Some time back I referred to this Challenge, and it’s high time I elaborated on my remarks there.
The Self Challenge, run by Self magazine, is a three-month program designed for fitness beginners or those coming back from a significant layoff and who want to improve their physical condition. It’s covered in the magazine extensively, but you don’t need the magazine to participate.
It has three components: cardio, strength, and food. Each section has logs and suggestions (menus, workouts, etc) as well as very useful articles appropriate for each stage of the plan. Exercises have video and picture demonstrations, so you can always see what you should be doing.
While it officially began in March, you’re still able to sign up online until June 14th, and I encourage you to do so. The tools provided as well as the community support are too valuable to be overlooked, and they’re all free. You’ll find it is rather chick-centric, and all calorie burns and nutritional advice are calculated for a woman of average height and weight; men, your calorie needs will be greater and your calorie burn rate will be slightly different (higher, unless you’re very short and light).
The single best feature is that they’ve done all the planning for you. You don’t have to sit down and think “am I ready for pyramids yet, or superslow training” because a whole team of experts have already worked these issues out when designing the program, which increases in intensity gradually over the course of the ninety days. But if you’re an iconoclast, you can still use the workout logs and other tools, simply putting in whatever you did INSTEAD of their suggested workouts. The plan is solid and cautious; you would be hard-pressed to injure yourself on this plan. You will not develop a body that can knock Giselle off the runway or Brad out of Angelina‘s life within the ninety days, but you will almost certainly improve your cardiovascular health, your strength, endurance, body composition (ie you’ll lose fat), blood pressure, cholesteral, and immune response.
Yes, you will; get tested now and then again at the end of the program, because the single best reinforcement is proof of your achievement. In fact, if you don’t have benchmarks for these, make an appointment and get them tested. Tell your doctor you’re thinking about going on a fitness plan and changing your diet and listen to what he says. Write down the benchmarks for comparison later; the best part of medical markers is unlike the scale, they very seldom mislead but refer directly to the true state of your body. I speak as one who worked out for a solid year and was bummed that I’d only lost 16 pounds. Then I went shopping for clothes and realized that I’d dropped eight sizes! D’oh!
The Self Challenge provides many tools including an easy to use (even retroactively: fill in last month’s workouts!) workout log with an extensive database of calorie burns for various activities. You can download MP3playlists for exercise motivation; tunes make the miles go by faster if they’re the right tempo. As well, there’s a huge list of easy recipies that deliver maximum taste and nutrition for reasonable calories. Here’s an example:
PEPPERONI POLENTA PIZZA
Makes 6 slices1/2 cup instant plain polenta
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup thinly sliced onion
1/4 cup diced red and/or green bell pepper
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 cup prepared marinara sauce
10 slices reduced-fat pepperoni
1/3 cup seeded and diced tomato
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/2 cup shredded reduced-fat (part skim) mozzarellaPreheat oven to 450°. For crust, bring 2 1/4 cups water to a boil. Whisk in polenta and salt. Reduce heat and whisk 3 to 5 minutes or until thick. Pour into a 9″ pie plate or cake tin, cover with plastic wrap and put in fridge to chill to room temperature. Meanwhile, sauté onion and pepper with oil in a nonstick skillet until onion is soft, about 2 minutes. Pour marinara sauce over crust. Add onion, pepper, pepperoni, tomato, and oregano; salt and pepper to taste. Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Sprinkle cheese on top and cook 2 more minutes or until cheese melts. Cut into 6 slices; serve immediately.
THE SKINNY
97 calories per slice
3 g fat (1 g saturated)
13 g carbs
5 g protein
Once you sign up, they will automatically send you an email update weekly, or you may choose daily reminders instead; that’s entirely up to you. I haven’t noticed a whack of spam resulting: I have three spams, which is the same number as I had before I signed up a week ago. As well as email support, they have a forum, and you can sign up to be paired with an exercise buddy, something which many people find very motivating; after all, suddenly you’re accountable to another person, and they to you. You’re not alone, and you do have a responsibility.
Just a side note: yes, they have spiffy prizes. No, you cannot win them unless you are a legal resident of the US. Dayum!
Metro
May 11, 2007
If you’re too male to sign up for this (and I confess my neck is stiff for many reasons) you can check out the Men’s Health Belly-Off Club.
Doug
May 11, 2007
Another news article supporting exercise and diet over diet alone: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/05/11/fat-internal.html
raincoaster
May 11, 2007
Thanks. I really should get that Wiki up and running. Next week maybe. This is yet another reminder that all guesstimate tools that don’t actually measure body composition are going to have a standard range of error. BMIs are an improvement on height-weight charts, but they’re basically just a BETTER chart, not the ultimate answer.
I’ve heard of the Belly-Off Club, but hadn’t checked it out. Maybe I’ll do a post on it. Hilarious that women’s mags are selling “challenge” and men’s are selling body image!
Metro
May 14, 2007
Friends have occasionally referred to MH as “gay porn”, and I can’t deny that the “great sex” section has been dwindling, rather. It’s also full of ads for skin toners and facial peels and that sort o’ stuff.
So I’m reasonably sure I’m not actually the target audience, but the nutrition and exercise info is pretty good.
The only problems I have with MH is the same as I have with any other magazine. In order to keep selling they have to keep changing the advice. Sometimes that’s valid: “Research suggests echinacea is helpful in fighting the common cold” became “Echinacea is an over-hyped weed, but if it makes you feel good go ahead.” But more often, it seems as though the exercise of the week changes just to give them something to do.
I enjoy their style issues though–I look at what they’re showing ($300 jacket, $100 shirt, $180 pants, $400 shoes) and go buy it at Winners.
raincoaster
May 14, 2007
Winners is teh ossom! On that surely everyone can agree (except in Ottawa for some reason, where the Winners kinda sucks).
Family Health
November 17, 2007
Wow! What a great recipe. Interesting crust with the cornmeal vs refined flour. Self Challenge sounds wonderful. With an overall lifestyle approach from food, cardio, picture demo…..etc. it will make a huge difference to help educate people to get healthy.