Here’s part two of the guest post from my awesome husband Charlie! Go back and check out his first post if you missed it – that will help this one make much more sense. Now, to be completely honest, Charlie basically designed his program himself, so I can’t take too much credit. He did, however, discuss it with me along the way and has ended up selecting (mostly) the type of plan that I would have designed for him anyway. But I’ll tell ya, there’s some truth to the saying that you can’t help your friends or family! He was a little stubborn on a couple of points, but overall a good patient (hehe). Here’s (from the husband’s mouth…er…keyboard) how Charlie picked out the program that works for him:

So, I had a few goals of my own, in mind. Here they are:

1. Lose 20 lbs (bringing me down to about 180 or so)
2. Increase my cardiovascular fitness from Excellent to Superior.
3. Improve my flexibility by doing more yoga!
4. Fit back into my wedding pants (they are too tight, now)

Now, like Becki, my own goals are all pretty synergistic. Losing weight happens through diet and exercise – thus, I have to increase my cardio. In doing so, I’ll benefit greatly from stretching, and the net result will be me strutting around in my weddin’ pants again. Of course, there’s the whole getting started thing – which, as anyone who tries to “get into shape” knows, absolutely sucks. I have found that my body roundly rejects any change of routine. At least, it tries its dangdest. And my body and brain will work in cahoots against me.

My Personality: I’m very much a free spirited type. While I will typically groan about routines and planning, the truth is that I just hate making plans – I don’t actually mind following through on them. I love accomplishment and progress, so as long as I stick to my guns, I’ll see results, snowball my motivation and continue to strive toward my ends.

My Lifestyle: Fortunately, being a Firefighter/EMT gives me the opportunity to work out while I’m at work – both in the gym and on the job – so I don’t have a whole lot of excuses to wriggle out of exercising. It also gives me a fairly stable schedule everywhere except at work, where I never know what might happen in a given day. Given that and keeping an eye on my diet with a food tracker and I should be well set!

My true confession: I love being fit and flexible. I love lifting weights and working out. Heck, I even love running. But I also love eating food. And not just any food. I love milk. Sausage. Steak. Pie. Ice Cream. Rich, creamy, sugary foods. Cookies? Yeah, I’ll take 6. Cake? Make it a double. You get the point.

So, while I have already been fairly active in my exercising in the past, I need to intensify it and, more importantly to my health and goals, moderate.

And I don’t wanna. But I’m gonna.

Goal #1: Lose 20 pounds

So, this is the one that takes the longest. It’s the first goal I’ve set but it’ll likely be the last goal I attain, because it’s really a culmination of the efforts I’ll embark on in my next couple of goals.

In order to do this, I plan on exercising for at least an hour 6 times a week and counting calories with MyFitnessPal, which I have used to great success in the past. After asking my fantastic dietitian wife, I will aim for a diet of around 2000 calories a day – which is basically a 500 calorie deficit daily for a man of my age and stature – and based on caloric intakes of 50% carbohydrates, 25% protein and 25% fats (Note from Becki: This was a compromise – see my comment above about his stubbornness – so don’t take these recommendations and run with them! Everyone’s body is different!).

This sounds complicated, but eating a basic diet of whole foods – milk, eggs, vegetables, fruits, meats and grains – tends to land me within those parameters on a regular basis without any direct effort of my own.

Goal #2 and #3: Cardio/Flexibility

These are the really tough part. I’m embarking on a 90-day workout journey with everyone’s favorite series, the P90X series. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the program, it is essentially a body weight fitness series that focuses on interval/circuit training. It focuses on a muscle group one day, then a cardio routine the next. Rinse and repeat. The first month or so looks something like this:

Day 1 – Chest and back

Day 2 – Plyometrics

Day 3 – Shoulders and Arms

Day 4 – Yoga

Day 5 – Legs and Back

Day 6 – Kenpo Karate

Day 7 – Rest or Stretch video

Repeat and so on. So you’re getting at least an hour a day in, and whether it’s a cardio based day or not, you’ll have a high heart rate regardless, thanks to the pacing. It’s a great routine for slimming down and getting used to using muscles you’ve been ignoring for a while. And I have lots of those.

This program, combined with my other activities, is what I’ll use to lose that weight!

Final Goal: Wear my wedding pants!

This is going to be very vindicating. I have a whole shelf full of pants I haven’t worn in a year – they’re just too tight. So I’ll train and moderate until they fit comfortably.

My Plan

Summed Up:

1. Moderate calorie intake to 2000 calories a day with healthy choices

2. Set aside 1 hour a day for active working out via P90X

3. Stretch properly and try to do a bit of yoga daily

4. Button pants without “sucking it in”.

Here’s to goals and go-gettin’! Thanks!

I hope you enjoyed my husband’s guest post. Today, it’s back to me! Today I will show you how I take my goals from ideas to action. As a quick reminder, the goals I set in my previous post were:

1. Lose 7 lbs to return to my usual body weight
2. Decrease resting heart rate and blood pressure to normal ranges
3. Increase cardiovascular fitness from “fair” to “good”
4. Improve posture by stretching chest, hip flexors, and decreasing anterior pelvic tilt, while strengthening back muscles.

