Core Performance: April's Great Fitness Experiment and March's Results (Giveaway Post!!)

Embarrassment: My armpits are hairy. Part of it is because I am porcelain pale (that's the nice person way of saying my friends call me Casper) with raven hair and while that sounds like a winning combo in romance novels, it's more about 5 o'clock shadows - on my legs - in real life. But me and my trusty razor have usually been able to keep my hirsuteness in check. That is, until P90X. That's right, people. P90X made my armpits hairier. Okay, to be precise P90X didn't increase my actual hair but thanks to my newly muscular shoulders, my pits are really difficult to shave! (Shout out to Jen Sinkler of Survival of the Fittest who also noticed this phenomenon in her curvier pits.)

Hairy pits aside - and I will extend my apologies now to all my Gym Buddies, Turbo friends and everyone else who has to see me in a tank top these days - let's get right to the results of P90X. The program is written to be done for 90 days (hence the "90" in the title) but if you are good at counting you'll notice we only did it for 60.

In the Gym
Complaint 1: We got bored. The first month you rotate through 6 different workouts. The second month they sub in two new workouts but you keep 4 the same. The third month is just all 8 workouts repeated. These workouts were definitely challenging - the Core Synergystics one made me so Toilet Sore that I almost had to install a handicapped bar in my bathroom - but the same 8 workouts for 90 straight days? Boring. And in our world where a new fun workout comes out every week, there simply is no reason in my mind to repeat the same thing over and over.

Complaint 2: Very little cardio. Some of you will see this as a plus but Tony and the gang don't seem to think much of cardio. I'm not saying I want endless treadmill runs but the Kenpo (stylized kick boxing) routine was the only actual cardio workout and that's done once a week. The plyometrics workout got our heart rates up but our leg muscles failed long before our lungs did.

Complaint 3: Oh my aching wrists! Between all the pull-ups and push-ups, my already computer-compromised wrists are toast. Other Gym Buddies complained of knee pain from all the lunges.

Complaint 4: I expect to get nailed for this one in the comments but Gym Buddy Megan and I agreed: it made our shoulders too bulky. I love to be strong (LOVE it) but I also like fitting in my shirts. P90X almost made me have an Incredible Hulk-esque wardrobe malfunction. In church. Surely there is a way to get the nice definition and the strength without the bulk? (And because I know you are all curious now, you can flash back to this post to see what my shoulders look like right now. They're not huge huge. They just make my shirts tight.)

Compliments: I loved the new weight lifting moves. Tony has some seriously creative juices because he has 6 different moves to work your biceps alone. We will definitely be incorporating some of these into future routines. I also loved my new strength. I started the program able to kinda eke out one pull up. I can now do two pull-ups and two chin-ups! This thrills me. Unabashedly.

Conclusions
P90X made no difference at all in my weight. I lost 1 pound last month and regained it this month. Of course this is not the fault of the workout. Like I said in my one-month review, 90% of my weight loss happens in the kitchen and I can't hardly expect to be losing weight while I'm snarfing down cinnamon rolls. Totally my bad and I know it. Yes, I still have 5 pounds to go to get to my "nursing weight" and yes I'm still really depressed about that. Feel free to chide me - or enlighten me - in the comments. I really really need to let this weight thing go. It's making me nuts. (Side note: This is further evidence that eating vegan does not automatically translate to weight loss. There's plenty of fattening (yet delish!) vegan desserts out there!)

On the dietary front - because if you'll recall, March's GFE was actually the Okinawa Program - things went a little better. It turns out I really enjoy eating like the Okinawans. I find the food delicious and I love their emphasis on whole grains. I feel really good eating this way and it meshes quite well with my baby-imposed dairy restrictions. The problem was my old nemesis Mr. Satan, er, Sugar. The Okinawan Program recommends 1-3 servings of sweets per week. I did that per day. Sigh.

April's Great Fitness Experiment
Back in January I reviewed a book called Core Performance Women by Mark Verstegen and Peter Williams. Basically this is a workout centered around making amorous advances on a foam roller - what's not to love about that? Actually, the reason I'm excited to try out this program is because it is written by a seasoned professional athletic trainer (Verstegen) for women athletes. Verstegen has both a dietary and exercise component but as the former is rather uninspired (though very solid) - think the 100s of articles you've read this month alone about lean protein, healthy fat and whole carbs - we'll be focusing mostly on the workouts. For those of you who don't own a copy of the book, the Core Performance website has a TON of free exercises, fitness videos and recipes so while you won't be able to play along with the Gym Buddies and I exactly, you can certainly try out his techniques. Just be sure to sterilize the foam roller when you're finished. (P.S. Men are not left out! While this particular book is written for women, his previous ones were written for men and his main site has plenty of info for the dudes as well as the chicks.)

Giveaway!
One of the comments I get most often on my Great Fitness Experiments is "Well that's all fine and dandy for you already fit folk but I'm just starting out! I can't keep up with that!" While I think that most Experiments can be scaled down for beginners, I do understand how intimidating health and fitness can be when you are starting from ground zero. GFE reader and certified Beachbody coach Elizabeth Demeusey has stepped in with a very generous offer specifically for all of you just getting into fitness. Beachbody's Slim in Six (you may have seen the omnipresent infomercials?) program is designed to help people get started on the path to better health. With Elizabeth's coaching and the Slim in Six program, you'll have a great transition into fitness.

Since Elizabeth wanted to specifically offer this product to fitness newbies, instead of using the random number generator to pick the winner (like I usually do), she would like you to leave a short comment explaining why you need this and I will select the winner based on need. So tell us: What goals are you looking to accomplish? Are you looking to lose weight? Improve your blood pressure or cholesterol? Avoid the family curse of diabetes? Elizabeth adds, " I would like to encourage only people to enter who really, really need to get serious about their health and not just people who are curious about watching the DVD." The winner will get to choose between the Slim in Six package or, if they'd prefer, Kathy Ireland's program for people battling type 2 diabetes.

Your Turn
Any other thoughts to add about P90X? Anybody try the Okinawan Program? And, Who's in with me for April's Core Performance for Women? Be sure to leave a comment telling me why you need a health transformation to enter the giveaway!

Anybody else notice the more muscular they get, the harder their pits are to shave?

New Scary Research: Stress Eating Can Lead to Food Addiction?

Right now my baby is crying it out*. I've been trying for 45 minutes (the length of time she's been crying) to think of some way to make this funny but the truth is I just want to crawl out of my skin and shove nails in my ears. But since I am unable to shed my skin snake-like - although that would make my post workout showers quicker! - and I will likely need my ear drums to be intact for future activities like listening to my son recount the entire plot of Lego Star Wars while my eyeballs roll back in my head, I am dealing with the wailing in another manner. I'm stress eating.

People talk about emotional eating all the time as being one of the core reasons people become overweight and have a hard time losing weight. For me, emotional eating isn't usually my problem. Being upset, angry or depressed actually makes me less hungry. But stress? Has me running to the jelly beans every time. I'll cut to the chase: this evening I have eaten half a pan of cinnamon rolls and 4 homemade (dairy free!) coconut almond chocolates. The calorie calculator in my brain just shorted out.

