Bill Phillip's | Transformation

Strength For Life - Base Camp

It’s Friday night; soon to become Saturday morning, and I find myself ending the first phase of my Strength For Life program – Base Camp. For those of you who haven’t read Shawn Phillips’ book (Bill’s Brother), I’d encourage you to read my first post of this thread, as well as watch the video I’ve posted most recently to get a better understanding of why Base Camp is necessary.

During the 12-day Base Camp, there are three nutritional guidelines - Eat Lean, Clean, and Green. Milk and bread products, as well as all alcoholic beverages are to be eliminated from your diet during this time. A minimum of seven full hours of sleep is not only beneficial, but required during this period. Base Camp’s training regimen offers a way to spare a re-introduction into training during Transformation Camp, and offers 6 convenient in-home, bodyweight workouts. Because these 2 weeks are designed to eliminate stress and prepare your body for the next 12 weeks that will follow, failure to meet any one of these requirements on a given day will result in a repeat of Base Camp.

The approach behind Base Camp is brilliant: you wouldn’t try to run a marathon without preparing for it, mentally and physically … would you?

Although I’m no stranger to morphing my body, in the past I’ve left out a valuable tool which has helped me re-discover ideas and concepts that are very valuable during a transformation process.

Journaling can help you see your weaknesses

By taking a few minutes to write in a book you allow yourself a chance to analyze what it is that you’re doing, and fix it.

Nobody is perfect

If you’ve read my profile, you know my philosophy on perfection, or rather the illusion of. Perfection does not exist. There’s always room for improvement, no matter how perfect you think you are. Being imperfect is an important feature that makes us human. Over the course of journaling Base Camp and having the opportunity to reflect upon it, I’ve realized that even in the 12 days I have made decisions I wish I had not made. Portion control was not mandated during these 12 days, but I did my best to prepare for the next 12 weeks. I folded at times I could have been the stronger person and said just said no. These moments are important because we lean from our mistakes.

“Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.” - Carl Schurz

Sleep is often over-looked

With the stressful lives many lead today, it’s rare to find the discipline to get a full 7-8 hours of sleep each night, but it could make all the difference in the world. While many people promote a healthy diet and exercise, I believe a more accurate statement would include sleep highlighted and circled with a bright colored pen. I’m guilty of it: staying up late and waking up early. After a while, we get used to it - that’s because the body is amazing an amazing machine that can adapt to almost anything you put it through. However, sleep is important to proper nervous system function, mood, energy, and attention-span. Maybe those days when motivation seemed low wasn’t motivation speaking at all, but your body begging for energy to compensate the lack of sleep.

Protein and Carbohydrates?

A portion of protein and a carbohydrate make a meal, right? What about vegetables? What about essential fatty-acids? Just because they aren’t required at every meal means they’re not important? Like many, I’m also guilty of not eating enough veggies and was scared of fat in fear that it would make me … well … fat. By journaling these 12-days I found a direct correlation between healthy digestion and vegetable consumption. I also found that when I ate oily fish or took fish oil, I had a more vibrant day and felt less achy. These elements are too often overlooked in a diet, but they’re important!

Planning ahead

When I first read Body-For-LIFE, I remember reading over Bill’s words – “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” I read over that not thinking twice about it. Year later, those words are coming back to haunt me. I still wrote down what I ate and how I exercised, but I never had a clear-cut direction in either department. I see now why this is so important. By not planning ahead, I failed to do many of the things I would have liked to do. Sometimes, I would eat too much simply because I didn’t plan ahead. Now is the time to really get into gear and planning is a powerful practice that will fuel success.

I’m taking this two-day break to relax and get my mind off of things. The next 12 weeks are going to be a great experience. I feel like this Base Camp has gotten me to the level necessary for a 12-week camp, and I’m going to give it my best. This was a valuable learning experience for me – one that I’m glad I didn’t just gloss over.

The best of luck to everyone!

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!