This is posted in the GROUP: Venus Index. If you can see this and do a different workout that is OKAY.

It is not my way or the highway. I have lots of MFP friends here who do other workouts. You can accomplish the same results with other workouts, many people have. This just happens to be what I bumbled upon and it works for me and I like it. I will support and answer questions to the best of my ability no matter what diet you are on or what workout you do. We can still be friends, it's up to you.

This post is to encourage the other girls here who do this workout and also to tell my story about how I found it.

Since most of us in VI land share the same philosophy on calories and workout burn, what and when you can eat I won't go into all that here. This is just to show the progression I experienced with the workout and calorie philosophy we follow with the workout.

First here is my total before and after:



When I started my weight loss journey I weighed over 171 lbs (I am 5'1" so that put me in the obese category). I actually weighed more than that but was afraid to get on the scale until I lost a little bit of weight first. Then I embraced the scale and weighed every morning until this last year during maintenance (I no longer use the scale).

I had tried so many diets and lost and gained so many times I lost count. I write about all that here:

http://www.venusindex.com/ten-thousand-ways-that-wont-work/

You girls know I'm just one of the girls on the forum who won a couple of contests. I don't work for John or Brad and I write articles for their site as a guest for the experience it gives me and I love sharing my stories and helping others.

Okay so I simply started to eat less and started losing weight. I was not counting calories but I ate 3-4 meals a day on small desert plates. One of the diets I had tried (The Makers Diet) had a rule not to eat past 7pm. I now know it does not matter when you eat, but this is how I bumbled along. Once I saw the scale dropping consistently I got a feel for how much to eat to keep that going. Some days I realized I probably ate enough by 5pm or 3pm so I stopped for the day. It was hard. I went to bed feeling hungry. But I always woke up fine and the process worked. I realized for the first time in my life at age 49 that I was fasting! I always said "I can't", all my life. I thought it was bad for me because of all the myths about "starvation mode" and needing to eat 6-10 meals a day and all that. I continued to feel strong at the gym as I lost weight and actually my energy level increased as I lost the extra fat.

After I lost about 40 lbs I told one of my co-workers I think I finally found the secret; mini meals and mini fasts. I thought this because I knew working out like crazy and running marathon after marathon while I continued to pack on the pounds didn't do it. I had never fasted in my life and realized that for the first time in my life I was doing it and it was causing me to finally lose weight. My co-worker happens to be super fit and lean and does the Adonis Index, so he told me to look up "Eat Stop Eat". So I did. I have to admit I was leery of it. The advertisement seemed hokey to me. I stopped the sale process and searched for reviews and found some good ones and one that said the research was amazing. So between that and the fact that I trusted my friend I went ahead and purchased Eat Stop Eat. During the process it asked if I was male or female. I thought this was really odd and it made me leery again. But then at the end it had some sort of deal for the Venus Index workout. I now understand that if I were male it would have had a deal for the Adonis Index. Once again I waffled, I was leery, but I went ahead and bought the workout for $40 and got access to the VI community. Oh my gosh that is when everything started working for me. It was the best investment I ever made in myself. So that was how I found it. What made me the most excited though was the fact that the research and theory Brad put forth in ESE matched the experience that I had found on my own and took it to a new level.

Now for the progress pics:

For over 30 years I did the same old thing with weights. 10 reps, 10 basic exercises, 3-4 sets. It gave me a good muscle base but didn't do much for my shape.

Right before I started VI, but after I'd lost 40 lbs I looked like this:




Those are cropped because I didn't want my under wear pictures out on photobucket. I didn't own a bathing suit yet because I've been fat all my life why would I have a bathing suit other than board shorts and a tank top, LOL.

After 3 months of doing just phase 1 and losing 17 more lbs I looked like this:




After 12 more weeks of phase 1 I looked like this, only 2 lbs lighter:




Then they came out with phase 2 and after another 12 weeks of phase 2 and still the close to the same weight I looked like this:





Then I finally got the Anything Goes Diet and I sort of kick myself for not having got it sooner. But I have reached my goal and it has given me some ideas for maintenance. If II had read it sooner I would have found easier ways to do the weight loss, but it's okay. The information is still quite valuable.

So that is all. I hope it helps encourage you to stick with the program. It is a tough workout. It makes you sore. Eating at a calorie deficit is hard too. It's a hard process, but so worth it. Just keep riding each victory to the next and know you do not have to be perfect to do it, just keep stumbling forward. That is all I really did, stumble forward, but stumbling into VI, ESE, and AGD did work for me.

Ro

http://bobbiesfitness.com/