I know I'm not eating because I'm hungry. And I'm not stuffing my face because the food is just that delicious - I barely tasted the last two rolls. There's just something about prolonged stress that makes me want to eat until I explode. The harder she cries, the faster I eat. Of course this isn't the first time this has happened. Just the other day we were stuck in traffic and my middle two children were fighting so loudly that they were literally foaming at the mouth. Oh yes they were. My hand found the bag of hot cinnamon jelly beans in the glove box (doesn't everyone keep a bag of jelly beans in their glove box? They should be a part of everyone's emergency kits: flashlight, flares and high fructose corn syrup.) and I ate a few. In spite of all my yelling at them from the front seat (it's probably for the best that I couldn't reach them), they persisted in killing each other. The more they fought, the more jelly beans I ate. When it finally looked as though my family was about to become a three-child clan again, I realized that I could barely breathe I had so many jelly beans crammed in my mouth. Looming fratricide notwithstanding, I decided to focus on the really important thing in this situation: my waistline. I spat the wad of sugar out into my hand and then chucked it out the window. Strangely that solved the situation as the kids were so upset that I had wasted perfectly good candy - and hadn't shared any with them - that all of them took up wailing and stopped punching each other. On another note: For my birthday I want one of those windshield shades that says CALL 911 in big red letters on it.

The thing that stopped me in my tracks then and got me to get rid of the rest of the cinnamon rolls now, is a new piece of research published in Scientific American via Nature Neuroscience that shows that rats allowed to binge on fatty, sugary rat chow became chemically dependent on it, their brain pathways lighting up in the same way as they would if they were addicted to cocaine. (Two extraneous thoughts: 1) What exactly constitutes rat junk food? Do they make them Whopper Jr. Jr. Jr.s? Sprinkles instead of rat pellets? Deep fat fried Oreo bites? 2) Who is in charge of procuring the cocaine for the rats? Is there a government bureau of Opiates for Animal Studies? Also, do the rats snort it? Eat it? Inject it between their toes so they won't have to quit modeling?) In the study, the luckiest rodents on earth - well, after the ones with the glowing livers - were allowed to eat as much junkie (Get it? Junkie?? Hee.) fare as they wanted. And then the gravy train ended. The results were ominous:

The new study showed that after eating a diet full of sausage and sweets for 40 days—even though regular lab rat chow was available—the obese rats had little interest in reverting to the more healthful diet when the tasty stuff was taken away. In fact, after depriving the high-fat habituated rats of their human junk foods, the rats would refuse to eat their standard chow for an average of 14 days. "I was really shocked at the magnitude of the effect," Kenny says. "They basically don't eat anything. If that translates over to us as a species, that's a major problem."

What the researchers didn't realize is that this exact same study has already been done on human beings. Children, to be precise. Many of you have seen Chef Jamie Oliver's new reality show Food Revolution where he goes to the unhealthiest school district in America (West Virginia for those of you who are curious) and makes over their chicken-nugget-and-pizza hot lunches with healthy, local fare. Considering that Oliver is a chef and that he has a TV series sized budget to work with you'd think that those kids would be reveling in their good fortune - Who has a personal chef in elementary school? Well, besides Lindsay Lohan but you saw where that got her - but this is not the case. What do the kids think of their healthified lunches? "A
survey of the school in his new ABC reality show found children overwhelmingly preferred institutional fare to his freshly made offerings — so much so that many stopped buying lunch." 8 out of 10 reported being "very unhappy" with their new lunches. Just like the rats, the kids are addicted to crap.

That's enough to scare me into throwing all my bags of jelly beans out the window.

The problem, of course, with food addiction - and now we can say that it is an actual physical dependency - is that one cannot just quit eating cold turkey (hee!) like you would if you were trying to quit cocaine. There's a reason why they tell you in AA that you can never ever drink again, because once you are an addict those chemical pathways are very hard to break. It's easier to abstain that to be moderate.

All of which leaves us with some very unpleasant questions to ponder: How do you avoid becoming addicted to food in the first place? What do you do if you already are? Are you condemned to a life of white-knuckling it through every holiday and dinner party? And lastly, when will research stop making me wet myself??

*And now, my baby has finally stopped crying! Joy!! For those of you who think I am evil and/or cruel, letting a baby "cry it out" is not as abusive as it sounds. Once babies reach a certain age (4 months old according to most doctors) they are capable of soothing themselves to sleep. You just have to teach them how. We've done this with all our kids and all of them are marvelous sleepers now. The first night, by the way, is the worst. But I'm totally not baking tomorrow. Just in case.

Rob Riches: Secrets To A Six-Pack

Very detailed and descriptive: Champion fitness model and competitor Rob Riches reveals his entire ab workout in the video below the pictures. Rob: "Learn how to do each exercise properly, and feel muscles that you've never felt worked before."

The workout video:

Fitness Advice: Do you Walk Your Own Talk? (Giveaway Post!!!)

Today Charlotte's roulette of unfortunate personal experiences is brought to you by the number one most feared word of fit folk everywhere. Nope, it's not "thong". Nor is it "Richard Simmons". (Because that's two words and, also, I happen to love him and his dance-tight clad legs.) It's also not "Whirlpool closed for cleaning" although that really does strike terror into my heart because you know it's not just routine maintenance that would shut down a jacuzzi in the middle of a busy gym day; you can bet your sparkly Richard Simmons branded thong (with attached tights) that bodily fluids are on the lam. (True story: One of the Gym Buddies recently witnessed a woman popping her man's bacne in the hot tub. There just isn't enough chlorine in the world to make that ok.)

The word is injury.

If you've been exercising more than a few days, you have probably had an injury. Perhaps if you are as klutzy as I am, you even have a collection of them. At this very moment I am sporting a nice bruise on my upper arm from walking directly into a stationary bike. That I had just finished riding. I also have at least 3 purple marks from where the Jelly Bean's carseat whacks my leg when I carry her in that back-spraining monstrosity. I also have a blackened toenail where I tripped over a weight stand and a spot on my jaw that is still smarting from where I punched myself in the face during Saturday's ultra sweaty Turbokick class.

To quote the ever-quotable Monty Python, these are merely a flesh wound. Sadly, I recently acquired an Injury with a capital I. The bane of exercise aficionados everywhere, these Injuries sideline you during events, wreak havoc with training schedules and are horrible for morale. Plus it makes me feel old. It's my hip, you see.

During my last pregnancy, if you recall, I had to quit running at about 5 months along because of excruciating hip flexor pain. While quitting running helped some, the pain increased until by the end of my pregnancy I couldn't lift up my legs to put them in my pants. I had to - and I'm not kidding you - use my hands and lift them sideways because while No Pants Day is regularly celebrated at our house it's not socially acceptable to take that party out on the street. Thankfully after Jelly Bean was born, the pain went away and I thought I was back to good.

