My 56 Day Experience with Beachbody PiYo

It's been over a month since I finished PiYo, but with my husband's work schedule changing, I haven't had a lot of time to do blogging. We no longer have a day off together so no hiking. Week nights, I edit for about an hour and then we watch TV and catch up on life. On the weekends, I've been doing a lot of mystery shopping and also editing. Today, I decided, no mystery shopping! I still have editing to do, but I did my grocery shopping yesterday so no need to head into town for anything! That frees up sooooooo much time it's crazy! Here I sit, blogging away!

What the program comes with

The basic program came with a nutrition guide, a calendar, a getting started booklet, 3 DVDs and a tape measure. The DVDs each had three workouts. However, one of the workouts was the instructional video that you should only need to do once and one of the workouts is a 20 minute Turbofire HIIT workout. It's not part of the PiYo program. It was nice to see what Turbofire was like though. Since I ordered through my coach, I got a free DVD called Hardcore on the Floor. Make sure you order through a coach to get the free DVD. This is the program that I bought when I signed up as a coach. 

The nutritional guide

The nutritional guide is short and to the point. It's a very similar concept to the nutritional plan in the 21 Day Fix that is all the rage. The main difference is that you don't get the containers. 21 Day Fix is focused on making it easy by not having to count anything. If it fits in the containers, you get to eat it. PiYo's nutrition plan allows for most of the same foods in the same quantities, but you don't get the color coded containers. It's a little more work, but it's pretty much the same concept. However, I like that with the PiYo version of it you get some Free foods. With PiYo, I could have as many leafy greens and cucumbers as I wanted, but with 21 Day Fix, I'm only allowed 6 green containers. I'm sorry, but no one ever got fat on spinach so it should be a free food. Anyway, you can read about my five day experience with the PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan to learn more about it. I'm not sure why I tagged one of the Kettlebell workouts into the PiYo get Lean Eating Plan category, so just scroll down past that post.  With the plan, I was allowed 6 servings of primary veggies (keep in mind that some of the primary veggies are actually fruits, but hey who cares), three secondary veggies and grains, three fruits, seven servings of lean protein and four servings of healthy fats. 

The Quick Start Guide

This gave a brief overview of the workouts and how long they were. The times weren't really accurate though. It also explained what you should do to get going with the program. It was a four fold paper and not really a booklet or anything. 

The Workouts

Align Fundamentals

This was the instructional workout. You do it once to learn proper form and all that jazz. It's not much of an actual workout, but I felt taller and stretched out after doing it. Seeing Chalene for the first time was interesting. She's an interesting character. She manhandled the people doing the workout with her. She poked at them and pulled up clothing so we could see muscles that were hidden. After doing his DVD, I was excited to try the rest of the program. You can read a play by play of the workout on my Review of Day 1 of PiYo.

Define Lower Body

This was the first real workout of the program. It is only in the first couple weeks of the program. It's just under 21 minutes. This was a nice workout. We didn't do anything crazy intense, but it was a good workout. I did a lot of sweating and I felt great after doing the workout. My BodyMedia device doesn't think I did a whole lot, but I think I did! You can read a play by play of the workout on my Review of Day 2 of PiYo. 

Define Upper Body

This was a really short workout. It was just about 19 minutes. This workout didn't have a warmup. it seemed like you should do Define Lower Body and Define Upper Body on the same day, but they weren't in the calendar that way. There were days that I did do them together and when I do my Les Mills Combat/ Piyo hybrid, I will be including these on the same day. This one had a lot of push ups and planking in it and I mean a lot. There was also a series with V-sits. You can read a play by play on my Review of Day 3 of PiYo. 

Sweat

The next one in the series was Sweat. I didn't like Sweat the first time I did it. It started to grow on me after I had done Drench a few times. Sweat involved a few segments that were just hard for me. My balance sucks and there were some sections that showed just how much my balance really did suck. There was some Warrior 2 and 3 in here also. A lot of squatting and lunging. You read read all about the fun I had with Sweat on my Review of Day 4 of PiYo.  

Core

There are two core workouts in this program. One is simply called Core. The other is the free workout you get if you buy through a coach. That one is called Hardcore on the Floor. I think Core is pretty hardcore though. It's about 30 minutes long. It had a section for abs while standing. Sometimes, I find it harder to do abs standing than it is to do them on my back. My legs hurt more than my abs in that section, plus my balance just sucks so it was hard to hold the positions. There some some planking, some down dog, some dog dog splits and some other fun moves like being in down dog split and then coming to a plank position. You can read a play by play of the workout on my Review of Day 10 of PiYo.

