The 90 day SSS plan

The what? I hear you say. Or maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about if you’ve come across Joe Wicks aka The Body Coach on Twitter or Instagram. If you have then you can’t fail to have been impressed with the many photos of his ‘lean winner’ clients who transform themselves in the course of 90 days by following Joe’s nutrition plan.

I’ve been following Joe for some time and have always been intrigued by his 90 day Shift, Shape, Sustain plan – it seems to get incredible results for people in a really short space of time. Up until recently I’ve never been tempted to do it myself because as well as an eating plan, it also set out an exercise plan as well. I’ve already got one of those, and I’m happy with it.

Then late last year I was browsing his site and noticed that he offered an option where he would create an eating plan based around your current exercise schedule. Obviously he’d prefer you to follow his, he believes you’ll get better results that way, but if you wanted to stick to your plan then he’d base your personalised eating plan on that. The seed was sown.

I’d been thinking for some time that I needed to take a look at my diet again. My fat loss progress feels like it’s been quite slow despite training hard, in the right way for fat loss for 5 or 6 days a week. I know that diet is more than half of the fat loss equation and felt that I could do with a back to basics look at what was going on my plate and in my mouth. And then I thought, why not take the guess work out of it – why not sign up for the 90 day SSS plan and get my hands on a personalised plan that had clearly worked for lots of other people.

So I did, and I start tomorrow.

The plan is split into three 30 day cycles and you receive one Cycle at a time. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but I got a very detailed pdf file outlining what I’d be eating and more importantly why. One of the aspects of the plan that I’m already enjoying is that its educational as well as instructional. Joe wants his clients to understand why he’s recommending that they eat what they do. So very importantly, what will I be eating?

3 meals and day and two snacks. On days when I train I’ll refuel after the training session with a meal that contains carbohydrate and protein. My other meals will be low in carbohydrate and higher in fat. On rest days all three meals will be low carb, high protein, high fat. Snacks are things like nuts, apples, boiled eggs.

I’ll be cooking everything from scratch and that means I’m going to need to plan well and be organised. It feels like that really is going to be the key to success. The food looks tasty and plentiful but I need to plan my week out in advance and make sure that I’ve got everything prepared. So this weekend I’ve shopped, chopped and cooked and now have meals ready for most of next week. I’ll do a bit more cooking during the week too. Everything needs to be weighed and measured as Joe has worked out my energy and macronutrient requirements based on the information that I sent to him as part of the sign up process. That felt like a bit of a faff to begin with but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it.

There’s also quite a lot of supplements that Joe recommends. These aren’t essential but can help progress so I decided that I may as well give it a go. I’ve got everything I need from MyProtein. They contacted me before Christmas and asked if I wanted to try out some supplements from their extensive range.

Luckily for me I chose some of the things which Joe has recommended, such as Omega 3 and some coconut oil – not a supplement but something with features a lot in Joe’s recipes. I also bought everything else that I needed from the site. It seems really good value and the delivery was really quick.

So I’m all set of Week 1 of Cycle 1 and feeling positive. January is a good time to be doing this as there’s generally less going on socially so I won’t be eating out as much and the temptation to drink will be far lower!

I’ll report back at the end of the month with the results of Cycle 1.