Archives for May 2012

Today we have an interview with Alicia Spilde who placed 2nd in the Open Division Level 1 in the latest Venus Index Contest.

Check out her pictures:

Alicia started lifting weights very young as she started working out in high school.

However, at college she didn’t want to keep going to the gym, mainly because there weren’t any girls that would go with her. Although was confident in the weight room, but she was intimidated by going there alone, she thought of it as a guys environment.

So, she became the “cardio queen” (her words).

As years went by, like almost every woman she was looking for some new diets and programs. And last year she was looking for something different, which lead her to finding Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat.

Eat Stop Eat was completely new to her.

No kidding, most people are used to eating every three hours, because the fitness media has done a great job of scaring us into believing if we don’t we’ll end up in starvation mode. So, it’s not hard to imagine what happens when you start talking about fasting.

However, like she told us, it’s stupid to eat breakfast if you are not hungry.

If you are forcing yourself to eat breakfast, you are not doing yourself any favors. Quite the opposite. Most people would benefit hugelyl from skipping breakfast.

Here are a few benefits of NOT eating the so called “most important meal of the day” and fasting instead:

• You will have more energy and focus
• You will get more things done
• You will see why you eat (hint: it’s not because you are hungry)
• You will be able to handle your cravings better and learn to control yourself more
• You will enjoy the food more when you do eat
• You will be free from the “what will I eat after this task is done” thinking
• You will probably consume way less calories during the day

It’s really okay not to eat breakfast or even launch, you will make it through the day, you won’t die, seriously.

Try fasting a few times.

To be honest this desire to eat has very little to do with hunger, it’s all in your head.

Just don’t talk about it with other people. Alicia suggests (and many other Venuses too) to keep your diet approach to yourself, because other people are full of BS they learned from reading magazines or watching TV and they will try to tell you (in their uneducated opinion) how wrong and unhealthy what you’re doing is. Be covert with your diet, it’s nobody else’s business.

Then Brad Pilon mentioned Venus Index in one of his newsletters and Alicia purchased it right away.

Are You One of Those Girls that Never Finish Anything?

This wasn’t the first time Alicia tried the VI contest. However, the first time she tried the Venus Index she had so much going on in her personal life that she just quit after two weeks.

If you are one of those girls that never finish anything, you really need to dig deeper into your reason why and find the core motivator behind your actions and develop the drive that keeps you pushing forward in life.

However, Alicia’s case was a bit different.

For her it was really just a matter of timing.

And she proved this to us the second time she tried the contest.

Maybe this is your case too. If your life is just too stressful now, career or personal wise then maybe wait a month and start after things are settled. Jsut make sure it’s not one of those things you say you will do later and never do it.

You should never make excuses!

Really commit to doing it and schedule the start for next month if you’re certain you can’t do it right now.

Once Alicia delivered her baby, her life wasn’t as chaotic and she ultimately got bored of just talking about fitness, Venus Index and competing and decided it’s finally the time to take action.

And this seems almost universal.

We have seen this with the guys over at Adonis Index several time too.

They will buy the program, but for some reason they are not ready or not willing to make the commitment and sometimes it takes them as long as 10 months to finally do it.

Alicia realized that she ran out of excuses and wasn’t walking the talk.

And since at that time the Venus Index Transformation Contest Number 4 was just announced she decided to get on board and do it.

What Approach Should You Take for the Contest?

Alicia started with the VI workout phase 1, continued with the phase 2 and really enjoyed it.

What was interesting though was her diet. She didn’t have a long way to go and lost about 6 pounds, which is the difference between good and exceptional, but still it isn’t that much if you spread it over several months.

However, her diet was very strict during the contest. And she told us that she wouldn’t go so extreme again and doesn’t recommend it either. Mainly due to the fact that she couldn’t sleep and had very little energy…if it wasn’t for her supportive husband she would have probably given up.

She recorded all of her calories and stayed well under 1000 calories. She kept it tight the whole time, measuring all her foods in grams, so there was very little room for error.

She was losing almost a pound a week, but for a cost of not sleeping. And we see it all the time, all or nothing approach usually results in very little energy, especially towards the end of the contest.

(If this is your case, you might want to consider doing the Reverse Taper instead of the traditional ineffective and tiring forward taper)

Like Alicia said, she might have acheived better results if she didn’t restrict herself so much.

Advice?

Don’t over do it with your diet.

You can always restrict the calories more. The bigger the deficit, the bigger the fat loss, however the key is to make it sustainable and not too strict so you can avoid any rebounds and stay lean after the dieting is over.

