to rest the muscles. The timing and alternating of the exercises was perfect. I felt as though I would just reach the point of failure and then we would either rest or move onto the next muscle group.

2. Time – The amount of time that I needed to dedicate to getting results with this program was incredibly small. I could get my workout in before my kids woke up and once I set which containers I was going to use for which meals/snacks I just filled them and ate.

3. Portions – Something I’ve always struggled with is stopping myself from eating once I’m full. I find that if the food is especially tasty I will just keep eating even though I know I should stop. By filling the containers and not going back for seconds I was able to only eat my fill.

4. Results – Before the fix I was stuck at a plateau for one whole month! I had already reached my goal weight but had set a goal to lose 1.5” more off my hips… and I DID! Over just 3 weeks I lost 4 Lbs, gained 0.25” of muscle on each arm, lost 1” off my waist, lost 1.5” off my hips, and lost 0.5” off each thigh. IN 3 WEEKS!

And the part you didn’t see coming, what I didn’t love about this program:

1. Results – I lost more weight than I wanted to. Right now you’re all thinking: “hah! Lucky!” But in all seriousness… doing this program put me at a BMI of 17.6 (normal range is 18.5 – 24.9). This meant I was underweight. I kept expecting it to start going up because of muscle weight gain but it never did. In my last week I moved up to the next calorie range so I wasn’t operating at a deficit and I ended up losing 3Lbs that week. The nutrition plan is great for losing weight but just ensure you are aiming for a healthy weight and not losing more than you should.

2. Simple Meals – The containers are great for people who are looking to keep meals incredibly simple. They do, however, make it very difficult to cook fun and fancy meals. Some of my favourite dishes to make combine several ingredients and I don’t usually measure anything. If you like to cook extravagantly then you may find this to be challenging to follow. But it is only 3 weeks long…

3. Family Cooking – I don’t just cook for myself. I also cook for my husband and my toddler at the same time. I’m not a restaurant so I don’t cook each person their own single serve meal. The fix is definitely made for someone who is going to be making their meal and their meal only. Just try making a batch of chili and then tell me how many red, green, and yellow containers it is! There is a cheat sheet that has a few “homemade meals” listed in it and shows how many containers to count for each but I found that my “recipes” were nowhere close to what they were counting so I just guesstimated a lot.

4. 7 Days a Week – This is just me being picky but having just finished T25 which has 5 workout days on and then weekends off I was a bit bummed that I would have to give up my weekends off. But I did it and it wasn’t that bad, especially since Sunday was yoga which is practically a day off.

Well, there you have my two cents on the 21 Day Fix. Overall, it was a decent program. The results I got were 90% of what I wanted to get and buckling down for 3 weeks was not so bad. I gained a lot of knowledge about portions doing the program and have since left the containers in the dust but I do monitor how much of each food group I’m eating in a day. One other thing I’ve been tracking is how I feel. Doing the fix and using Shakeology has made me less bloated and not feeling sluggish like I normally did. On my week off I am making note of the foods that make me feel “icky” so I can cut back on them and feel good all the time!

If you would like more information on my experience with the 21 Day Fix just comment below or send me an email! If you are ready to commit to this program or any other Beachbody program, click here.