I can highly recommend a couple of different resources for getting into shape. The primary recommendation I can make is Body for Life by Bill Phillips. Bill is a widely respected member of the fitness/body-building community and his method has helped thousands of people get into great shape. The secret to Bill’s method is that there is no secret. It’s a combination of eating right and working hard. His workouts are a regimen of high intensity interval training sessions. Bill walks you through the method, the hows and whys, and shows you various workouts you can use to target each area. He also talks about how to space your workouts and lots of other important factors such as sleeping right, eating right,  and HIIT theory.

The inside cover of the book has a giant gallery of before/after photos. If you’re facing impossible odds, take heart. All of these people made these transformations with BFL. He talks about his hosted competitions in the book also. It’s pretty inspiring and really gave me a lot of hope.

I used this method about 10 years ago when I was getting married. I lost about 40lbs in 12 weeks. I felt great and was in really good shape by the end of the 12 weeks.

Bill provides a series of tracking sheets such as the one shown here to help keep everything straight so that you get the most for your workouts. What I loved most about Bill’s method was that on cardio days, I was running for 20 minutes. That was all. On lifting days, I lifted for 40-50 minutes. For someone that has a family and time is an issue, this was a great solution for me!  Granted, at the end of my workouts, I was exhausted! At that time, I had a basic weight bench and free-weights (which are necessary for this routine).

Body for Life outlines how to eat great, and really simplifies how to make good choices. It comes with a chart to help you plan out your meals with very little thought. By the end of the 12 weeks I was just sick of eating, as you have to eat very frequently. I ate like a king, but surprisingly got tired of it. In my opinion this was the only down-side of this program (and for some I don’t think that will be a problem). The other sort-of-down-side is that you need either equipment or free-weights. Barring those two gotchas, I love Body for Life and heartily recommend it. It’s great for novices and experts alike.