So good in fact that I resumed daily exercise with Jelly Bean in a front pack, at one week post-partum and returned to TurboKick at 4 weeks post-partum. The funny part of this whole story is how I kept telling the Gym Buddies I was going to take it easy because I didn't want to get hurt. Specifically, I'd read a ton about what happens to the stomach muscles after childbirth and I didn't want to make my diastisis (the vertical separation between the abs) widen, or worse, pooch out. I even routinely admonished Gym Buddy Allison whose baby is 1 month older than Jelly Bean and has the most glorious red hair I have ever seen, to lay off the ab work and focus on the Tupler technique.

But why would I take my own advice? It's so much more fun to get injured! Plus it's great blog fodder, right?

Which is how I found myself a month ago back to lifting my leg (mercifully just the left one this time) into my pants with my hands. Stairs were painful. Climbing out of the car was misery. And TurboKick - with all it's kicking, duh - was excruciating. Did I stop? No. I just upped my whine factor. At first I thought the problem was with my kicking form. Then I thought I had strained a ligament by running again too soon. But neither stopping running nor modifying all my kicks to knee lifts (yeah I was awesome to watch) helped and the pain got worse.

Then it hit me: You know what I'd gone full-bore back into right after having a baby? Ab work. P90X's special ab ripper workout was ripping my abs in a wholly unintended way. I finally figured out that my stomach muscles are simply not strong enough yet to do any move requiring me to hold my legs off the ground (like bicycles or Russian twists or pretty much all of the TurboKick ab moves). My hips were kicking in to help my weak abs and the pressure on my lower back and hips led to the injury in my hip flexor. Within days of backing off the ab work and sticking only to moves where my back was supported and my feet stayed on the floor, the pain started to get better. Now, 2 weeks down the road I'm pain free. Thankfully it seems that I caught the problem before I permanently hurt myself. But boy howdy do I feel stupid.

On another gym front, however, I did make a smart move. I found the awesomest bra ever! Actually it found me by way of a review from superfit blogger Mama Sweat. She and I have many things in common - running, Minnesota, books that are taking forever to get published - but thanks to our four (each) happily breastfed babies, we also share weirdly problematic boobs (They change cup sizes every hour! They leak! They sag! Unless they have mastitis and then they're like rocks!). So when she blogged about her love of the "Handful" bra - how could you not love it with a name like that? (Tagline: Designed to flatter, not flatten!) - I knew I had to try one. This bra rocks. At first glance it looks as if it wouldn't be very supportive, what with those skinny straps:

PS> Thanks for all the nice compliments on my zebra workout tank! I love it too! Even better: I got it for 3$ on clearance. Some days the universe smiles.

But I put that bra through the works. It held up (and held the girls up) great through running, kickboxing, weight lifting and everything else I threw its way. Want to read more about the Handful and enter to win one of your very own? Click through to my giveaway page!

When it comes to fitness, do you "walk your talk" ? Or has anyone else ever get an injury from not taking their own advice? What's your scariest fitness word??

Contest Winners!

What isn't funny about Prince, really?

The winner of the $200 Visa gift card courtesy of Arm & Hammer is...

KUrunner who wrote:
Only one laundry woo? Gosh, I don't even know where to begin.

Let's see. I'm a long distance runner living in South Carolina where even running before the sun comes up entails running in at least 70 degree weather. All of my clothes have runners stank!

Add to that the fact that my husband, in his sleep deprived state, tried to wash our cloth diapers, not realizing that they get washed separately. Now, every step I take smells like baby poo and BO. I imagine I smell like that car from Seinfeld.

[Note: I consolidated the comments left on both posts and the winner was picked by random number generator. Thanks everyone for all of your comments! I'm glad there are so many other pit-stainers out there!)

And the winner of Fit Not Fat's bag of granola is....

Azusmom who wrote:
I LOVE Galaxy Granola, but AAAAARRGHH! (Sorry, my inner Pirate comes out once in a while.) I just went to the website and it says that due to the overwhelming response, they are temporarily suspending the free giveaways.
Wow, Charlotte! You have POWER!!!!!! *grin*

[Note: Again, the random number generator hath spoken although I have to say it's good to see a pirate win something for a change;)]

E-mail me your info and I'll hook you up with your prizes!

Don't forget to enter my latest giveaway for a free sports bra! And there are two more great giveaways coming later this week!! (What can I say? When the PR gods send rain, it pours product!)

Nick B. Loves Pumping Iron & Dancing

Nick B. from AllAmericanGuys considers himself a very outgoing guy and loves to be the center of attention. He's a college student with a high GPA, pursuing a bachelors and hopes to become a physical therapist some day or perhaps work with animals.

When not hitting the books hard, the 20-year-old hunk can be found partying (he loves to dance), hanging out at the beach or pumping iron in the gym. Nick works out 5 days a week and has been adding quite a bit of muscle as of lately. He claims to eat whatever he wants (including junk food), and it somehow doesn't affect his six pack and physique. Nick also doesn't consume alcohol, even when he's at wild crazy parties. It's just one of the things he is proud of.

Favorite sport: Football, track and field, volleyball
Most admired body part: Shoulders
Height: 5'9, weight: 160

You find many high quality photos and videos with Nick B. on AllAmericanGuys.

Tuan Tran: Forearm Training

Bodybuilder and power lifter Tuan Tran explains his new video where he performs some forearm work: "This superset is a combination of E-Z bar reverse curls with single arm farmer's walks."

New Research: Jelly Beans Will Kill You (Giveaway!!)

I don't want to start your day off on a bad note but the health and fitness research this week has been, well, a downer.

Item the first: Turns out your gut instinct was right - scientists (at Princeton, no less!) have discovered via our favorite furry rodent test subjects that high fructose corn syrup actually does make you gain more weight than the same caloric amount of table sugar. Not only that, but HFCS causes scarring on your liver, childhood obesity and early death. But don't worry, you still have to show ID to buy a single box of Sudafed! So we may die early with scarred livers from all that unregulated Coca Cola but if we're over 18 at least our noses won't be stuffy.

Item the second: Jelly beans are made 100% out of high fructose corn syrup.

Now you see why I'm bitter. I adore research if it tells me do something I'm already doing - like the research this week that found that women need an hour a day of exercise to maintain their weight - it's an exercise addict's dream come true! But: IT'S JELLY BEAN SEASON, PEOPLE. How do I love jelly beans? Let me count the ways:

1. SweeTart jelly beans - the gold standard of chewy sour deliciousness and they are only sold now. Also only sold now, their HFCS-laden sister in crime, Gummy Bunnies.
2. Mike N Ike jelly beans - regular Mike-n-Ikes ain't bad but for some reason the jelly bean version is 100 times better.
3. Sour Starburst jelly beans - yummy but they make my tongue hurt if I eat too many. It's like a little tongue seizure.
4. Nerds jelly beans - they have this amazing bumpy crispy sour outer shell and a gooey tangy middle. Weird to look at but man they go down easy!
5. "Spice" jelly beans - are disgusting. I wouldn't touch them with a pair of Lindsay Lohan's leggings much less eat them. They're cheap and the black ones taste like fake black licorice. That's just wrong.

