Donovan Green - No Excuses Fitness: The 30-Day Plan to Tone Your Body and Supercharge Your Health

Shoshana Smith weighed about 300 pounds when she first walked into my gym on Prospect Avenue in the South Bronx. With a personality to match her figure, she sashayed up to the front desk and demanded the best trainer in the building. I sat down with Shoshana and asked a few questions, just to get to know her a little better. I learned that she was unemployed and raising her two young children on her own. She hoped to improve her financial situation by becoming a court officer. The problem was that she needed to lose 100 pounds to be eligible for the force.

Shoshana had already washed out of many fitness and weight-loss programs, mostly because she lost confidence in herself. But now she had a real deadline. The next court officer exam was a year away, so she had 52 weeks to lose one-third of her body weight, or she wouldnt even be eligible to take it. As an experienced fitness coach I knew Shoshanas goal was difficult but achievable, and I could tell she was ready for the journey no matter what. She was living on personal savings and government assistance at the time, so I cut her a deal on the training fees and we started working out almost immediately. There was no time to waste.

Shoshana was the perfect candidate to join my No Excuses program, a holistic health plan based on a tripod of smart nutrition, intense mental training, and targeted physical exercise. I put her on a strict diet of 1,500 calories a day and launched her on my total-body-workout regimen, which combines yoga, Pilates, weights, and mixed martial arts. We worked out for 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week, varying the workout every day so that Shoshana was constantly challenged and never bored. Within 4 months she had dropped 30 pounds.

After 6 months on the program, even though she was sticking to her diet and exercise regime and despite all her progress, Shoshana became impatient with the rate at which she was losing weight. Never a wallflower, she got right up in my face at the gym and announced that she didnt feel that the No Excuses program was working for her anymore.

Soon thereafter, Shoshana bought $200 worth of fat-burning pills. She brought the box containing her new pills to the gym and showed them to me, thinking that I would approve. I asked her to put the pills into my hand. Then I developed a mysterious hand tremor and spilled them all out on the floor. Oops! Suddenly I faced an enraged client with crazy martial arts skills that Id taught her. Fighting an instinctive temptation to flee, I explained that diet pills are dangerous because they can increase your blood pressure and heighten your risk of heart disease. I told Shoshana that we were going to take her weight off the right waythe No Excuses way. Luckily for me she calmed down, and we started training again.

What I discovered that day was that Shoshana was focusing way too much on her bathroom scale. She weighed herself every day, and every day shed get depressed about the results. I told her that scale was the devil and made her promise that she would weigh herself only once a month. Instead we focused on her body-fat percentage and on her measurements: waist, hips, bust, and thighs. Meanwhile she worked on seeing the connection between her mind and her body more clearly.

As the weeks went by, the numbers all dropped, and Shoshanas confidence increased. Once she opened her mind to change, she found balance, endurance, speed, power, and, ultimately, strength. And even though she wasnt weighing herself very often, her weight dropped steadily as well. After another 6 months of hard work and smart nutrition, Shoshana had made huge strides in the No Excuses program. She achieved her weight-loss goal and then some. Her weight dropped to 180 pounds without drugs or surgery, while her blood pressure went from dangerously high to normal.