Covert Bailey - The Ultimate Fit or Fat

Covert Bailey Fitness offers programs and materials to help people improve their fitness.

For more information on our fitness and nutrition coaching programs, videotapes, audiotapes, books, and posters:

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Copyright 1999 by Covert Bailey
All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Bailey, Covert.

The ultimate fit or fat: Get in shape and stay in shape with Americas best-loved and most effective fitness teacher / Covert Bailey.
p. cm
Includes index.

ISBN 0-618-00204-9

1. Physical fitness. 2. Aerobic exercises. 3. Reducing exercises. 4. Health. I. Title.

RA781.B215 2000

613.7dc21 99-40641 CIP

e ISBN 978-0-547-52788-8
v2.0119

Q: Your new book... is it just a rehash? Or does it have something new to tell us?

A: In this book I have something brand-new, something so radical it will change America. In my little way Im going to rattle the world. I am going to tackle Americas number-one health problem.

Q: By number-one problem, are you referring to heart attacks and strokes?

A: No, heart attacks and strokes are symptoms of the problem. Low fitness is the problem. It is the people with unfit arteries, unfit cardiovascular systems, who are vulnerable to heart attacks and strokes. The day is coming when medical insurance will cost half as much for fit people as for fat people. We spend too much time and money on weight-loss programs. People who get fit lose fat without thinking about itand they get healthy into the bargain. When I put it in that perspective, most people say, Wow! Ive never looked at it that way before!

Q: Are you claiming your book is going to cure low fitness?

A: Hell, no! People have to cure themselves, but its hard to take care of yourself when you have no way to measure your progress. If you have to take expensive laboratory tests to find out if you are improving, you tend to lose your incentive. My new book offers methods for monitoring your progress at home. For example, I have a new way to measure body fat so that you can check yourself as often as you want. And I have a brand-new way to measure your own fitness level so that you dont have to wonder how fit you are or how you compare with other people.

Q: Your earlier books talked a lot about aerobic exercise. Is that what The Ultimate Fit or Fat is about?

A: Yes, but now we have ways to improve a basic aerobics program, techniques that let you speed up your progress without exercising more often or longer.

Q: How do you do that?

A: We used to urge people to do only gentle aerobic exercise. Now we know that you have to add some hard, intense exercise if you want to get fit quickly.

Q: Intense exercise? That sounds scary! Wont people get hurt?

A: They could; thats why most people who talk about how to get fit are afraid to recommend hard exercise. But a big part of this book is about how to add intensity to your exercise without getting hurt.

Q: Arent most exercise teachers still saying, Take your pulse and Be sure youre breathing aerobically?

A: Either they dont know about the importance of intense exercise or they are afraid of itintense exercise has to be included in a balanced program.

Q: How else has your exercise advice been modified?

A: We now know that weightlifting plays an important role in fitness, and I show you some neat ways to do this at home. People who have never lifted weights like my suggestions because they arent intimidating, but even macho types can make good use of my techniques. The book has a whole section on wind sprints, which I never used to recommend for out-of-shape people. But now we know that even fat, unfit people should do wind sprints IF (underline that IF) they learn how to do them right.

Q: How does one do a wind sprint right?

A: Aha! Read my book and find out! No, seriously, the reasons why you should do wind sprints, how you should do them, and how they differ for people at various levels of fitness require a rather lengthy explanation. Im not being flip; it would be irresponsible to throw out a few fast remarks.

Q: What about diet? Do you talk about that?

A: Not in this book. Ive written two books on diet, The Fit or Fat Target Diet and Smart Eating, but this new book deals with the underlying problemfitness. Diet books deal only with a symptom of the problem. My new book explains why people get fat in the first place. It shows you how to change your metabolismand you can put that in capital letters!

Q: So this is not another diet book?

A: Right! The Ultimate Fit or Fat is not a diet book, but it deals with fat and overweight better than diet books do. The new book tells you how to get fit fast, how to raise your metabolism so you can eat more. And, if thats not enough, how to pass your next physical exam with flying colors.

Q: What about the baby boomers? They are mostly over fifty now. Is there anything special here for them?

A: You bet. Im sixty-seven myself, so I understand the baby boomers concerns. Getting hurt is a bigger problem with age. But even older people can do hard exercise if they learn how to do it right.

Q: Most people are too lazy. They dont want to exercise.

A: No! That is not true! People are not lazy. If anything, they are rushing around more than ever. The problem is that people are too busy. Exercise is only one of their priorities. My book makes it possible to fit exercise into any busy schedule.

Q: If exercise is so good for us, how come doctors dont talk about it?

A: Because they are too busy taking care of us after we get sick! And they are tired of having people ignore their advice to eat right, keep fit, and quit smoking. The relationship between fitness and health is so obvious that you shouldnt have to have a doctor explain it. For goodness sake, do you want your doctor to hold your hand while you take your daily walk? Dont ask your doctor to be a nanny.

Q: You have used The Fit or Fat in the title of several books. Does The Ultimate Fit or Fat mean this is the last of the series?

A: Yes, it is. The Fit or Fat books span twenty years, and although they have been very successful, I have always felt that a key ingredient was missing. In this book nothing is missing. By giving people a way to measure their own fat and their own fitness, The Ultimate Fit or Fat pulls together the whole problem of body fat and metabolism. This book gives people the final tools they need to get fit while lowering their fat. At the same time, it should put an end to the diet mania.

Lets get a thousand average, ordinary people to help us with an experiment. Well make sure they are like you and me: men and women, some fit, some fat, some into sports, others not. Lets divide these people into two groups of five hundred, naming one of the groups the good eaters and the other the exercisers.

The good eaters will have the most carefully designed, balanced diet we can devise, BUT they will do little or no exercise. The exercisers will be sloppy in their eating habits, occasionally eating junk food and too much fat and indulging in some weekend pig-outs. BUT they will exercise a lot.