I had to throw #5 in there in case you thought I unabashedly love all jelly beans. While we're on the subject, I'm not a fan of the much-ballyhooed Jelly Bellies. Some of them are yummy (ripe pear!) but then you accidentally get a popcorn or cappuccino one and you realize that Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans are a concept that only works in the fictionalized halls of Hogwarts and is horrendous in practice. (And "top banana"? Retch.) My point: I'm a connoisseur of HFCS.

Clearly I am in need of a snack intervention.

Like manna from above Fruit Not Fat's Galaxy Granola* showed up on my doorstep. I don't know about you but granola is one of the very first things I eliminated when I started healthifying my diet. I haven't had a bowl of granola in probably 6 years. Which is sad because I really do like granola - all those crunchy rolled oats and nuts and fruit! It seems like it would be good for you, right? But then most companies (even my beloved Kashi) smother all that whole grain goodness with buckets of oil and sugar and, yes, often HFCS thereby turning a healthful breakfast into a nutritional horror show.

I am not a fan of horror shows, nutritional or otherwise. (Just ask my students in Seattle. They discovered they could actually get me to run screaming from my own classroom by the merest hint of telling me the plot line to any of the Saw movies. Gah. I just got a full body shiver. There - again! Okay, must stop writing about it now. Back to granola. Ack - another shiver!! Stop it!) Fruit Not Fat's concept is simple: they took out most of the sugar and all of the oil and replaced it with apple puree. It's delicious. And not just in a I-can't-have-real-granola-so-this-substitute-is-decent kind of way. In all honesty I like this granola - especially the raspberry flavor - better than any "real" granola I've ever had. They sent me three bags to try and they were gone in as many days. I couldn't walk past the cupboard without sneaking a handful.

The nutritional profile is pretty impressive. Just 115 calories per 1/4 cup serving, 1g of fat, 5g of sugar (compared to Kashi Go Lean Crunch's eye-popping 12g - that's the same as Cap'n Crunch), and 4g of protein. The ingredient list is so simple it's a work of art. Whole rolled oats, barley flakes, spelt flakes, evaporated cane juice (yes, that's sugar), wildflower honey, apples, raspberries, crisp rice, oat flour, oat bran and vitamin E. No weird stuff! The only downside is the price. At $5.29 a bag (that's from their website - I don't know how much it costs in stores as there aren't any near me that sell it), that's a bit steep for cereal. Especially cereal that I may or may not have eaten an entire bag in one sitting. Ahem.

Want to try some yourself? Fruit Not Fat wants to give one of you a free bag - you can choose your flavor but I heartily recommend the raspberry (it has little freeze-dried raspberries in it!). Everyone else is not left out in the cold - you can order a free sample off their website.

What's your favorite kind of jelly bean? (And if you say the black licorice ones, I'm not sure we can be friends anymore. Sorry, mom!) What do you think about the HFCS study??

*FTC disclaimer: Fruit Not Fat provided me with free samples of their granola. I was not paid for this review.

Behind The Scenes Of AllAmericanGuys

The video below is a report on Fox News about AllAmericanGuys, the site for the world of male fitness models with approximately 100 million hits a month. Watch this look behind the scenes of AAG:



The site: AllAmericanGuys

Blast Your Booty: 5 Moves to a Bodacious Backside

Gym Buddy Krista's face says it all, I think. There was pain (like two nails driven into my butt cheeks, not to mention serious ham and quad soreness) but there was also much laughter.

After FitJerk shredded our abs, you'd think I'd be leery of handing our delicate lady behinds over to him but you know me and a good challenge. Besides, this is our "rest week" on P90X and we needed a little variety to spice up our Core Synergistics (the least restful workout ever, Tony Horton!!) and Yoga (of which the Gym Buddies are boycotting). So Monday found us kicking, lifting, squatting and - heaven help us - thrusting our butts to high heaven. All in the middle of a very crowded weight floor. Mondays are the day the staff reserve to give the elderly folks the tour of the fitness floor. We got a ton of stares and quite a few comments. Thankfully dollar bills were not involved.

But, (or butt! hee!) let's get to the workout. I'll let Fit Jerk explain it to you. He even went to the effort of drawing you cute little illustrations. The Gym Buddies and I will interpret:

This workout has been a while in the making… I mean just ask Charlotte. I told her about it like a month a go and after some trial runs I finally got everything up to speed and we have a workout that will quite literally spank you silly.

Charlotte's note: My butt hurts. A lot. No spanking necessary, thank you.

The making: A while back I challenged Charlotte to try my insane ab workout and to my surprise she got a bunch of her friends together and put them through sweet agony. Nothing says friendship like “hey, come feel the massive burn of lactic acid with me!” – I should know, I put my good friend and training partner through this 3 times a week. Sometimes 4, then he hates me. So I figured, why not throw up a new challenge for her? So I picked a body part I get asked about a lot, and made a workout to help make it spectacular.

Alright let’s get on with it.

The Booty Blast: Working Out Your Behind So You Can Move Forward in Life

Golden Rule: Rest 90 seconds between each exercise and 60 seconds between each set.

R = Reps
S = Sets
mx = Maximum Reps (Till failure)
/ = Divides the # of reps you need to do per set

Exercise 1: Standing Kickbacks
S = 3 (per leg)
R = 20/20/mx

First of all, I should mention that you can do this while standing OR on the floor by going on all fours (hands and knees). Do whatever works for you. The concept is simple: Pick a leg and bring the knee up into a 90 degree bend. Flex your toes upward and kick your legs back while simultaneously driving you heels into a non-existent target. If someone was standing behind you while doing a kick back, they should get impaled by the heel of your foot. It’s like a mule kick. YEEEHANWWW! TO make it challenging, you can always kick higher but to REALLY feel it in the bum, try holding your leg for a second or two once extended, then bring it back.

Strangely no one wanted to volunteer to stand behind Allison to get kicked. Yeah, I know she smiles all cute but girlfriend kicks like a donkey.

Workout 2: Deep Hack Squat
S = 3
R = 15/20/mx

You will need some kind of machine for this since I don’t want most of you doing the traditional barbell hack squat. The thing with the hack squat is that your legs are out in front of you… so as you go down into the squat it will look as if you’re sitting in a chair. Think of doing a wall sit… its a similar position, but you go deeper. If your gym does not have a hack squat machine, you can use the leg press machine and just keep your feet in front as much possible. Having your heels under your knees is a good way to think of it. Also, don’t rush it… slow and controlled. For those that know how to read tempo, do 212.

Fit Jerk didn't give me a cute little drawing for this one so you get my best attempt at good form. Yes, it feels as weird as it looks but trust me - with your feet out that far you really really feel it in your tush.

See those red marks across my shoulders? The sign of a really heavy hack squat! I love a good weight-lifting war wound!

Workout 3: Assisted Roundhouse Kick
S = 3 (per leg)
R = 15/20/mx

This exercise is my secret weapon to a great backside, I’m not tooting my horn here… it's feedback from plenty of women, so you know… it’s gotta be all true. I've been doing karate since I was 15 years old and I always noticed the great burn feeling in my butt after my Sensei put us through this drill every class. By the time we finished it felt like I had sat down butt naked on a hot stove. We don’t need to go that crazy, but this is a great exercise. To do this, stand against a wall and make sure your supporting leg (non kicking leg) has its toes pointed TO the wall. This means your heels will face the target. Next, bring up the knee of the kicking leg as high as possible and bend it so that your heels are almost touching your butt cheek. Hold on to this leg. Now while staying in this position, fire the kicking leg (point your toes) and then bring it back. Every rep should be done as fast and as furiously as possible.