Alicia’s take home message for women like her:

• Use the Venus Index forum, the girls are just plain amazing
• Don’t restrict yourself too much
• Find someone who is supportive and shares your goals, that makes all the difference
• Keep pushing and going, the dieting is not forever, it will end at some point and you can go back to maintenance and enjoy your new body, it’s worth it and you will “value” the food you eat more
• When you get closer to your VI the effort is not exactly easier per se, it’s just different
• Do the transformation contest, you will learn a lot about yourself, your body and how you think
• Don’t expect to solve all of your life’s issues just by getting in better shape
• Your physical transformation will happen quicker than the mental and emotional part of it
• Your abs will probably show up just one or two weeks before the photoshoot if you want to get that lean
• Once you improve some area of your life, new challenges will arise, expect and accept it
• Don’t stress yourself out if your progress isn’t happening at the pace you want
• Changing how you look takes time, you have to undo all those “bad years”
• Learn to enjoy the process
• Be covert with your nutrition
• Hire a professional photographer, don’t ask your friends or family members to take the photos (listen to the interview to find out why)

Links form Alicia’s interview:

Eat Stop Eat – Lifestyle based on taking breaks from food

Venus Index Workout Phase 1 and Phase 2 – Venus Index workouts focused on building your ideal hourglass shape

Venus Index Community – Forum full of amazing women, sharing all their fitness and lifestyle tips and tricks

Read Alicia’s experience with Venus Index in her own words:

VT4 has been a life-changing experience for me.  For one, I actually FINISHED something.  I have started countless 12-week programs and have never finished one.  I entered VT3, but quit 2 weeks in.  For some reason, November 30, 2011 I decided to quit with the excuses and just GET IT DONE.  So I was very excited for VT4 to start.  I was well into my routine of workouts/diet when VT4 started, so I just did the work and got results.  My weight did not change a lot, nor did inches because I didn’t have that far to go, but my body changed.  I have muscle tone and shape that I have never had before.  I weigh…

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Listen to the interview here:

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Today we have an interview with Kris West who placed 2nd in the Open Level 2 Division in the latest Venus Index Contest.

Check out her pictures:

I bet that you think Kris had to follow a very strict diet and work out every single day for two hours to prepare for a photoshoot like this in just a couple of weeks or months.

Well, if you’d think that, you would be wrong…

The Magic of Maintenance Point – The Minimalist/Maximalist Approach

After placing in one of the previous Venus Index Contests last year, Kris wanted to just maintain her physique. This contest for her was all about finding a way to put the least time and effort into the training and diet to stay looking good. She wanted to spend as little time as possible in the gym to keep her look and ate the maximum amount of calories she could eat without gaining fat.

Do you think this worked?

Well, judge by results not words:

How’s the Maintenance in Reality?

Kris trains during her launch breaks and her workouts are usually about an hour long, because she needs to get back to work. Her fitness is made around her work schedule and kids. Not the other way around as some magazines or “experts” would have you do.

This time Kris didn’t want to have more than 3 workouts a week. And being with Venus Index from the beginning and having lots of experience in fitness, she could play with different programs and “lego block” them into various ways (not something we’d recommend for beginners) and since the Venus Index workouts are designed this way, you can cycle them however you want. She combined the main Venus Index workout with one of the workouts from Adonis Index and cycled them week by week.

Since Kris didn’t do any cardio and wasn’t obsessing over her training she had more time for herself and even if something came up on the day of her workout, she would just go to the gym the next day.

She didn’t strive for some strict workout structure in her weekly schedule and just went whenever she wanted. And as long as you are consistent, you can keep it flexible, the key ISN’T to make your fitness your life, the key is to look good WHILE having a life.

And it’s really not that important when you go to the gym anyway. If you have four workouts a week and you do them four days in a row, that’s fine, but remember that leaving some rest days in between will help you to be stronger in your next workout thus get better results out of it.

For diet, Kris changed her approach a bit. She was always a one meal type of person. This time, she didn’t do any fasts and tried eating more meals a day. Not because she was afraid of Starvation Mode or some other fitness media myth, but rather because she wanted to test out some new things.

She started doing several mini meals during the day to keep more energy and out of cravings. While this may sound as a surprise from a Venus, the truth is that there is a big difference in how you should eat if have 50 pounds to lose vs maintaining visible abs all year round.

We are starting to find more and more evidence that not only does weight loss slow down and gets harder towards the end, but it also seems that once you get really lean (visible abs for women and single digit body fat for man) you need to eat more often and just can’t do 24 hour fasts anymore.

When you get very lean your body has very little fat in its storage and your appetite will be higher as a result and your body may will want to naturally store more fat. So, to stay lean and avoid binging it seems like a good idea to eat more often and not creating large calorie deficits on a daily basis.

“It’s all about obtaining/keeping “the look” with the least effort and not stressing over the scale numbers.”

– Kris West

Links from Kris’ interview:

• VI Phase 1 and VI Phase 2 – Venus Index workouts focused on building your ideal hourglass shape
• Venus Index Community – Forum full of amazing women, sharing all their fitness and lifestyle tips and tricks
• Eat Stop Eat – Program that will teach you how to take simple breaks from food to lose weight while enjoying social eating events and eating the foods you love
• Adonis Index – Just like the Venus Index, just for men
• Vince DelMonte Interview Part 1 – The interview with Vince over at Adonis Index that Kris refers to in the interview
• Muscle Building is a Lifestyle: Interview with Kris West – The first interview with Kris

Read Kris’ experience with Venus Index in her own words:

After the last Open I pretty much decided I didn’t want to be in a deficit all the time.  With that being said and after listening to the Vince podcast I kind of had an AHA moment.  Physique competitors seemed to be the best at changing their look within the shortest amount of time.  What was their “secret”?  They also always speak of eating “mini meals” throughout the day.  I had tried this concept years ago when first trying to build muscle but could never really conform to the thought of eating every 3-4 hours so never really gave it an honest effort.

