Fit in 10: Slim & Strong--for Life!: Simple Meals and Easy Exercises for Lasting Weight Loss in Minutes a Day
256
Fit in 10: Slim & Strong--for Life!: Simple Meals and Easy Exercises for Lasting Weight Loss in Minutes a Day
256eBook
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Overview
Most women already know, more or less, what they should be doing to keep their bodies healthy and strong. Eat right, work out, and be mindful—but who really has the time for all of that when work is crazy, the kids are waiting for dinner, and there just aren’t enough hours in the day? It turns out, you don’t need hours: just 10 minutes!
Based on cutting-edge research and designed for real women, the 60-day Fit in 10 plan offers proven results without endless hours at the gym or cooking elaborate meals. Working out for just 10 minutes per day and spending 10 minutes or less creating healthy, delicious meals will result in a faster metabolism, slimmer waistline, reduced pain, and overall improved health and mood.
Fit in 10 is a lifestyle, not a diet. Prevention has developed this program to help you boost your commitment to a healthy, active life. The book includes a 10-day clean-eating jumpstart meal plan; 85 healthful, delicious recipes; and a 60-day training plan to help you form new exercise and eating habits that will improve your health and tone and tighten your body. The 10-minute “Life Changers” throughout the book encourage and empower you to prioritize yourself and stay on track to meet those goals long past the first 60 days.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781623369965 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Harmony/Rodale |
| Publication date: | 12/26/2017 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 102 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Life is Complicated. Fit in 10 is Simple.
“i’m healthier, i have so much more energy, and for the first time in a very long time, I’m finally showing up for my life again,” says the woman standing in front of me. The 59-year-old New Yorker barely resembles the person that I met just 60 days earlier. She’s lighter now, and not just physically.
When I first met Lori Lowell, she was exhausted. Desperate to feel better, she had applied to be part of the Fit in 10: Slim & Strong—for Life! test panel. It wasn’t just the long hours she put in at work. Her job as an office manager of a medical office was taxing, and the 12-hour days didn’t leave her much time for herself, but for the most part, she enjoyed it.
No, it wasn’t work. It was everything else. First, she was physically run down. She hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in months. Her back ached so badly that every time she turned over in bed, the pain woke her. She’d always struggled with her weight, but she’d never been this heavy before. The last time she got on a scale, the number she saw—190 pounds—shocked her. It was too much for her 5-foot-6 frame. Plus, ever since she turned 50 and the hormonal storm hit, she wasn’t just carrying it in her hips and thighs. Now, it had settled around her belly, making it much harder for her to do the gardening she enjoyed and to find clothes that fit.
On top of feeling physically awful, Lori was mentally drained. Her younger sister, Donna, was battling brain cancer, her father-in-law was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and she and her husband, Ken, were still trying to get two of their three kids through college. It was just too much.
“I’m so sick of feeling overwhelmed and out of shape,” she’d told me. “I need to make a change that’s actually sustainable.”
10-Minute Transformations
My heart ached for Lori during that initial conversation; I understood the very real hurdles she was up against. But I also felt hopeful for her, because I knew there was a simple solution that would help her turn around her health and get back in shape in just minutes a day.
Over the last 3 years, Fit in 10 has empowered thousands of busy women to lose the stubborn weight that was slowly eroding their health and stealing their joy. Without dieting. Without punishing their bodies with ridiculously tough workouts.
I never grow tired of seeing someone’s face light up when she learns that she doesn’t have to suffer through miserable diets or torturous exercise to feel good in and at peace with her body. That moment when she realizes she can enjoy amazing food while living the life she wants in the healthy body she needs. When the cloud lifts and she gives me a hug, her eyes bright, and she says, “Thank you. For everything.” I squeeze her back, feeling humbled and lucky to have met another Fit in 10 soul sister who inspires me to continue to prioritize my own health and wellness.
If you’re reading this book, you probably know how exhausting it is to feel uncomfortable in your body or to think constantly about your weight and stress over what, exactly, you should be eating. You also know how crummy it is to feel guilty about missing yet another workout. The truth is, most of us already have a general understanding of what we should be doing to stay healthy and strong—eat better, move more—but we get lost in the details and overwhelmed by “How in the world am I ever going to find the energy or time to do it all?”
I know, because I’ve been there, too.
A Desire for Something Easier
The idea for Fit in 10 started brewing when I began to realize that my time-crunched life was only going to get busier. Here I was, the fitness director of Prevention, blessed with an abundance of wonderful opportunities to do a job I believed in and loved, and yet I was struggling to find a way to fit in all of the good stuff I knew I was supposed to be doing. I spent most of my days parked in front of a computer and most nights, after walking in the door after 7 p.m., scrambling to get a clean meal on the table before falling into bed and doing it all over again the next day.
It was also getting harder and harder to squeeze in my daily runs and twice-a-week yoga classes, let alone get to the strength-training workouts I knew my body and metabolism needed to stay strong and youthful. Every expert I spoke to and countless new studies backed the importance of lifting weights, and I wrote and edited numerous stories for Prevention on why every woman needed to be doing more of it. Still, while I made it to the occasional boot-camp class, I was largely part of the 80 percent of American women who weren’t strength training regularly.1
When I hit my mid-thirties and my body started to lose tone and feel achier, I promised myself over and over that this would be the week when I was finally going to start making strength training a priority. Then, reality would set in and I’d be crushed by a wave of deadlines, e-mails, and millions of other little must-dos, and my goal to get stronger and leaner would be washed away. I remember thinking to myself, “I don’t even have kids yet. This is only going to get harder!”
