Product Description

This guide outlines Bill Phillip's fitness programme, comprising weight training, aerobic exercise, and a careful diet. In addition, it addresses the reader's own personal goals and encourages personal transformation mentally, not just physically. The "Body for Life" programme reveals: how to lose fat and increase your strength by exercising less, not more; how to tap into an endless source of energy with Bill's "power mindset"; how to trade hours of aerobics for minutes of weight training - with dramatic results; how to feed your muscles and starve your fat with the provided eating plan; and how resistance training can significantly increase your metabolic rate allowing you to burn fat and change the shape of your body.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21314 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Bill Phillips had been publishing body-building magazines and marketing nutritional supplements for years when he had a weird revelation at a trade show: many of the most loyal and enthusiastic readers he had were totally out of shape. From that uncomfortable realisation came his popular Physique Transformation Contest (top prize that first year: Phillips's own Lamborghini), now world famous, and this book. The three-times-a-week weightlifting program in Body for Life is deceptively simple. If you have spent any time in the gym, you have already done all the exercises. But Phillips includes a couple of high-intensity sets at the end of each exercise that should compound the training effect on each muscle group. Same goes for the cardiovascular exercise he recommends: just 20 minutes, three times a week. But those 20 minutes are spent jacking the intensity up and down, accomplishing more in less time.

Phillips arranges all this into a 12-week programme, along with nutritional and motivational tips. Be warned that the nutritional advice gets a little spacey. For example, he puts "carbohydrates" and "vegetables" into separate categories, and recommends three daily doses of a nutritional supplement called Myoplex, which his company manufactures. (Fortunately, he gives tips on how to make each dose taste different, such as by adding drops of peppermint extract.) Despite this strangeness, Body for Life still motivates because so many others have achieved astounding results in similar 12-week windows, and the pictures and testimonials are here as evidence. --Lou Schuler

About the Author
Bill Phillips is the founder and editor in chief of Muscle Media magazine and founded the Body for Life Programme.

Customer Reviews

Inspiring and motivating, but very hard to follow to the end
My gym workouts seemed to be going nowhere, so I invested in this book to try and structure my approach and speed up my progress.

One of the reasons I chose this book above others was the complimentary reviews here on Amazon. But, may I point out that while some of the reviews award five stars and rave about the book, it's not until you get to the end of the review that the author suddenly admits that he or she is 'about to embark on his [Bill's] plan'. Or, 'I know that when I complete the 12 week course, I'll have the kind of body you see in all the mags or on Baywatch'. Until you've actually tried sticking to the program, you'll never know how hard it is, however motivated you may feel at the offset.

So, in short, from someone who has tried to follow the plan all the way through - i.e. me, I can honestly say that the book is highly inspirational and motivational, but I found the strict diet regime very hard to follow.

The book's focus revolves around the belief that you can 'Change your mind - Change your body - Change your life'. I.e. empowering yourself to change your body will have a knock-on effect and could change your life. It is easy to understand and very clearly written, and I felt motivated and inspired after reading it.

Having applied Bill's 'intensity' method to my workouts, my workout times became more effective and shorter, and after just a couple of weeks my personal levels increased significantly. I actually felt like I'd done a harder workout after just twenty minutes than when I'd previously spent over an hour in the gym.

However, I failed because I found it impossible to stick to the diet. For example, I do not class a mixture of non-fat yogurt and cottage cheese as an evening meal. Nor can I eat pasta with no sauce, no butter and no cheese - but just a squeeze of lemon over it. I realise diets mean some sort of sacrifice, but this was beyond my personal limit.

My other complaint is Bill's habit of extolling the virtues of his company's own nutrition drink, Myoplex, which is extremely expensive. Also, I did not want to start taking supplements.

In summary, the book is worth buying for motivating you and guiding you towards a more effective fitness routine. But unless you have huge amounts of self discipline and will power, you are unlikely to resemble the 'before' and 'after' photos adorning the inside covers after twelve weeks.

12 weeks that have changed my life
I have read some of the other reviews on here and felt it only fare I share mine. I bought this book after hearing about it form a collegue. I read it and felt empowered and after a few weeks decided to give it a go. I was sceptical about the photos and even more sceptical about the plugs for eas products. Anyway I followed the book to the letter. It lays it out in such a way that it easy to eat correctly and train right. I started off at 14st 2 pounds with 26% body fat. I followed the regime stricklty and am now 12st 5 pounds with 8.5% body fat. I nolonger suffer with indegestion and have taught my mind and body to eat correctly. This book has changed my life and I would and in fact do recommend it to everyone.

A decent exercise/eating program with plenty of motivation
The best thing about this book is the way it is packaged as a 12 week course. This gives you a challenge and a goal. It makes you think about what you want, how you are going to get it and what has gone wrong before. The motivational stories may make UK readers cringe a little but I'm sure they will also have a positive effect too.

The main weakness is that you could (if you could be bothered to work it out for yourself) get the same results without the quirky diet regimen. If you have been a couch potato for a while like me and piled on a few pounds then of course suddenly doing 3 sets of aerobic and 3 intense sets of weight-training a week is going to make a big difference over 3 months. It is doubtful whether you really need to be eating 6 meals of carbohydrate and protein to achieve excellent results and I suspect, given that most of the world operates on 3 meals a day, that being the odd one out will be difficult for a lot of people. Each meal is one "portion" of protein, one or carbohydrate & as much low-carb veg as you like. This could typically be a skinless chicken breast & a baked potato which amounts to c.300 calories, add to this a tablespoon of flavoring, be that salad dressing or sauce etc and some vegetables that adds up to c.2000 cals a day which for a flabby guy doing a load of exercise is sensible. I've found that eating these 6 meals a day is a fair bit MORE calories than I'd normally eat but given the huge increase in exercise I'm sure it won't do any harm. Also, I've always eaten a balanced diet and I'm sure that the advice on nutrition will be much more useful to others who eat crisps and Coke all day.

Most of the diet advice is fairly sound. It's not dangerous zero carbs nonsense like the Atkins diet but the pushing touse his own-brand meal-replacement shakes is neither necessary nor particularly healthy - I think we are all coming to understand that natural foods are greater than the sum of their tehcnical nutrient breakdowns and are, in the long run, the only really heathy option. Having said that, this doesn't render the course irrelevant.

There is plenty of support information, groups and sites on the web for this plan which is an added bonus and can only help keep one motivated.

Like all these books, you are partially sold on a silver bullet effect - that somehow a certain combination of foods and exercises and maybe supplements will have a synergistic effect and have amazing results. I don't believe this to be true but that souldn't put you off. If you are currently not already fit and lean then in following the program you will lose fat, gain muscle, be fitter and feel better - this is a certainty as you will be exercising a lot & eating pretty well. It's no miracle but you don't need one anyway.

I'm following this course with some changes to the eating plan to fit in with my life and it has had the effect of motivating me to get up, exercise and plan my eating. I've been getting more and more unhappy about my weight increase and general laziness and this book has tipped my into action.