Note: Once you start the kicking, DO NOT hold the leg every rep, this defeats the purpose. You’ll notice that your knees start to dip as you get tired… you need to FIGHT this urge because that’s where a lot of the results come form.

Assisted kicks are for wusses! We don't need no stinking wall!

Workout 4: Hip Abductions
S = 3 (per leg)
R = mx/mx/mx

Most gyms have cable machines and have a crap load of different attachments that you can use. One of these attachments is for your ankles. But if you don’t go to the gym and/or your gym does not have the adequate equipment, you can do this with a pair of resistance bands which cost like $30 for a full set! So you have no excuse. If you’re REALLY dead broke and/or walking itself gives your rear a burn then you can do this without any resistance.

I don’t think much explanation is needed. Keep your hips perpendicular to the direction you’ll be kicking. Keep the kicking leg as straight as possible and raise sideways as high as you can. Dipping your upper body down a little bit will help get your leg up higher. Oh and holding onto something for balance is generally a very good idea.

The beginning of the move.

The end of the move - isn't Allison the most adorable fitness model ever?

Gratuitous backside shot (this is what happens when Krista gives us immature girls the camera to hold)!

Workout 5: Barbell Butt Bridge (Or hump the ceiling)
S = 4
R = 20/30/mx/mx

Grab a normal 45lbs barbell and place it along your hips. The thing I like about this exercise is that you can keep adding weight according to your experience level… but don’t let your ego get carried away. To do the 30 reps during the second set, I doubt you’ll be able to get away with much weight so take an educated guess. You may also use dumbbells by placing them on your thighs and holding on to them.

As you lie down, bring your knees up and keep your feet flat on the floor. Then raise your butt and lower back off the floor (hump the ceiling), hold it for a second and then lower yourself back to starting position. You should really focus on squeezing your bum as you do this… not only will it let you lift a heavier load, you will get the desired effect needed.

Nope, no picture from us on this one! This was embarrassing (hee!) enough without photographic evidence. But I want to point out that we totally DID use the 45 pound bar! It was even the curl bar so it hurt in two different ways - so take THAT Mr. Jerk!

Workout 6: Eat Smart!
S = unlimited
R = forever

One final thing I want you to realize is that just like abs, a great butt will be hiding behind a layer of fat… unless you get rid of it. Doing this workout will surely give you a powerful bum, and will give it the “tightness” it needs to stay firm… but if you really wanna “show it off” then you need to realize that your eating habits are just as crucial. Unleash your spectacular rear view by eating right AND doing my workouts… and expect to be complimented and stalked – Every girls dream.

Stalking is every girl's dream? And in other news, next week I will be guest posting, on Fit Jerk's blog about new wave feminism in a gym environment.

Cheers.

No, cheers to you my abtastic friend! Thanks for another great challenge!

- FitJerk

Author Bio: While he has a passion for writing and oozes the entrepreneurial spirit, FJ is a Fitness Expert first, and focuses on impeccably accurate advice that is delivered it in a straight forward, No-BS style. Check out his book or for personal attention, look into E-Training!

See ya on the backside!

Overall this was a kick-butt routine - in both senses! All of us were sore the next day which was good since our derrieres are not something we choose to work very often. Kinda like calves for me - I will never willingly work my calf muscles. I hate calf exercises. Do you have a body part you hate to work? Any of you try this workout with us this last weekend??

Written By Charlotte Hilton Andersen for http://thegreatfitnessexperiment.blogspot.com only! Not to be re-published without permission.

I Live a Dirty Life ($200 Giveaway!!!)

"Mom, why can't we have a dog?" My son begged.

I gave my standard answer. "Because between you, your two brothers and sister, I already have enough butts to clean up after."

"But mom," he beamed as if he'd solved cold fusion, "dogs totally lick their own butts!" It will speak to his faultless reasoning skills, or my exhaustion, that I actually considered it for a moment before remembering this is the same child who suggested I buy a box of cereal because "it only has 6 pounds of sugar in it."

Butt wiping aside, the mess promulgated by 4 tiny kids is astounding - it's like living in a frat house: underwear on the table, food on the floor and enough pee on the bathroom walls you'd think we'd have just installed wall-to-wall urinals and been done with it. Thankfully they're short so the pee stays below shoulder level. But by far their most high maintenance habit - after their 2,000 piece Lego minefield - is the amount of laundry they generate. So when Arm and Hammer asked if I'd try out their new stain fighting gel detergent I knew I'd have plenty to test it out on. They were particularly interested in seeing if their stain-fighting powers were up to my family's love of the great outdoors.

To see all the embarrassing evidence of my less-than-stellar housekeeping, how Arm & Hammer helped me clean up my act and HOW ONE GFE READER WILL WIN $200 click through to my giveaway page! (Leave all contest entries in the comments of THAT post. Contest winner will be announced Monday March 29.)


Written By Charlotte Hilton Andersen for http://thegreatfitnessexperiment.blogspot.com only! Not to be re-published without permission.

Live fit, be fit, AbFitt! Fit /school..biceps training

What people commonly refer to as the biceps are actually two distinct muscles: the biceps brachii and the brachialis. Both muscles run along the front of the upper arm, from the shoulder to the elbow. The biceps brachii is responsible for the ball-like "head" on your biceps; the brachalis is the larger of the two, located underneath the biceps brachii. Both muscles that make up the biceps help flex your elbow. In addition, the biceps brachii helps to supinate your forearm.

Everyone has trained them in hopes of shaping, toning and building bigger biceps. Here is a tactic I employ to build bigger, stronger biceps. Listen most of you if not all of you can not curl your body weight, so the weight your using to train your arms curling will never stress and build your biceps the way simple chin ups will. How you ask? Almost everyone can do a chin up, your body weight. so say you are a female who weighs 120 pounds. I am sure you are not doing one arm dumbbell curls with 60 lbs, right? However by pulling your body weight with the chin up you stress your biceps more than with the dumbbells with all 120 pounds of your body weight.If we re visit basic "body building 101" you know stress on the body = a bigger stronger muscle.( with proper rest & nutrition )

woman will benefit by shaping long, lean & sexy arms. Remember woman do not produce testosterone, the hormone responsible for large muscles. So ladies don't use the "I don't want to get big muscles" excuse. You simple won't, you can't. So learn to chin and the results will amaze you, I promise.

Men will benefit by getting stronger and ultimately build a bigger sleeve popping bicep. So use this great training technique, add it in addition to your current arm training program and watch em grow!!

Richard-

Sergio Martinez..And the new middleweight champ of the world.

As most readers of AbFitt know, I am a big believer in Sergio Martinez as does Lou DiBella, the promoter of Sergio Martinez, Who compares him favorably to another Argenitinian-born fighter, Carlos Monzon, who once held the middleweight (160 pounds) record for consecutive wins, and, who reeled off victories in his final 84 bouts (75-0-9), with 45 knockouts starting with a fourth-round stoppage of Francisco Geleberti in October of 1964.

