More than fitness, it’s a ‘Way Of Life’!
Way Of Life Boot Camp has a basic philosophy underlying ALL of it’s training, which is that fitness is more than just exercise, it’s a ‘way of life’ or path that improves our lives physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually.
Martial Arts Elements
Way Of Life Boot Camp founder, Forrest Folen, was introduced to fitness through martial arts training. After years of going down the “wrong path”, Forrest discovered martial arts and fitness to be the “right” path and training became a way of life that would transform his life and lead to a passion that would lead him to be on the forefront of a movement that believed that fitness was way more than an image on the cover on a magazine – fitness is a transformational tool and path to living your best life and becoming your best self.
Training is results-driven
Nothing motivates us more than results. When you see progress in how your clothes fit after just a few weeks of training, that’s VERY motivating! Seeing the numbers on the scale go down and getting compliments from your friends and family mean a lot to us. Can you imagine how you’re going to feel when you have to buy new “skinny jeans” and all your clothes start fitting loose? It may be expensive to have to buy a new wardrobe, but you’re worth it!
Our training uses cardio, strength and metabolic circuits to accelerate fat loss. The exercise combined with our Way Of Life Boot Camp nutrition guidance will get you results.
…And these aren’t “quick-fix” results either. These are results that last. There is no crash diet, no magic pills. It’s hard work, dedication, and a journey that will get us results and the lifestyle changes developed over time that helps us keep our results. Most of our clients have experienced the traps of “quick-fix diets” and know the importance of a well balanced nutrition and exercise program such as ours.
Strength training to gain or keep muscle and raise metabolism
There are other fat loss programs out there that focus on just diet or just cardio training with diet. However, all the current research AND tried-and-tested methods of training have shown us that real body transformation is centered around the cornerstone of strength training.
Strength training, or resistance training, involves things like push-ups, squats, rows, weights training, and other such methods. Strength training is crucial to maintaining muscle mass during fat loss. When we lose weight and muscle, we can be sure to gain all the weight back, plus more! Strength training ensures we are doing things the RIGHT WAY. The way that makes us stronger, gives us energy, shapes our bodies, and makes us confident in everything that we do.
It’s got to be FUN!
Another core part of the philosophy of Way Of Life Boot Camp is that training is not only effective for fat burning, flattening ones stomach and getting in great shape, but it’s also FUN! This was one of Forrest’s biggest revelations when it came to helping people overcome the barriers of getting and staying in shape. Forrest realized that when training wasn’t fun, it became something to avoid. BUT when the training was fun and the energy was positive, it attracted people and helped people reach their fitness goals much faster.
More Way Of Life Boot Camp philosophies
The Long and the Short of it
Food Logging: Why it Works
The Balancing Act (Balance is Important)
Why Cheating is OK!
Get other involved
1. The Long and the Short of it
Before we get into the core nutrition philosophy lets talk quickly about two ways we can approach your nutrition plan and why it’s important to choose one before you begin. When we look at most of the diet information out there, we see a lot of plans that I would like to call short term approaches. Now before you go off thinking that is a bad thing, I want to tell you why it’s not necessarily. People have heard all the bad publicity about fad or crash diets and how they are not good for long term success. That is absolutely……..true! But here’s the catch, “fad” and “crash” diets are short term approaches to nutrition and there is a place for them.
There place is for short term use. Your mindset is critical from the beginning. If we look at short term approaches as just that, we can use them to our advantage and reap the rewards they have to offer while recognizing that we have to add a long term approach at the end of the short term approach for continued success and long term lifestyle changes. Short and Long continued: With a short term approach, we make big and drastic changes to the way you eat. You may cut certain foods out of your diet for a while. Maybe you take out all things that aren’t nutritionally dense, like candy, cakes, cookies and fried foods. You may have more structure in your diet, such as eating every 3 hours, with very specific calorie counts at each meal or specific foods at each meal so you can insure that you are getting the nutrients you need to keep your body satisfied but nothing extra that would maybe throw you off track. When I need to kick myself into gear again and get out of a bad food cycle, I always start with getting rid of drinks that have calories and I switch back to drinking only water. Now some might say that this is a perfectly acceptable long term approach for them, but it’s not for me.
I enjoy a soda here and there, maybe a cocktail every few months, and maybe an afternoon latte everyday. A better long term approach for me would be to drink water throughout the day and make my daily latte a low calorie version and let the soda and cocktails be part of my cheat days and not a regular thing. My point is that a long term approach needs to take you personally into account. Yes, we all need to eat the right amount of calories for our bodies and we need variety in our diets, but beyond that, the real long term success lies in what is going to work for you.
2. Food logging
Have you ever kept a journal or a diary? Have you ever gone back and looked at said diary say 10 years later?
No, is that just me, am I the only one who can get rid of just about everything but something about those written words, I just can’t manage to let go of? Ok, yeah maybe it’s just me. Well if you so happen to ever stumble across an old diary, here’s what you are likely to find. Things that you were obsessing over way back when are so much clearer in the rear view mirror than they were when you were there living them. I’m sure a tiny part of it is simply maturity, but I think there is something to be said about stepping back and looking at something from a slightly more detached perspective. This works the same way with a food diary or a food log. Many of us eat in the moment without much thought. It goes something like this: I’m hungry….. what’s closest? easiest? sounds tasty?
