Last-Minute Event Planning

By Team Beachbody

Panic. Your 20-year reunion is a month away and you're 10 pounds over your high school weight. You've always said that you weren't going to let age get to you but you just changed jobs, the kids are at that "special" age, and there just hasn't been time. oh dear, what to do?

Don't cancel your trip yet, you can still waltz into the party lookin' like Farrah or Magnum PI. In fact, you can make fairly significant changes with a solid month of self-discipline. Sure, it won't be easy. You're going to have to restrict your diet significantly and augment your daily exercise periods. It will cause you some stress, certainly, because you still have to work and the kids won't change for you. But think about how much less stress you'll have at that reunion as you speak with old friends, "Aging? Nah, don't even notice it."

The key to staying fit as you age is periodization. What, you say? Periodization is a term used by coaches and athletes. It's a term for cyclical training. You train a certain muscular system until it plateaus, then alter it, never doing the same series of workouts more than 30 days in a row.

Altering your workout can mean as little as increasing its intensity so that if you add weight or increase reps, that's fine. When you plateau you want to change, which is as soon as you stop improving or-better--when improvement becomes minimal.

As a working adult, not an athlete, your periodization will be different. You'll cycle your exercise periods between intense and maintenance. No matter how busy your schedule, you can probably dedicate certain blocks of the year to strict diet and exercise and others to maintenance. The periods of intense exercise can be very short, as little as three weeks, while the maintenance periods can be quite long. The key here is to get fit in the first place because the fitter you are, the less work it takes to maintain it.

So, for your first step, go for it and get ready for that reunion. After step 1, it will keep getting easier and easier if you keep with a program.