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8-Week Program Details This 8-week program includes a 3 day a week weight training split; Legs, Push, Pull. 1. Legs 2. Chest/Shoulders/Tris 3. Back/Bis/Abs Always warm up for 5-10 minutes before you begin your weight training. This can be done on a treadmill, bicycle or elliptical machine. You can perform these 3 weight training workouts in any order you would like, any day of the week. You will do these 3 workouts every week for the full 8 weeks. Each workout has 5 exercises and you get to choose from two different exercises. The number of sets you do depends on your experience. Start with 2 sets and a weight heavier enough to control the movement for up to 10 repetitions. After the first week if you are ready to advance you can either increase the number of reps, or increase the number of sets, or you can increase the weight. Form is most important, so be sure to focus on excellent form before moving to a higher weight. But do challenge yourself! A sample week could look like this: Monday - HIIT morning, Shoulders/Chest/Tris evening Tuesday - Legs Wednesday - HIIT morning Thursday - Rest Day Friday - Back/Bis/Abs Saturday - HIIT Sunday - Rest Day There are many variations of what your week will look like depending on your schedule. Above is just an example. HIIT Training It also includes High Intensity Interval Training workouts for your cardio. Studies have shown that this form of training burns fat more efficiently and it takes less time than other traditional forms of cardio. Also, no special equipment is needed so it’s easy to do anywhere at anytime. See HIIT Workout Guide for more details on those workouts. Depending on your goals you will do anywhere from 1 to 4 HIIT workouts each week. You can do additional steady state cardio if you choose but be careful not to over-train and be sure you are eating enough calories for your specific activity level. Keep reading for helpful tips and how to calculate your calorie needs. This will help you in building your own meal plan to meet your fitness goals. I’ve include a tutorial on how to meal plan in the Sample Meals worksheet.

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1. What Are Your Goals? Do you want to lose body fat? Or do you want to build muscle? It’s hard to do both at the same time efficiently. You may gain a little muscle tone while losing body fat, but if you want to have substantial muscle grown you must feed the muscles and not eat in a calorie deficiency. Eating the way the program describes and doing the workout routine will automatically help you lose body fat if you need to because when you have more muscle on your body you burn more calories even when you’re sleeping. 2. Focus on Whole Foods If you want to reach certain goals your diet needs to be on track. 80% of health is diet, so we want you to focus on eating whole plant foods during the program. That means laying off things that come in packages and have long ingredient lists. It could mean for you giving up gluten, sugar, and alcohol. Whatever you decide to do stick with it. 3. Prep Your Food in Advance On your day off, like Sunday, prep your meals for at least the next 3-4 days if not the whole week. Batch cook your carbs (like quinoa and sweet potatoes), pick a few protein recipes to make, and chop some veggies for easy steaming and snacking. Make a few snack foods or measure out servings for store-bought snacks. Smoothies and breakfast porridge are best made the day of really. But prep everything possible in advance so you always have good food choices available! If you want you can measure out each lunch and dinner meal in containers in the fridge for the week. Store big salads with the dressing in a separate container. Then you can just grab it and go. Since I work from home I like to keep everything separated in it’s own container and make up my plate at the time of eating. This helps me not get bored and I can choose whatever I’m in the mood for, but if you do better making each separate meal in advance then do that. Find what works for you. 4. Track Your Food and Workouts If you don’t track everything then it’s hard to look back at what you’ve done if you need to adjust your plan to further reach your goals. Once you get the hang of this way of eating and start to know how many calories are in certain foods it isn’t necessary to track your food every single day if you feel comfortable skipping some days. But you do want to keep a workout journal or use a phone app to document what exercises you are doing each week and how many sets and reps of each. Don’t forget to track the weight you lifted as well. That way you know what weight to start that exercise with the next time! And you can watch yourself get stronger and go up in weight. Oftentimes on my last set if I feel like I could go up in weight I will give it a try and sometimes do less reps than 10 if I can’t manage that many. Maybe next time you do one set with the lighter weight and 2 sets with the heavier weight. Continue to push yourself so you can get stronger. If you are a beginner to weight lifting you will gain strength faster than you think so don’t take the easier way out. If you try a heavier weight you want to be able to do at least 5 reps with excellent form. If your form starts to slack or you can only get a few reps in, go back to the lighter weight and try again next time.