Nicknamed, "Maravilla," or, "Marvelous," like American middleweight great, "Marvelous"Marvin Hagler, the 35-year-old Martinez lives in Madrid, Spain, has the looks of a model and some of the most underrated boxing skills in the sport.

But those are quite lofty comparisons for Martinez, a slick-boxing southpaw who has yet to score the big win that warrants such praise, even as he ran off a mark of 28-0-1, with 18 knockouts after being knocked out by Antonio Margarito in the seventh round in February of 2007.

Although he already wears the WBC's junior middleweight (154 pounds) title, Martinez can go a long way toward distinguishing himself on April 17, when he'll go after the WBO and WBC middleweight (160 pounds) titles held by Kelly Pavlik (36-1, 32 KOs), of Youngstown, Ohio, at The 3,000-seat, Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

Martiinez is coming off of December's majority decision loss in a clash of southpaws with Paul Williams (38-1, 27 KOs), of Augusta, Ga., during which he got up from a first-round knockdown to floor his Williams just before the bell ending the same round.

"That was a travesty that Williams got the decision. It was a very close fight, but one judge scored it rediculously," said Martinez, referring to the fact that one judge scored the bout, 119-110, for Williams.

"It was the type of fight that, if I won, no one would say anything. Nobody would think that Paul Williams got robbed," said Martinez, who earned his crown with an eighth-round knockout of Alex Bunema in October of 2008. "That is the reason that HBO has given me another opportunity against Pavlik."

As a result his performance against Williams, the highly-avoided Martinez (44-2-2, 24 knockouts) was considered for a lucrative rematch with Williams, as well as a shot Pavlik.

"I'm very proud to know that many people recognize that I didn't lose the fight. Paul Williams was good, but I felt like I won the fight," said Martinez.

"But this time, I will not leave it up to the judges," said Martinez. "By around the eighth, ninth, or 10th round, I will have figured out Kelly Pavlik, and that's when I will go after the knockout. That's when I will end this fight."

here at AbFitt we think Sergio becomes the new champ, but trust me when I tell you this will be no upset!!! Sergio is the real deal.

This months top five training supplements.

1. Optimum 100% Whey Protein - View 100% Whey Protein


#1 and growing, ON 100% Whey is the undisputed Gold Standard and winner of the Supplement of the Year and Protein Powder of the Year in 2009. Why? It's packed with the purest all-whey proteins, with isolates as the primary source, plus 5.5 grams of BCAAs and Aminogen digestive enzymes to maximize absorption. Better yet, it tastes as goods as it works and mixes as fast and easily as it's absorbed. I have been taking this for three years,I love it.


2. BSN NO-Xplode - View NO-Xplode


BSN's blockbuster product won our Muscle Builder Of The Year award for 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009! This real quote from a visitor pretty much sums it up: "No-Xplode is the best NO booster I've ever taken.


3. USPlabs Jack3d - View Jack3d


Did you hear about that guy that had crappy, lethargic, pathetic workouts but still stays lean & fit? Neither did I. Stop sleep walking through your workouts with Jack3d! People are reporting intense pumps and insane energy.

4. Gaspari Nutrition SuperPump250 - View SuperPump250


You remember that one day when you caught your girlfriend cheating on you with your dad? You were immediately in a RAGE, with adrenaline pumping through your veins and your forearm hairs standing on their ends. Well, somehow Gaspari has put that feeling in a powder! Take it before your workout. Then take your rage out on the poor harmless little weights. Repeat until swole.


5. Optimum Opti-Men - View Opti-Men


With 75+ ingredients in 5 high-potency blends, ON's Opti-Men Nutrient Optimization System offers active males so much more than a multi. In addition to a comprehensive array of vitamins and essential minerals, each tablet supplies antioxidants, free form amino acids along with botanical, marine, vegetable and fruit extracts. Opti-Men is designed to optimize your body's use of food and supplement nutrients while enhancing your male edge.

Scott Herman: My Tricep Workout

In this video fitness model Scott Herman performs and explains the following exercises: overhead tricep extension, skull crusher, bent-over overhead tricep extension, alternating reverse pull-down and push-down, single-arm reverse pull-down.

I Dream of Flying

Gym Buddy Allison took this pic - in addition to being She-Ra in the gym, she's also a phenomenal photog.

He was just a small boy on a swing.

A boy like any other boy on a swing like any other swing on a day like any other day. Nothing remarkable. Nothing special. Just a boy. One very small boy.

So why was I crying? It started with his feet. You see, his legs were too short to touch the ground which left his Spiderman-clad feet swinging ineffectively in the air. The swing would not obey his impotent commands and twisted gently in the breeze, thwarting his dreams of touching tree branches. Of flying. Of falling back to earth to be caught at the last second and jerked upward again until the sun shone full in his face and the laughter escaped his throat. But he couldn't kick off and even if he were to somehow overcome the initial inertia binding him to the earth, he hadn't learned how to pump his wee legs yet and so would be quickly righted by gravity.

He called out for someone to push him but his voice had no sense of urgency, almost as if it were done merely out of habit and not because he thought anyone could hear him. He was not altogether wrong. Up until that very second nobody could hear him.

In one sharp moment my world of vision-less words collided with his world of wordless visions. He was calling for me. His tiny, tinny voice which rasps my exhaustion-honed nerves more than I'd like to admit, finally pierced the swirling cloud of words and ideas that cushion me so tightly that small things like appointments and friends' birthdays and dinner menus aren't merely forgotten but are actively not remembered. Things like small boys.

Three things I learned outside today:
1. There is half of a dead rabbit in our backyard. Just the bottom half, in case you are curious. Discovering that there is a wild raptor in our suburban trees is oddly thrilling. Also: I have no good answer to "Why that rabbit has no face, mommy?" other than the truth: A bird ate it off. That feels wrong.
2. My baby has light auburn, almost strawberry blond, hair and in the sunshine her eyes look like two sapphires. Nobody in our immediate family has light hair or blue eyes. She is a beautiful alien creature that I know less about than I thought I did.
3. A six-year-old and a seven-year-old will give up their video games to poke sticks in the mud if I let them take off their shoes. Even though it is 60 degrees cold outside. Mud can only be appreciated with bare toes.

People have been telling me ever since I had children to enjoy this time now while they are young because it passes so very quickly, that the magic that enlivens Velveteen Rabbits and vanquishes dragons and allows mommy kisses to heal wounds will disappear like so many Lite Brite pieces on Christmas morning. I thought I understood what they meant. The problem with that advice - besides the fact I find the sharp little Lite Brite pieces every time I sit down on our pee-perfumed couch - is that it often comes from a place of forgetful regret. These advice-givers are not pacing the floors at 3 a.m. with my inconsolable, colicky infant and chunky vomit crusted on the inside of their bra. These random people in the grocery store are not humiliated when my son drops trou in the middle of a crowded amusement park to relieve himself on a plastic tree. These elderly people were not there the day my son climbed out of his car seat, over the back of my chair, jumped on my head and tried to claw my eyes out while I was driving down the freeway because - and I'm serious - I wouldn't buy him Chinese food for lunch at the mall food court. But most of all these Further Along Parents aren't there for the daily grind of meals and baths and bedtimes and tantrums and the relentless around-the-clock stream of demands. Children are black holes of need. Perhaps they have forgotten this.

