Since going Paleo my family has fallen even more in love with our grill. Paleo and grilling just work well together. The past couple of years I've even been stepping outside my grilling comfort zone more and more. Grilling things I'd never thought to have grilled before and trying new flavor combinations. I have to say I'm pretty thrilled with the results of most of my flavor experiments. In the past I'd never have thought to grill fruit, but it's amazing. Grilling fruit and adding it to traditionally savory dishes? Brilliant. Oh yes, and? New rule: every burger recipe for the rest of forever must contain grilled pineapple. OK, maybe more of a guideline. It's a seriously delicious combination though. This Smoky Grilled Pineapple Burger is always a crowd-pleaser at my house. It's not only Paleo, but Whole30, glutenfree, lower carb, and clean eating friendly. I promise you won't miss the bun! paleo, grilled pineapple burger, smoky
I must confess: I've never met a Beachbody program I wasn't head over heels in love with. Until now...
The 21 Day Fix was a big thumbs down for me.
I'm not going to share my before and after pics for this program, because you can tell no difference. I lost 2.5 pounds. To be fair it's only 3 weeks. One should not expect miracles for that amount of time (even though it does seem to be marketed that way). I'm perfectly happy with 2.5 pounds. If I chose to stick with this program I could see myself losing a pound a week on it.
But I just don't love it enough to stick with it! I'm honestly glad to be done.
What I loved:
- The trainer. I really enjoyed Autumn Calabrese as a trainer.
- The modifier. Seriously, can we have the modifier of these workouts do a beginner set? Loved her. I would say one upside of these workouts is that they are completely beginner accessible because of the modifications shown.
- Several of the individual workouts. I loved a couple of the individual workouts (especially the extra DVD Plyo Fix) and can see myself doing them regularly in the future.
- The focus on building healthy habits. The program is designed to be 3 weeks of building the habits of working out and proper portions. LOVE that.
- Random, but the way Autumn explained a sumo squat finally clicked for me. I've been doing them slightly wrong!
What I didn't love:
- The built in commercials. There's a commercial for Shakeology, or their multivitamin at the beginning and end of every workout! You can skip past them (thank goodness), but still annoying. They also display Shakeology and talk about it in most of the workouts. Call me crazy, but if I pay for a workout that's just too much advertising!
- The way the workouts were scheduled. I hurt my shoulder by day 3. I'm in no way blaming this program for my injury, these things happen. I'm an experienced exerciser, but day 1 you do cardio holding handweights and day 2 is upper body?! I tweaked my shoulder and had to modify the entire rest of the program and it still hurts. Just not a fan of the way the workouts are set out for this program.
- The lighter weight, higher rep workouts. For most of these workouts you will do reps for 1 minute. I'm just not a fan of these type of workouts in general. It was probably good for me though, to shake things up. However, I prefer to go heavier with weights and lower on reps.
- The calorie burn for the workouts. Of course everyone is different, but I like to see at least 300-400 calories burnt per workout for workouts of this length. For me these came in at 200-250 most days. In fact, the 400 calorie burn per workout they have you use in your calorie calculations is super high for me. Only in 1 of the workouts did I even top 300 calories burned (and that was the Plyo Fix extra DVD).
- The food plan. I think it's great in theory, but in practice I hated it. It wasn't enough fat or protein for me and I was hungry and cranky. In fact, even though my calculations set me at just under 1700 calories I found upon tracking days that I often wound up at 1250-1400 calories. It's very easy to come in too low in calories depending on what you fill your containers with. I did not expect to need to count calories/track food on top of this. I wound up adding 1 or 2 proteins and a fat per day. It also turned out to be pretty inconvenient. I just didn't like it.
- The cost. I really thought it was a decent deal if you bought the challenge pack, but after doing this program I've changed my mind. I definitely would not buy this again.
- Not 100% related to the program, but the 'faked' before and after pics that are everywhere for this program. They're driving me nuts! I've seen 2 types: 1. The before pic where the person is hunching over and poking their tummy out and then the after pic the person is standing up super straight, shoulders back, and sucking their tummy in. 2. Where the person has clearly done several round to get their results.
I just didn't enjoy the program as a whole. Completely personal preference. It seems like a good solid program and I think it would benefit some people, but I personally just didn't like it.
So, hype or help? I'm going to have to say there's some help in there, but it's layered under a whole lot of hype! Bottom line: there are better programs out there.
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