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Calculating Calorie Needs Use the IIFYM Calculator to figure out Daily Calories Required for your body composition and goals. STEP ONE

STEP TWO Choose Your Goals

My goal (s) of this program is:

Fill in each category even if you want to lose weight. Use Suggested 15% for Fat Loss. You need to know what your maintenance calories are because you never want to go below 300-500 calories of this number. If you eat too little your body will think it’s starving and will hold onto any fat you want to lose. Please keep this in mind. If you are using MyFitnessPal.com or another phone app it’s best to enter everything manually.

BMR Fat Loss Maintain Bulking

If you are using MyFitnessPal to track calories, if you manually put in your fat loss calories you must also put in your exercise activity to see how many calories you need to make up. Do not enter in your goal weight because MFP has a tendency to tell everyone who is trying to lose weight they should eat 1200 calories. This is WAY too low if you are an active person. Your BMR calories are what you need just to function and get out of bed and move around so you must eat more than that if you exercise. Fat Loss – keep in mind that you will be working out and lifting weights, which will automatically put you in a calorie deficient. So on days that you are working out you can eat more even if you are trying to lose weight. The only days that you should eat the “Fat Loss” amount of calories above is when you don’t work out at all. You may have tried in the past to diet by always having your calories in deficiency and noticed you were tired, sluggish, or never met your goals. Most likely you were under-eating. Maintain –When you work out enter in that as well and it will take off calories burned from the total amount of calories you eat in a day. If you are trying to lose weight/body fat you will be in “calorie deficient” mode on your workout days. If you are NOT trying to lose weight you’ll need to eat more calories to make up for those your burn off. Bulking – this is how many calories you need to eat if you want to gain weight and/or put on muscle mass. Keep in mind that on your weight lifting days you will need to eat more calories to reach this number of calories consumed.

Gender

Age Height

Weight Body Fat %

Exercise Level

Name Email Phone number

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STEP THREE Select Nutritional Plan (to calculate macros) What are Macros? The macronutrients that make up any diet are Carbs, Protein, Fat in that order. A good average it to shoot for is 60/20/20. That means that 60% of your calories come from carbohydrates, 20% comes from protein, and 20% comes from fat. If you want to bulk it might look like 55/25/20. It really depends on what your goals are and how you body reacts to certain macros. Every person will be different. Some people benefit from having higher protein and fat in their diet, while some people swear by high carbs and low protein/fat. And you don’t have to live and breathe by your macros. It’s just another tool to use to access your progress. It’s most important that you focus on eating the right amount of calories and high quality food. If you already know what macros work best for you, put them in the IIFYM calculator manually. A good average is 60/20/20. If you want you can try the low fat setting. If you don’t already know what works best for you try one set of macros for the first 4 weeks and we can re-evaluate it at 4 weeks.

Macros Carbohydrates Protein Fat %

Grams Per Day Grams Per Meal

Please note: They have it in the order of Fat, Carbs, Protein so be sure to write down the correct amounts! So the number of Grams Per Day will show you where your calories are coming from each macronutrient. In MyFitnessPal there is a pie chart that allows you to see your macros very easily. After you’ve entered everything in for the day, take a look to see if you’ve hit your macros. If you didn’t, then you would make adjustments for the next day. Or you can change your macros if you felt comfortable with the way you ate that day. It’s just one additional way to keep your diet on track. Here is a sample!