Some really great news about the goals I have set is that goals #1-3 all work together really nicely. All in all, I need to improve my cardio and that is also one of the key parts of a balanced weight-loss plan, so I won’t have to do double-duty on exercise there. Goal #4 is a little different and will involve some specific stretching and targeted strengthening exercises. Before I get into the nitty gritty of how I plan to achieve my goals, I’m going to start by asking myself some of the same questions I ask my clients. These questions help me make appropriate suggestions/decisions about the types of plans that are most likely to work for each individual person. Here are my answers:

My personality: I’m a nerd! Epitome of a type-A personality, I love to organize, have a plan, and make lists. I love structure but I also love variety and I love to have fun!

My lifestyle: I’m primarily working from home now, which makes cooking and food prep much easier, as well as scheduling in time to exercise. In the past, I have used a food tracker to help me meet nutrition goals but I’m not really feeling like tracking right now. Despite my nerdy, type-A personality, I would like to use something with more flexibility that is a little less labor intensive since I’m focusing a lot of my detail-oriented energy on my business.

My true confession: I ask clients this question to learn what kinds of things they think are likely to be “bad” or that they think might hold them back from their goals. In reality, it’s so I can make sure to find out the foods or exercises they feel very strongly about (for or against!) and make sure to tailor their plan accordingly.

For me? I love chips! A lot. And ice cream.

I also do not care for cardio, in a general sense. I get bored! I need more mental stimulus than a treadmill, elliptical, or jog offers to distract me from thoughts of, “when can I stop doing this????” It doesn’t help that I’m so out of cardio shape now that it hurts to do vigorous cardio. For a cardio plan to work for me, it’s going to have to include fun and variety – lots of variety. And maybe some social interaction. That helps a lot too!

Goal #1: Lose 7 pounds

This one will obviously take focus on both exercise and nutrition. I’ll discuss exercise more in goals 2-3. I’ll cover nutrition here.

Since I’m not feeling like tracking intakes right now, I’m opting for a more flexible option. My easy-to-use nutrition plan was born after I calculated the recommended amount of calories for a day to lose 1 lb per week, then translated that into portion sizes from each food group for balanced and well-rounded nutrition. That essentially leaves me with a quick-and-easy checklist of portion sizes, like so:

The list is designed to give me extra “slush calories” for treats, condiments, or whatever (like chips and ice cream!) so I don’t have to feel deprived or restricted.

Goals #2-3: Decrease heart rate and blood pressure, Improve cardiovascular fitness

The primary way I’m opting to attack these areas is by working on my cardiovascular endurance, as I happen to know that it is the primary cause of my increased heart rate and blood pressure. With cardiovascular training, you can decrease your resting heart rate, and decrease the work of your heart. Essentially, your heart becomes a stronger and more efficient muscle the more you train it.

“The” Stairs

Since cardio can be boring for me, I’m keeping my plan open to allow for several different types of cardio including (but not limited to):

• Cardio dancing videos from Youtube
• P90X DVDs with my husband
• Kickboxing DVDs
• Scottish Highland Dancing (an old pastime I break out every so often)
• Climbing a mean steep flight of local stairs

I’m going to make my action plan include getting my heart rate to a goal range (115-155 bpm) doing 40-60 minutes of any of the above cardio options 5 days per week. That way, I can choose what I prefer to do that day based on my mood and I’m less likely to be bored or skip.

Goal #4: Improve posture/target muscle imbalances

For this one, I was fortunate enough to have my dear yoga teacher friend Jessica at Zesa Wellness design a personalized, anti-desk job yoga practice to help me open my chest and hip flexors and strengthen my back. I’m planning to do this practice 5 days per week.

I have also designed a strength training program that targets my the muscles up and down my back. In general, I don’t recommend strength training programs that aren’t balanced (where they only train one muscle group or one side of the body), but this is my one exception. When I know there is already a muscle imbalance, I will sometimes temporarily train the weaker side only for a few weeks to help balance things out before incorporating a more balanced plan that trains the whole body. I’m going to complete this strength training plan twice weekly.

My Plan

To sum it up, my plan looks like this:

Goal #1: Lose 7 lbs to return to my usual body weight

• Use my daily food group checklist to stay within and get enough food from each food group each day.

Goals #2-3: Decrease resting heart rate and blood pressure to normal ranges and increase cardiovascular fitness from “fair” to “good”

• Complete 40-60 minutes of cardiovascular exercise (heart rate 115-155 bpm) 5 days per week

Goal #4: Improve posture by stretching chest, hip flexors, and decreasing anterior pelvic tilt, while strengthening back muscles

• Complete yoga practice 5 days per week
• Complete strength training program 2 days per week

I realize that may sound like a lot to commit to, but remember that I’m working from home and have quite a bit of control over my schedule. That’s one of the strengths of my current lifestyle that I’m taking advantage of with this plan!

Up next: Part 2 of Making My Husband’s Plan!

Since my new practice, i’mPowered Nutrition & Fitness, is offering a $20 discount on my Goal-Getter package to help you meet your New Year’s goals, my next project is going to be something a little different. Both my husband and I are going to show you what the Goal-Getter package is all about by laying out our own nutrition and fitness goals and documenting our journeys to goal-get them! Alright, alright…enough punning.

Husband and I will start off with the body composition and fitness assessments to test where we are at now, then use those results to create goals. Based on those goals and our individual personalities/lifestyles, I’ll make a nutrition and training plan — i’mPowered-style — and we’ll follow it. You’ll get to watch the journey!

Stay tuned for the results of our “before” assessments!