Admission: Having young children is the boot camp of parenthood. At least it is for me. I'm not proud to confess this. I know it isn't this way for all mothers. But there it is. Which isn't to say I don't love my children. I love them with a ferocity that surprises, stupefies and even frightens me. As their mother, I am the one in charge of this great balancing act of supply and demand - a skill that I am not very good at yet. Perhaps I will never learn to manage both my selfish desire to read and write until I am sated, with their desire to be sated by me. Yet my shortcomings as a mother should not punish them. This neediness is not their fault.

Today my son needed a push. So he could fly.

I dream of flying.

Post Script: Today is the day I drop down to three days a week of blogging, folks. Maybe less if there are more swings that need pushing. You will also see a lot less of me around the 'net. This has been a long time coming. I've been hanging on by my fingernails since the Jelly Bean has been born. Why? When I first started blogging, I read somewhere (Where? Who knows where thoughts come from, Joe?) that the cardinal rule for a good blog is that you must post something every day. I don't know if that's true. All I know is I can't do it anymore. Some of you, I imagine - perhaps vainly - will be disappointed. Others will probably be relieved - one less blog to hit on the comment rounds. Either way this feels like failure to me. I'm a girl that likes to do everything 100% or nothing and I'm tempted to just walk away. Two things hold me back: 1) I can't stop writing, even if I wanted to. 2) I love you guys too much. It's a very selfish thing really but reading your comments and sharing your lives through e-mails and your blogs has been one of the great privileges of my life. I don't want to lose you. So I'm going to try this thing called moderation. Other bloggers have done it and survived. Wish me luck.

Written By Charlotte Hilton Andersen for http://thegreatfitnessexperiment.blogspot.com only! Not to be re-published without permission.

Recruiting All Weekend Workout-ers! Blast Your Booty! Plus Get a Great Deal on a Heart Rate Monitor!

This particular butt exercise is not recommended by me. FitJerk, maybe.

The incomparable FitJerk (of ab burnout fame) has designed a butt-blasting workout just for GFE readers! The Gym Buddies and I will be doing it in the gym on Monday - for any of you local folk who want to join us - and we'll be taking pictures, laughing and undoubtedly making a host of inappropriate puns (how could we not?) I'll be posting the detailed workout and blogging our tighter butts on Tuesday and would love to have you guys try it too! Send me pics, send me your thoughts, heck - send me the quarter you bounced off your rear! And we'll all get toilet-sore together!
Happy butt lifting!

UPDATE: Woot.com's deal of the day today (Saturday, Mar 20) is a Proform combination heart rate monitor for $30 (US)! It has continuous HRM via a chest strap and touch pad option. Tracks cals/laps/splits/zones/etc. GREAT deal! Done at midnight tonight.

Rob Riches: Strong Shoulders, Calves, Abs

In the video bodybuilder and fitness model Rob Riches shows how he trains shoulders, calves and abs in Gold's Gym:

Ab Crunches: Fitness Staple or Overblown Hype?

You could always go the Mariah Carey route (hint: it involves an airbrush, several colors of spray tan, and a drastic underestimation of the observational abilities of the general public.)

Sit-ups: they're the one exercise everyone has tried. Mostly because you can't help it. Even as a baby it was one of the first things you learned - right after how to spit-up. You want to get out of bed in the morning? You sit up.

But these days sit-ups have gone from blase to being a raging topic of debate in the fitness world. They're either the yellow brick road to brick-hard abs or they're evil incarnate and not only are pointless ("you have to lose the fat first!!") but may even be counterproductive by building - and I'm using the technical phrase here - pokey outey muscles. Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow are reportedly in the former camp, regularly clocking hundreds of abs, sans roller, a day. Britney Spears once bragged of doing 1,000 sit-ups a day to stay in Toxic snake-dancing form. In the other camp you have Angie Harmon who boasts of never intentionally sitting up unless she has an actual reason to do so, such as getting out of bed for a bikini shoot. Right along with her is Abtastic Spice Geri Haliwell who says her Bond girl stomach comes from eschewing abs and sticking with dog walking and yoga. I've yet to hear anyone, celeb or otherwise, say "Sit-ups? Meh. I do a few here and there. They're all right."

Regardless of which side of the ab spectrum you fall, there is a serious side effect to sit-ups that you should know about. (If I worked for Self or Vogue right now I'd be all "The Disastrous Exercise You ARE Doing That May Be RUINING YOUR HEALTH! Search madly for our non-existent table of contents to find this article before the grocery checker gets to your order or you WILL DIE!" Ahem.) Two friends, who shall remain nameless for reasons soon to become apparent, both came down with the same, um, medical condition. And they both got it from doing sit-ups.

Problems of the Butt
The official term is "posterior ulcer." I call it blistered badonkadonk. Basically it happens when you do sit-ups in such a way as to rub all the skin off your tail bone. As painful as a carpet burn and as embarrassing as a bed sore, these ulcers can take months to fully heal. Knock on formica, I've never had this issue but it is hard to ignore when two super-fit girls in my life both did this to themselves in the same week.

I giggled. A lot. But it really isn't funny (stop laughing!). These ladies both now have problems with anything that requires just basic sitting, even with out the -upping. In addition to experiencing serious ridicule from their friends and loved ones, they've had to put up with tons of invasive questions from me. True story: had a 20-minute convo on the treadmill about one friend's blister. Nothings says "run on the free hand sanitizer" like oozing fluid talk on the tready!

So What To Do?
Both friends would like to maintain their lovely flat tummies and so were asking my advice as to what kinds of ab work they could do that didn't involve leveraging off their broken butts. While I came up with hanging leg raises, the Roman chair and various Pilates moves, Women's Health Magazine did me one better:

Called "the craziest ab move ever invented," the Wicked Wiper is supposed to be the best ab exercise out there. In fact, it's so crazy your average fitness model can't do it! If you read that last paragraph on the picture (click to enlarge) you'll find:

Full disclosure: As for the ripped gal in our photos? Not even she could do it! We used photoshop magic to erase the dude holding her up.

I gotta say I was wondering how she was managing to smile while doing such a stunt. How's that for truth in advertising?

So there you go - if you break your butt, you've always got the Wicked Wiper to keep you in shape. Or you could just ask Angie Harmon's mom to please birth you.

How do you feel about ab work? Do you love to crunch, crunch, crunch? Or are you one who runs away if a Swiss ball even rolls in your general direction? Do you subscribe to a particular type of ab theory (Pilates? Yoga? Tupler? Mariah Carey??)?

Written By Charlotte Hilton Andersen for http://thegreatfitnessexperiment.blogspot.com only! Not to be re-published without permission.

