Open Source Fitness - Get started here
The do it yourself diet - comfort food for life
-You know you need to eat well for your health, and you know you need to eat less to lose weight. But when was the last time someone told you to eat comfortably? Appetite, hunger and satiety vary tremendously from person to person - and will even vary for you over time as you navigate the voyage from fat to lean.
Awareness of the differences and similarities - and a basic framework to build upon - can do much to help you tailor your own diet to work with you. Read here to get started.
Eat less and move more
- A very basic read about diet and exercise.
Carb cycling made easy
- Carbs are yummy, but they make some of us hungry. Many of us turn to lower-carb dieting strategies to control appetite, but find it limiting. The answer: cycle high and low carb days and use weightlifting to make it work for you. Read this article once you’ve worked through the little exercise in “Eat less and move more”, above.
Basically, training
- A simple, balanced, and effective lifting and cardio plan to get you started - or keep you going when you’re too busy to think!
Simple Variation
- A little less simple, and still uncomplicated - my friend Patrick Ward offers this two-day split when you’re ready to add a little strategic variation to your workouts.
Keeping it going-the evolutionary process of fat loss
- Stuck trying to drop those last 10 pounds? This might help you understand why.
Baby Got Back
- Where it all began. My take on Ian King’s four day workout split, which incorporates vertical and horizontal planes for upper body work, and quad dominant/hamstring accessory and hamstring dominant, quad accessory work for lower. Heavy compounds as 5×5s, accessory work as 3×8-12. If you’re new to lifting, maybe start with Basically, training for a few months until you’re more conditioned.
How to do cardio if you MUST!
- HIIT (high intensity interval training), hill repeats (aka HELLS!), steady state. They all do something useful. But let’s face it - cardio sucks. This protocol eases you into your first month - and is built around Baby Got Back and carb-cycling. That’s right, one-stop, open-source fitness, and you read it all here first!
Superior(ity) Complex(es)
- Circuit training promised us the world: stronger muscles and a leaner body, all at once. The problem, of course, was that circuits were inappropriately used as a substitute for heavy, low-rep strength training. Keeping the heavy stuff away from these metabolic complexes gives you the best of both worlds.
8 seconds of Glory (8 seconds of Doom?)
- 8 second sprints with 12 second recovery periods. I’m nicknaming it “8 seconds of glory” and you build up to doing these 20-second cycles for 15 minutes in total.
High Intensity Interval Foreplay
- Although many athletes use sprint intervals as part of our conditioning, it’s a relative newcomer to “mainstream” fitness; outside of bodybuilding or athletics, not THAT many people do it, and fewer still really know how to prepare for an activity that switches rapidly from eccentric to concentric contraction. Perhaps more for this than for any other type of activity, proper warmup and stretching is key to both optimal performance and injury prevention.
Get bent - My adventure into the land of bendy-holdy technology*
I’ve wanted to learn how to do the splits for a long time, but never got around to it, for some reason. My friend Kate is a ballet instructor in Australia. I asked her to help me work out a simple plan to ease into the splits, and she very kindly obliged.
| Mmmmm Fat! | |
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My love for fat knows no bounds. This article will give you a little background on fat-related jargon: fatty acids, triglycerides, cis and trans fats, saturation (saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated), how much of the stuff to eat and how much of each. More >> |
Get Built - my WannaBeBig columns
- My (almost) year as monthly columnist for WannaBeBig.
- Moe - 5 kids, lost almost a hundred pounds on her own, watch her get LEAN here!
- Lisa - After having interrupted her fat loss plans to have her third child, here’s how she’s losing the baby weight.
- Dree - A long slow cut for this fit mother of three. We’re hoping to diet her down slowly and keep her healthy-lean until the spring, when she’ll probably start sniffing around for contests!
- Josh - My jacked young male friend diets down for contest lean. We’ve got him started here with a PSMF (Protein Sparing Modified Fast) to kick-start his fat loss so he’s not doing 2 hours of cardio a day when he’s three days out!
This is great stuff. Will be sure to bookmark this page. Thanks, Marianne!
Comment by Colon Cleanser — June 4, 2007 @ 6:01 am
Hey Marianne,
Great article, the one on eating less and moving more. Like we were talking about earlier today - this info has to get out.
Keep up the good work. Good meeting you today.
Keep in touch.
ty
Comment by Tyron — June 27, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
Thank you Tyron. It was a pleasure meeting you today!
Comment by MariAnne — June 27, 2007 @ 1:38 pm
[...] to the activity levels you have.. Built/Marianne has a nice write -up on this on her blog: Got Built? Open Source Fitness - Get started here __________________ Odd Exercises You’ve Never Tried Before journal: Go with the flow diet: [...]
Pingback by Never 2 Late 2 Chase the Dream (it's better than liposuction) - Page 35 - JP Fitness Forums - Personal Training — May 21, 2008 @ 1:55 am
Hi MariAnne I stumbled across your site while doing some research. Here is my dilemma I’m a currently a student in the States studying sports nutrition. When I was a teen I was diagnosed with PCOS (don’t know if your familiar with this syndrome). It affects your hormones and insulin levels making it hard to lose weight. I’ve dropped a significant amount of weight over the years and now have 25 I need to lose. I had a body comp. done and my lean mass was 109lbs, my body fat was 28%, and it said I needed to drop 14lbs of that fat. My diet is clean I’ve just started doing a low carb diet where my carb grams average around 78 or so from veggies and fruits. I obsess about this constantly I do think I workout too much but I’m afraid that if I don’t workout for two hours or more a day I won’t lose. I lift heavy 3 to 4 days a week and cycle,run and use the cardio equipment in the gym. I’m getting ready to start Brazilian jujitsu. I would love to obtain a physique like yours I’m incredibly depressed I cry everyday. I was wondering if possibly you could take me under your wing and help me with diet and training. I would be very much obliged I thank you for your time.
Comment by buff in the ruff — May 31, 2008 @ 11:02 am
Buff, can you outline here how you are training now? Let’s see if we can get things moving for you. I am indeed familiar with PCOS, and you are definitely on the right track with the low carb diet.
Comment by MariAnne — June 1, 2008 @ 10:36 pm
[...] Got Built? - (Did you really think I’d have all guys?) [...]
Pingback by Mr. Low Body Fat’s Blog » Why I Listen to S&C Coaches For Weight Loss — June 22, 2008 @ 2:03 pm
[...] Got Built? - (Did you really think I’d have all guys?) [...]
Pingback by Mr. Low Body Fat’s Blog » Why I Listen to S&C Coaches For Weight Loss — July 12, 2008 @ 9:20 pm
[...] is a trainer who focuses on strength training and fitness for females. She keeps a blog as well - Got Built - and asked me if she could post the K.I.S.S. program on her blog. She added some information to [...]
Pingback by OSP Blog » Blog Archive » Follow up to the K.I.S.S. program — February 1, 2009 @ 7:43 am
Hi there –
My swordplay classmate Laura referred me to this site and I want to thank you for taking the trouble to do the research and put it up in an accessible way.
I’m putting together a plan for myself based on your writing and was wondering — would you be willing to have a look over it once I’m done and let me know what you think of it? It’s always nice to have a second opinion, and I really don’t trust the people at the gym I go to to look at it and not try to sell me something.
Please let me know if this is all right for you.
Thank you!
V
Comment by donnaidh_sidhe — April 6, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
Donna - wow, I am running behind on this. You bet, let me know what you need.
Comment by MariAnne — May 9, 2009 @ 9:14 pm