James Villepigue - Alpha Male Challenge: The 10-Week Plan to Burn Fat, Gain Muscle & Build True Alpha Attitude

Rick Collins
To Kathy, Lauren, and Caitlin, my A-Team,
and to all my wonderful family and friends

James Villepigue
For my wife, Heather; my daughters, Sienna James and Kaiya; my mom, Nancy; my sister, Deborah; and my beloved father, James R Villepigue, a genuine True Alpha.
To my heavenly Father above, I thank you for blessing my life with love, happiness, and health.

Just as no individual man is an island, neither is a writing duo. In many ways, Alpha Male Challenge was a team effort. We are most grateful for the invaluable contributions of Jud Dean, Jack Darkes, Jay Cohen, David Sandler, Jill Jitomir, and Colette Nelson. We also wish to thank Mike DiMaggio, Hector Lopez, Doug Kalman, Jose Antonio, Marie Spano, Mark Myhal, Will Brink, Steve Fleck, and Stew Smith, to name but a few, for their helpful input on the books content. We also extend our gratitude to all those who have assisted us with the mechanics of bringing our broader True Alpha vision to realization, including Alan Feldstein, Will Brink, Mike Nelson, Justin Miller, Tony Serge, John Romano, Dai Tran, Kim Albert, Eric Hillman, Christopher Oliver, Steve Blechman, and Fairfax Hackley. Our research assistants, including John Ray, Matt Stock, Ara Basmajian, and Diana Vargas, among others, provided welcome support. Additionally, we wish to thank all of those whose quotes and contributions within the pages that follow have helped to make this book even better. Wed also like to acknowledge the best-selling Body Sculpting Bible franchise, as its historic success helped pave the way for this collaborative endeavor. Perhaps most of all, our wives, Heather and Kathy, and our families deserve special thanks, as do Marc Gann, Bob McDonald and the hardworking staff of the law firm of Collins, McDonald, and Gann. Without their collective patience and understanding, this book would not have been possible.

Okay, guys, its time to take an honest look at yourself. Make sure the shades are down and you have privacy in the house. Stand in front of the mirror in your underwear. Do you like what you see? How does it compare to what you looked like a few years ago, or when you were in your mid 20s? Somewhere in the tornado of stress and obligations, between finishing school and todays hard look in the mirror, your body probably changed. If youre like most guys, tight became loose; hard became soft.

Your body may not only look different but may also perform less impressively as the years go by. Endurance, strength, and power all diminish. The knees, shoulders, and lower back all begin voicing complaints. The kinetic energy you radiated back when you could burn the candle at both ends is increasingly difficult to find. Your engine has stalled. The only thing moving fast and furious may be your hairline.

Youve likely changed on the inside, too. Not surprisingly, theres a direct relationship between your appearance and your attitudehow you feel about yourself and your place in the world around you. Are you past your peak or just hitting your stride? Do you have the confident edge of a winner? Are you a strong leader and capable protector of your loved ones? Are you in charge of your life and in control of your destiny?

If youre not at the very top of your game, physically and mentally, youre not alone. Although modern American life is more comfortable than it was in generations past, many men are fatter, sicker, more stressed, and less rested than ever before. Theyre less rugged, less robust, and more likely to have a muffin-top spilling over their belts. It doesnt help that we live in a changing social environment in which its harder than ever to figure out what a man is supposed to be and act like in order to be his best. Men are supposed to be manly, arent they? But somewhere along the way, manliness went from a virtue to a memory.

You are holding in your hands the key to a revolutionary transformation of your body and mind. Only 70 days from today, you can reclaim the muscular, masculine glory of being the best man you can be. Everything you need youll find within these pages. The 10-week Challenge that begins on is the assembly manual for constructing the true Alpha Malethe ideal of masculine excellence.

So much of modern life is a challenge; we face daily struggles of so many kinds. Our use of the term Challenge is both a positive and empowering call to action and a recognition that nothing worthwhile typically occurs without hard work and sacrifice. And so, we challenge you to take control of your life by taking control of your health, your body, and even your thoughts and behaviors.

If you think conventional weight lifting is boring, we agree. Thats why few guys stick with it. But we created a program to excite you! If you think diets involve bland, tasteless foods, we hear you. But our food planthe perfect fuel for true Alpha Malesis both nutritious and absolutely mouthwatering! And if youre walking around with the same old attitude as the rest of the empty suits around you, prepare for a shock of inspiration that will change everything! If you accept this Challenge and follow it faithfully with us for the next 10 weeks, we promise you will reach a paradise of rich rewards.

But before we get you there, lets look at how you got where you are now.

Todays society is always on the go, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Many of us work long hours, and our schedules are often irregular and unpredictable. We seem to be working harder than ever even though many guys have less and less confidence in their financial forecasts. A good nights sleep is a rare luxury for many guys.

Long work hours dont leave much time for anything else. Add on social expectations within the dating scene, and not much spare time is left for single guys. For married men, shared household responsibilities dip even further into the pool of disposable minutes. Between 1965 and 1995, mens average weekly housework time doubledfrom 4.9 to 10 hoursbased on a survey of four national studies published in 2000 by Univer sity of Maryland researchers. And for guys with families, like us, the joys of parenting are offset by an ever-lengthening list of responsibilities and seemingly impossible time pressures. Each stage of child rearing carries its own unique demands, from the bottle and diaper days to the endless chauffeur duties of the parents of socially active teens.

Our collective pool of available time sometimes seems to have dried to a puddle. Despite ubiquitous television and newspaper reports urging us to get more exercise, less than half of guys age 35 meet the American College of Sports Medicines recommendation of at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on most days and preferably on all days. More than 70 percent of guys ages 25 to 34 dont do regular resistance training. If theres any spare time at the end of the day theres no energy left to do anything but vegetate in front of the TV or computer screen. The result? A metabolic and psychological vicious cycle that becomes ever more difficult to break out of with each passing year.

The 24-hour television news cycle provides a never-ending stream of stressful visual and auditory information. Danger and risk, real or imagined, seem to be all around us. Its taking a toll on us. A few years ago, researchers led by an associate professor of psychology at Merrimack College studied the effects of 9/11-linked television viewing on dream content, concluding that each additional hour of viewing raised a viewers stress level by 6 percent.