Name Christy Morgan Email theblissfulchef@gmail.com Phone number xxx-xxx-xxxx

Gender Female

Age 34 Height 5’3

Weight 106 Body Fat % 16

Exercise Level 6 times/week

Macros Carbohydrates Protein Fat % 55 25 20

Grams Per Day 238.4 108.4 38.5 Grams Per Meal 47.7 21.7 7.7

Fat Loss Maintain Bulking 1387 1734 1907

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Basics of Nutrient Timing We are going to use what is called “Nutrient Timing” when planning our meals, carbohydrate, protein, and fat intake. This is eating your carbs (and protein and fat) around your workouts for the greatest success in performance and reaching your goals. HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) – this is a special kind of exercise that uses timed short bursts of intense exercise followed by a short recovery done in intervals. It’s just like the workouts we did in the 28-day program. This is my favorite way to do cardio because it keeps the heart rate up, burns through calories and fat, and is a quick workout under 30 minutes. You can always find time for it! See the HIIT Workout Guide for sample workouts. Pre-Workout HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) – many people benefit from doing their HIIT right after waking on an empty stomach (or after having some coffee, tea, or coconut water). We call this “fasted cardio”. I personally did this for 9 months to help shed body fat and it worked great for me to a point. It wasn’t until I started weight training that I saw the real results. If you are in the “Fat Loss Zone” I highly recommend you try fasted cardio. It may take your body some time to get used to it, so if you feel like you need to have a little something before you work out go for a piece of fruit. If you do try fasted cardio and you are not able to push yourself at your max then eat something small and fast digesting before. If you are in the “Maintain” or “Bulking Zone” you want to eat something at least an hour before your HIIT or maybe you don’t do high intensity training at all. You have to figure out what works best for your body. The point of eating before is to ensure your body does not burn your muscle for energy to do the workout. If you are in serious bulk mode you may want to do light steady state cardio a couple of times a week instead of HIIT training. Doing a little cardio is good for cardiovascular health and will help you remain a lower body fat percentage. Weight Lifting – most people benefit from having food before they weight lift. It ensures that you aren’t burning muscle during your workout and you have ample energy to lift heavy. If you lift in the AM have something 1-2 hours before like protein oats or any of the suggestions below. If you lift in the afternoon make sure your lunch meal has starchy carbs to fuel your workout. If you lift in the evening have a small meal or snack. If you are in a real bind fruit is always a good option or eat half a protein bar on occasion. Pre-workout meal: Protein isn’t as essential as carbs pre-workout. Carbs need to be simple and fast, ensuring quick and easy digestion. Examples: rice cake with peanut butter or coconut oil, small smoothie with fruit and hemp seeds, banana with peanut butter, piece of toast with peanut butter and banana, non-dairy yogurt with fruit, or just fruit can work.

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Post-Workout Immediately following lifting you could benefit from having protein and carbs. The easiest thing is a small smoothie with coconut water or non-dairy milk, banana, and protein powder. Then you want to eat a proper meal with starchy, dense carbohydrates within 2 hours after your strength training workout (in addition to protein). This helps repair muscles and restore glycogen. This could be a salad with lots of veggies and lentils, a green smoothie, protein pancakes, rice with tofu and veggies, bean soup, or anything listed on the Sample Meal Plans worksheet. Fat Loss Zone If you are in the fat loss zone, do the HIIT training in the morning fasted (no food). Then you will have carbohydrates after the HIIT for your first meal of the day. For a pre-weight training meal have something small that has protein, carbs, and fat. Then after your lifting have protein and carbs but no fat. On days you are not lifting weights you can skip the pre-workout carbs and just have veggies, fruit and protein. Maintaining Zone If you are maintaining you want to have starchy carbs upon waking, before your lifting workout and after your workout. Protein should be included at every meal (even snacks). Bulking Zone If you are bulking or wanting to add muscle and are not worried about losing weight you want to have starchy carbs upon waking, before your lifting workout and after. You can really eat carbs all day but you also want to have protein with every meal (even snacks). You’ll eat your “Bulking” calories all the time, but you may choose to eat 300-500 calories more on your lifting days. See Sample Meal Plans worksheet for sample meal plans.