Maybe there was something to it…

Click here to read the rest

Listen to the interview here:

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Today we have an interview with Terry Clauss who placed 3rd in the Transformation category in the latest Venus Index Contest.

Check out her pictures:

There is a good chance that Terry’s story will resemble to yours, because it’s just so common.

Issues with weight and eating often times start at an early age, we just don’t realize it.

When Terry was 13, her mother was worried that she was getting fat. She took Terry to a doctor who prescribed her diet pills (At the age of 13? WTF!?).

She would not eat and then binge afterwards. The weight loss and weight gain never ending cycle began.

Terry tried EVERY diet there is. From Atkins, to South Beach to Naturally Thin, Diet Solution, Weight Watchers, you name it, she did it.

She had little bits of success, but the issue with all of those diets was that they were all too restrictive. It wasn’t about eating less, it was all about cutting out entire food groups. This may be the conventional approach, but it’s just a ticking time bomb.

You will always make up for whatever you have removed from your diet.

For Terry it was starting to be pretty depressing to be constantly losing and gaining pounds of fat. Today Terry is 53 years old and has 40 years of unsuccessful attempts of dieting behind her. At first she was skeptical because she wasted so much money, time and effort on other programs in the past.

Could you imagine trying to lose weight for year after year for 40 years in a row? Without any significant or long-term success, how would you feel, would you think that it’s even possible to lose weight anymore?

At this stage most women think that it’s their hormones and they just can’t lose any weight no matter what they do.

Well, Terry decided to give Eat Stop Eat and Venus Index a chance.

At first she tried ESE and got some results with that, so she trusted Brad Pilon. When he sent an email about the results from the third Venus Index contest and she saw that the girls all looked like normal people and just after 12 weeks they got in great shape, she jumped right in.

She improved her physique and she is finally on her way to building a body she can be proud of and keep all year round.

What really drove her to do this was that her son was going to have a baby and like she said: “I didn’t want to be a chunky grandma.”, so she decided to get in better shape.

It’s never too late and even if you’ve been trying to lose weight and get in shape for the past 40 years without any results, you still have a chance to do so, you just need the right approach.

Terry is proof of that.

Don’t Be Afraid of a New Approach, You Have Nothing to Lose

When we are trying something new, we feel anxiety and excitement at the same time. Usually, we are excited about it, but once it’s time to take action we realize that it’s new and doesn’t feel very comfortable. On one hand it’s exciting, but on the other, we would rather go back to our previous habits.

Well, the biggest growth happens outside your comfort zone and if you want to get different and new results, you need different and new approaches. Doing uncomfortable things at first will expend your comfort zone.

It’s really up to you whether you will shape your future or just accept whatever comes your way.

Terry sat down and compared the pro’s and con’s.

She asked herself: “What is the worst thing that can happen?” and “What is the best thing that can happen?”

She also admitted that without having to send the before pictures at the beginning, she wouldn’t be so committed and would have probably dropped out during the first few weeks.

The Venus Index contest works as accountability and will help you stick to your plan, it will keep you motivated, because you want to send pictures that shows at least some kind of difference.

And after the contest?

Well, first this get’s you moving and then gives you momentum to continue and take it further.

Take Home Message:

• Focus on the Venus Index workouts, they work if you follow them as written
• Work out when you have the most energy, but make sure you go to the gym, don’t make excuses
• If you are not losing weight after weeks of dieting, your weight loss plan is not working, change it
• Some people don’t want to hear the truth about diet, it’s not sexy, what about you?
• Find what works for you and stick to it
• Don’t look for excuses, life does get in the way, but you have to deal with it in order to succeed
• Do it covertly, you don’t need to tell anybody
• People will start to ask you what you are doing, that’s when you can tell them about it if you choose to
• Enter the contest, don’t be afraid it, it’s a good motivator
• Venus Index is for normal people that have a job and a family
• If you take a break, don’t make it too long

Programs Terry Used:

1. Anything Goes Diet – Diet that allowed Terry to eat anything she wanted, without any meal plans to follow or list of “forbidden foods”
2. Eat Stop Eat – Terry did the Eat Stop Eat fasts twice a week
3. Reverse Taper Diet  – Diet protocol that Terry used along with AGD and ESE to avoid overeating after the contest was over
4. Venus Index Circuits – Venus Index workout plan Terry followed that helped her optimize her Venus Index ratio and get her closer to her idea body shape
5. Venus Index Community – Forum full of amazing women, sharing all their fitness and lifestyle tips and tricks

Read Terry’s experience with Venus Index in her own words

My journey through VT4 has been a wonderful one. I started the workout and have followed as best I could with some modifications when needed because of previous injuries and bad weak knees. In the beginning I was doing the 3 workouts per week and trying to do some cardio 3 other days. I eventually skipped the cardio and have just been doing the VI workouts because I was getting so tired from the cardio I was doing that I was losing my motivation to do anything…

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Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download