As someone who struggled with weight in the past, I wasn’t about to let my health and fitness slide backward (you can read more about my “aha moment” on page 22). I had to find a doable solution, one that I could share with every woman who was in a similar struggle. So, I started to wonder, “What’s the littlest amount of strength training someone could do each day and see a major difference in her strength and body?” After diving into the research and chatting with some of the top experts in the field, I eventually settled on 10 minutes—the time you could find, say, right before you hop into the shower or while dinner cooks in the oven. Research conveys that 10 minutes of simple movement can make a huge difference in everything from your mood to your metabolism (see page 4 for more). But I chose 10 minutes mostly because I believed it was truly doable. Because if it wasn’t simple, there was no way I was going to fit it into my busy life.
When I brought the concept of Fit in 10 to my team at Prevention, they loved the idea of such a simple plan, and the wheels were set in motion. After creating the workouts with trainer Larysa DiDio, we tested my fitness hypothesis with real women in the real world. We were shocked by how quickly 10 minutes of metabolism-revving strength training could transform one’s body and health when paired with simple, clean eating. We saw it work with women of all ages and fitness levels, whether it was someone like Lori, who needed to ease back into exercise, or someone like me, who needed to add in regular strength training to break through a plateau.
Over the last few years, we’ve created two successful fitness DVDs—Fit in 10: Total-Body Transformation and Fit in 10: 30-Day Belly Fix—that have helped women get fit right at home, in just 10 minutes a day. While the workouts were tremendously effective, I kept hearing one very important question from our Fit in 10 community: When are you going to make clean eating as simple as the 10-minute workouts?
Making Good Food Simple
The result is the book you are now holding in your hands. Fit in 10: Slim & Strong—for Life! is the first Fit in 10 program that combines new 10-minute toning routines with a cookbook’s worth of 10-minute clean meals that will make weight loss easy and enjoyable. This isn’t diet food. This is real food. These are clean, yummy, homemade recipes that you—and your family—will love. Every meal is as simple to make as it is delicious to eat. You’ll find protein-packed breakfasts for your busy mornings, perfectly portable lean lunches, and amazingly simple and satisfying dinners that are a snap to put together after a long day. And of course, since I believe that life’s better with dessert, we’ve included healthy treats that will satisfy your sweet tooth.
You’ll also learn the basics of clean eating so that you’re empowered to make smarter choices at the store, when you’re eating out, when you’re standing in your neighborhood bodega, or if you’re wandering the airport wondering what the heck you should grab on the go. These are the simple techniques that have given me the freedom to stay at a healthy weight without counting calories or restricting food groups, and I’m so excited to share them with you. They’re also the same guidelines that our Fit in 10 test panelists used to transform their life, health, and bodies.
Strong for Life
At this point in our lives, it’s not about looking like a supermodel—it’s about feeling like a superwoman. There’s so much more to us than the size of our thighs, but we do need to be strong, healthy, and confident so we can live our lives with energy and passion. The 10-minute sculpting routines in this book will help you do that, without ever having to leave your home. Each of the 12 routines will show you how to strengthen and tone every “zone” safely and effectively, in a way that works for your body. I know because we tested them with women of all ages and fitness levels.
Real Women. Real Life. Amazing Results.
Once we created the Fit in 10: Slim & Strong— for Life! plan, we asked 15 women from the New York City area to see how well it worked for them in the real world of crazy schedules, achy bodies, and families full of picky eaters. They ranged in ages from 33 to 60, and each had her own reasons for needing a way to simplify her health and fitness strategy. Some were busy moms in their thirties and forties who couldn’t devote large chunks of time to exercise, and others were women in their fifties and sixties who wanted to go into the second half of life feeling stronger and healthier than they did 10 or 20 years ago.
After 60 days on the plan, our test panelists were thrilled with their results. (You’ll find many of their inspiring stories spread throughout the pages of this book.) Overall, they lost an average of 11 pounds and 23 inches, with some women dropping up to 14, 15, or even 18 pounds in only 8 weeks. They also saw their bodies become tighter and leaner, especially in those hard-to-tone areas like the belly, thighs, and upper arms. Many women found the Fit in 10 lifestyle so enjoyable and doable that they plan to keep following it. (Anne Marie Russo was down 26 pounds at press time. See her story on page 129.) While the weight loss numbers were impressive, the transformation they experienced went far deeper. Women who had previously felt weak and beaten down (emotionally and physically) suddenly were doing things they hadn’t done in years.
They were running up the stairs without feeling breathless, squatting down to play with their kids or grandkids, jogging instead of walking around the block, and easily lifting heavy suitcases overhead. They were thinking more clearly, their energy was better than it had been in months, and many of their nagging aches and pains had disappeared. What’s more, for the first time in years, they felt confident and happy to be in their bodies. They were enjoying getting dressed in the morning. There was no more hiding under blousy tops or squeezing themselves into pants that were uncomfortably tight.
And remember Lori? Now she’s down 13 pounds, sleeps through the night, and feels happier than she has in years. “For the longest time, taking better care of myself and losing weight was always on my mind,” she says. “It was like the crack in the ceiling that needed to be fixed, or that dent in the car that needed to be repaired. It was always there, and it was wearing me down. The idea of getting back in shape felt overwhelming, but now I know that it doesn’t have to be. There are little things you can do that can make a huge difference.”
Now It’s Your Turn
Anyone who credits Fit in 10 for their transformation was already amazing. This book isn’t here to change you or to try and force you or your body into some ridiculous “ideal.” It’s here to empower you with smart, simple tools that make it much, much easier for you to give your body what it needs in the time you have. So if you’re sick of worrying about your weight, feel confused about what to eat, or want to be strong and lean for the rest of your life, this book will help you do it in minutes a day.
Sometimes I still can’t believe that such a small idea has helped so many. I’m so excited for you to experience what happens when you stop thinking “I don’t have enough time” and start believing “I can move mountains in the time that I have.”
Now, let’s start the journey together.