…then we make a selection and eat it until we aren’t hungry anymore or maybe its really tasty and we keep eating past that point. Sometimes the types of foods, the quantity, the frequency or the motives for eating, mess with our overall success in this area. Food logging is an amazing tool that we can use to help us see those patterns that are getting in the way of our success.
Some of us are better at it than others when it comes to having a good sense of where we are going right or wrong with our food choices. I know that I can often see it better in others than I can in myself. That’s why food logging can help give us that insight into our nutritional habits and help us to uncover where we have some opportunities and where we needs to cut back.
Depending on your food log method, hopefully you’ll have the ability to look over not only a days worth of nutrients but also a whole week’s worth as well. That’s where I see the most value. Look at all your macronutrients first, your fat, carbohydrates and proteins.
The USDA recommends adults consume the percentages of their caloric intake from each group: carbohydrates 45–65%, fats 10–35%, and proteins 20–35%. After that I like to look at fiber.
Fiber fills us up and is great for our digestive health. When fiber is too low, we tend to fill ourselves on empty carbs or sometimes only on lean proteins, all while our body is craving some fiber. When you look at your food log and really use it as a tool to steer you to your goals, you’ll be amazed by how much quicker you start to see results.
3. Balance
When you diet and restrict certain foods you are more likely to crave those foods. If you give in to those cravings, it can often feel as if you have failed. There are so many temptations out there. We don’t need anything else getting in our way of success. That’s why eating a variety of foods in moderation is a better long term strategy. And while we are mentioning it, lets talk about variety.
Did you know that of the 150 plants that supply the world’s food supply over 75% of it comes from just 12 plants? I think we can do better than that. Variety is the spice of life and you deserve a more seasoned life.
Variety on our plates keeps things exciting. Variety in our stomachs make our bodies happy. So when you are thinking about your dinner try swapping out a wheat product for another grain, say quinoa, amaranth, millet. Or swap your spinach in a cooked dish for kale or swiss chard. Think about texture and nutrients when making a swap and you can really open up your world to a more exciting menu. Now that doesn’t sound like a diet does it?
4. Cheating. It’s a good thing!
This goes right back to balance and variety. Please don’t deprive yourself as part of a long term strategy. It won’t work! We get if you’re doing a temporary “plateau buster” plan and you have a weakness for a particular food and you want to restrict yourself for fear that if you indulge, there’s no turning back and you are bound to go overboard. I would challenge you to keep that food in your diet but change your portion size and maybe only have it on your workout days.
I would need to see what the research says here but I would guess that maintaining portion control is a more successful long term approach than restricting a particular food would be.
Another way of cheating that may work for you is having a cheat day. If you are a good planner and you have your meals worked out in advance and don’t go for long periods of time without eating (this should be all of us but let’s just keep it real here), you can probably get away with a whole cheat day. You rocked the healthy eating Monday through Friday and now Saturday you know you’ll be out and about maybe even at a party and you want to go a little wild. Some of us can totally do it and still keep on track with our overall healthy eating approach.
Just make sure that your overall calories for the week still reflect a deficit if your goal is to lose weight. Pick a style that works for you and go for it!
Make choices that fill you up. When food logging, you might find that by the end of the first few days, you are still feeling a little hungry. Take that opportunity to look back at your food log and see what nutrients you might be lacking in. For me, it’s usually fiber and protein, sometimes fat.
The next day when making your meals, think about ways to add those things into each meal. So for example, if its fiber, you might throw in some chopped frozen spinach and flax seeds into your morning smoothie. It doesn’t add much to your calorie load but man does it make a difference in how long you’ll feel full afterwards. Then at lunch you might pile your sandwich high with lots of different veggies and even fruits. So here’s a combo you might not have thought of: lettuce, cilantro, red onion, and pineapple with a chicken breast or some sliced turkey. Sandwiches or burgers don’t always need to be just lettuce and tomato. Spice it up!
5. Get Others Involved
Social support systems get us through a lot of things. They act like buffers between us and tough situations. Chances are, our families or those we eat with most often have many of the same eating habits that we do. When going with a long term approach, you want to be making lots of small gradual changes and thats much easier to do when those you eat with are doing it with you. If you shop for and prepare the meals, you have a lot of control here. Lets say you swap out your family’s snacks first.
Maybe rather than buying chips, you buy something that’s salty and crunchy but is more nutritionally dense like, roasted and salted almonds. A quarter cup of almonds has about the same number of calories as the snack sized bag of chips but the chips are mainly fat and simple carbohydrates while the almonds have good fats and protein, both of which will leave you feeling more full in between meals. If you aren’t cooking meals at home with your family but you eat with your co-workers, bring in some healthy snacks to share at the office. Tell people what you are doing. Chances are they need a buddy to encourage them too. Healthy food choices are contagious in the workplace. I’ve seen people recipe swapping or even lunch sharing, where a group will take turns bringing in healthy lunches for the group. It’s a great way to build momentum to keep you going on your journey to healthy living.
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