Buns

This one grew to become one of my favorites. I liked that it was different than the others. This one focused on a lot of squats and a lot of lunges. There were different types of lunges that I hadn't heard of like Clockwork lunges. I kinda liked those! I definitely felt it the day after, but it was all good. You read read a play by play on my Review of Day 16 of PiYo.

Strength Intervals

This was around 20 minutes. This was not one of my favorites in the program. It was nice that it was very different than the rest of them, but it just didn't seem to fit the program for me. The other workouts all seemed to share the same concept, but this one had intervals of strength and cardio. So we jogged for a couple minutes and then went to lunges. We did skaters for a couple minutes and then went to squats. It just was weird for me to have this one in the mix. You can read a play by play on my Review of Day 19 of PiYo.

Drench

Oh the dreaded Drench. It was 48 minutes. I had heard some really good things about Drench, but they all said that it was intense! I was not really looking forward to doing it since I figured it would be really hard. Sweat was hard enough for me. Drench was pretty dang intense. It was basically the extended version of Sweat. It had many of the same moves in it. As I got better at the moves, it got to be less of something that I dreaded doing. I never did manage to get through the Down Dog Split section without having to take a break. It probably will not be in my PiYo/Les Mills Combat hybrid workout even though it probably should be. You can read a play by play on my Review of Day 25 of PiYo.

Sculpt

This one was 26 minutes. It ended up being one of the ones I looked forward to because it was different than the others. This one focused on strength training using our own body weight. There were squats, lunges, push ups, tricep dips and some other things. It was hard! It was crazy intense, but I survived. You can read a play by play on my Review of Day 29 of PiYo.

Hardcore on the Floor

This was the free workout that came from buying PiYo from a coach. It was about 33 minute and the name says it all. It was a hardcore floor core workout. There was a lot of planking going on. There was also a lot of Down Dog Splits which I just suck at. It's a great workout, but it was hard. You can read about it on my Review of Day 56 part 2 of PiYo.

Turbofire Low HIIT 20

This wasn't part of the calendar. It was just a free workout that came with the program to entice me to buy Turbofire. It didn't entice me to buy it though because I'm just not coordinated enough for it. I got a great calorie burn, but I was so off from what she was doing it wasn't funny. You can read a play by play on my Review of Turbofire Low HIIT 20.

My Results

I lost five pounds during this program. It's not nearly the results I was hoping for, but I wasn't exactly sticking to the best nutritional plan. Prior to PiYo, I was doing really well with keeping on track with my nutrition. At some point during PiYo, I decided that I was done with salads. I was juicing and getting some leafy greens, but my 250 calorie salad for lunch was replaced with left overs from the night before or sandwiches. I just reached my breaking point with salad and couldn't do it anymore. We switched to anew brand of olive oil and I wasn't a fan of the flavor. I just didn't like the dressing I was making with it and I just couldn't eat another salad. We also went out to dinner a few times and had some yummy desserts. I also stopped doing my home made froyo at some point during PiYo. I'm not really sure what prompted my nutritional spiral. I do know that I was bummed with my slow results of weight loss at the start of PiYo, so I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it. I had plenty of non scale victories with PiYo. I went down a size in my jeans. I finally got into jeans that were smaller than my husbands. My shirts started looking like night shirts instead of T-shirts. I got stronger too. I just didn't lose much weight. I think the salt had a lot to do with it. After PiYo, I focused on dropping salt. Once I did, I managed to drop the five pounds that I gained just after PiYo and I've actually dropped another pound. I just can't seem to give up salt. Right now, I'm having a flare up of my breathing problem so I'm sucking down cough drops like there is no tomorrow and the sweetness of the cough drops makes me want salty foods like chips! I have found some healthier chip options though. They are even made with real potatoes. A lot of the "healthy" chip alternatives seem to be filled with a bunch of chemicals, but these aren't! Woot woot! 

My Overall Thoughts

I'm glad that I did PiYo. There were days that I didn't want to get up and do it, but I still did it. I made it through all 56 days of PiYo. I was 272 pounds when I started PiYo. I'm not going to say, "If I can do it, so can you." That's just annoying when I read other people say that. I'm just saying that at 272 pounds, I managed to get through a program that I didn't think I would survive. I thought Yoga was for people who were already in shape. I did have some challenges and I had to modify a lot, but I did it and I got better at it as time went on. I was the stepping stone for me to step into more traditional yoga. Not all yoga for big people has to be about weight loss. I'm finding that I enjoy just doing yoga for the stretched out feeling I get from doing it. 

I really liked Chalene. She was upbeat and motivational without being annoying. She talked about form and kept telling us that we didn't need to go low, but we needed to be in the right alignment. Doing this workout series made me want to try her other programs. Although, after trying TurboFire, I think I gave up on that one. I'm still toying with getting ChaLEAN Extreme or TurboJam, but I have way too many programs to do at this point already!