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General Food Guidelines In this program we get calculated with our meals, timing them around our workouts, and making sure to fuel ourselves for the activity we do each day. Any meals you loved from the 28-day program or any healthy recipes you find from cookbooks can be entered as “My Recipes” in MyFitnessPal so you can get the nutritional values. The recipes in this program include the nutritional value so you can easily enter this in the Meals tab, “Create a New Food”. Vegetables – Eat often and anytime of day. Unlimited amounts throughout the day can be eaten and don’t need to be counted toward your total calories. Vegetables are staples of the plant-based diet. They are packed with the micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals we need for good health and longevity. Have at least one large salad a day filled with all kinds of raw veggies. Fruit – There is a lot of debate on whether fruit can be eaten without limits or if one should limit fruit to only a few pieces a day. I will leave it up to you to experiment with what works for your body. Some people get intestinal discomfort or gas when they mix fruit with other food especially grains so keep that in mind. Starchy Carbs –Whole grains and starches supply the complex carbohydrates that our bodies need for brain function, blood-sugar regulation, metabolism stabilization, and fuel for your workouts and muscles. The best choices are brown rice, oats, quinoa, millet, amaranth, wild rice, polenta, yams/sweet potatoes, teff, lentils, beans, squash, pasta or bread (only on occasion). Protein – No matter what anyone says protein is an important building block for gaining muscle, maintaining muscle, and losing body fat. It’s important that you eat protein at every meal during this program. Most people can benefit from using protein supplements to ensure you are getting enough without adding too many extra calories to your diet. Beans are a powerhouse of nutrients, iron, vitamins, and fiber, and free of cholesterol and saturated fat, making them an awesome source of plant-based protein. But if you are trying to lose weight keep them to once a day because of their high carbohydrate content. Other great sources of protein are lentils, tofu and tempeh. You are welcome to use vegan protein supplements if you choose to do so. Fat – Just like fruit there is debate on how much fat you need in your diet. You will have to figure out what works best for you, but as an athlete you need to make sure you have ample whole food fats in your diet for proper function. Try to keep it in the 10-20% range of total calories. My favorite sources are nuts, seeds, avocado, coconut, coconut oil, and hemp/chia seeds. Water – Shoot for at least 2 liters of water a day up to one gallon. Avoids – Ideally if you avoid these foods you will reach your goals and feel amazing; meat, dairy, fish, trans fat, preservatives, processed foods, alcohol, refined sugar, and additives. If you can’t pronounce an ingredient don’t eat it! Also, some of you may benefit from eliminating gluten from your diet.

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About Me Christy Morgan, 34, known as The Blissful (& Fit) Chef, has been tantalizing taste buds for years as a vegan chef, cooking instructor, food writer, and cookbook author. Christy’s mission is to show that a whole food plant-based diet can be delicious, easy and will bring more energy and bliss into your life! Now in Austin, Texas she offers cooking classes and health programs for corporations and families who want to get their health on track. You’ll find her recipe contributions in the Skinny Bitch Ultimate Cookbook by Kim Barnouin and articles written for various platforms across the web. Her first cookbook, Blissful Bites: Plant-based Meals That Nourish Mind, Body, and Planet, is available where books are sold. Christy has been seen on VegNews.com, One Green Planet, Daily Candy, Fox Good Day, From A to Vegan, and is a guest on numerous radio shows and podcasts including Martha Stewart Living Radio, Our Hen House, Vegan World Radio, and the Dr. Don Show. It wasn't until January 2013 that she became dedicated to fitness and spreading the message that you can be strong (and sexy!) with a plant-based diet. She received her Certified Personal Training certification from NASM in February 2014! Find out more at TheBlissfulChef.com. Be sure to follow her on Twitter, Instagram and visit her Facebook page!