Tuan Tran: Strong Calves

In the video below bodybuilder and power lifter Tuan Tran performs calf raises on the leg press machine. Tuan explains: "There are many different ways that you can work your calf muscles, and if you have access to a leg press machine you can do calf raises on the machine. There are two main differences between calf raises on a leg press and calf raises on a standing calf machine. The first major difference is that when you are standing there is more challenge on your balance and core muscles. The second major difference is that the weight is loaded from the shoulders when you stand versus through your hips and lower back when using the leg press. Some people find calf raises on a leg press more comfortable on the shoulders than most standing calf machines, and some people find that they can lift more weight when they are using the leg press to do calf raises." Watch the video:

5 Things to Consider Before Going Vegetarian

Thanks to high-profile celebs like Alicia Silverstone (vegan), Posh Victoria Spice Beckham etc. etc. etc. (vegetarian), and Amanda Seyfried (raw foodist but hates it since she's only doing it to stay Hollywood skinny), going vegetarian or vegan is all the rage these days. Despite my general skepticism of anything touted by a celebrity, since I happen to be a vegetarian-by-choice-vegan-by-force-and-yes-I-still-eat-fish-atarian (For those of you keeping track, with the center free square I totally have a bingo! It spells C-R-A-Z-Y.) this is one trend I can get behind. So you'd think I'd be one of those exhibitionists standing in Times Square in a lettuce bikini and holding up posters of slaughterhouses. (Anyone else question the motives of the painted, dramatic, naked PETA girls? Meat whatever, oooh look there's a camera!)

The thing is, I'm a non-militant vegan. I'm going to end up on PETA's naughty list (like the no-fly list but with way more cavity searches) but I have to say it: being a vegetarian is not for everyone. And that's ok.

This weekend a good friend stumbled across Alicia Silverstone's blog (that's based off her book which I haven't read because honestly I already mostly eat that way and I'm not going to take fish out of my diet no matter how many times she tells me they squeal in psychic pain so I'll save my $20 thank you) and decided that she wants to try going vegan. So she did what any rational person would do: she got as far away as possible from me. No, actually she asked me - the girl with so many food issues I got on TV twice to exhibit all my crazy - for advice. Over a text message. For the love of little green apples girl, I can't even tell you my shoe size in a text much less explain my philosophy on food! So instead of an 8-word answer you get an 800-word one.

5 Things to Consider Before Going Vegetarian (Or Vegan or Raw)

1. Your motivation. Your reasons for going veg are going to be really important in deciding if this lifestyle is for you. You want to save the animals and/or the environment? Good answer, as long as you're really passionate about it. That reasoning sounds great until you're confronted with Uncle Lloyd's famous BBQ at the family reunion and you think, "Well heck this pig's already dead - at this point it will best benefit the environment in the form of manure via my brown-sugar-and-special-sauce poop!" Or perhaps you want to lose weight or get healthy? Those are great reasons but know that a veg diet isn't going to magically make those things happen. A Diet Coke and french fries are vegan but that doesn't make them health food. Bad reasons for going veg include "Because [insert celebrity] is doing it", "Because I've heard my poop won't smell" (Alicia Silverstone's on crack - your poop totally will still smell because it's made out of bacteria. You should worry if your poop doesn't smell.), or "Because I need to lose 10 pounds by Thursday."

2. Your social circle. It is a lot easier to eat veg if lots of your friends and/or family members do too. I'm not saying it's impossible to be the lone raw foodie at the annual hotdish potluck but it will be uncomfortable. And you will end a lot of dinner parties hungry. Unless you have the cajones to show up with a little tupperware of your own food, which I have never quite had the nerve to do - rather I just try to eat dinner before we go anywhere to dinner. Yes, it's as crazy as it sounds. So if you live in Cali and get stroll past that little vegan cafe every day on the way home from surfing, then this will be a lot easier transition than for those of us who live in the land where there has never been an event where sausage has not been served.

3. Your feelings about vegetables. You would think that this would be a given but I have known more than a few "vegetarians" who hate vegetables. I had one friend whose diet consisted solely of white flour, cheese and tomato sauce (i.e. spaghetti, cheese pizza, and tater tots with ketchup). And I used to shop with another vegan friend who filled her cart solely with prepackaged food-in-a-box. (Hint: white flour and sugar are still white flour and sugar even if the box says "organic enriched wheat flour" and "brown rice syrup.") If you want to reap the vast health benefits of the vegetarian lifestyle you need to eat vegetables.

4. Your free time and money. Like most healthy eating lifestyles, going veg will take either more of your time or more of your money. At first, probably both. Yes you can do veg very cheaply but it takes effort. Coconut oil is 8$ for a teeny little bottle but butter is $2 for the same amount. Lots of the specialty food items like nutritional yeast, tempeh, etc. can only be found at pricey health foods stores or on the Internet. Also, it is possible to go veg by eating an Amy's Organic frozen dish for every meal but chances are you are going to have to devote some extra time to looking up recipes and cooking. The other time-suck is if you have a family that you cook for, very often you end up making two meals - one for you and one for the omnivores - unless your whole house is ready to make this change. By far most of the vegetarians I know live in a meat-eating household and end up making some concessions to that.

5. Your tolerance of change. Are you a tiptoe-into-the-pool kind of girl or a rip-the-bandaid-off-and-cannonball-into-the-water gal? (If you are the latter, you'd better not leave that bandaid floating in the pool is all I'm saying.) Going vegan whole-hog (hee) is a huge lifestyle change. Pretty much everything that you are used to eating will be gone. The way you have learned to cook will be useless. All the items in your pantry become suspect. 99% of cookbooks won't apply to you or will need modifications. A simple trip to the grocery store can take you 3 hours as you interrogate every product you pick up (just ignore all the people staring at you talking to that eggplant - they're just jealous you can hear things they can't.) Some people like this total life overhaul and find it refreshing. Others get so freaked out when they realize how much animal products permeate their lives that they run screaming away and never look back.

I don't say all of this to discourage anyone from going vegetarian. I write this to manage your expectations because you'll have a better experience as a veg-head if you know what's coming down the pike. My advice to anyone is to give this lifestyle a try! There are enormous benefits to a plant-based lifestyle. But maybe work into it slowly. Try adding a vegetable to every meal. Try going meatless one day a week. Or three. Whatever you think you and your family can handle. Try a few vegetarian/vegan substitutes for foods you normally eat to see if you like them. (Me, I don't tolerate processed soy at all well - helllooo rancid gas! - so I avoid all the "burger" type stuff, soy milk, tofutti cuties and the like.) Try out some new veg recipes like the ones from Heather Eats Almond Butter or Averie of Loves Veggies and Yoga.

You don't have to go cold turkey (hee!) unless you want to. Something I have learned over the years of eating meat, not eating meat and everything in between is that there is a lot of judgment about food out there. There will always be someone freaking out about something you eat or don't eat so find where you are comfortable and where your body feels the best and then ignore everyone else.

What's your opinion on vegetarian diets? Have you ever tried one? What would you tell my friend? What do you think of vegetarians who will eat meat every once in a while? Should it be an all-or-nothing lifestyle?

Written By Charlotte Hilton Andersen for http://thegreatfitnessexperiment.blogspot.com only! Not to be re-published without permission.