Monday, August 01, 2011

The Tracey Anderson Method and time

The Times has been featuring the trainer Tracey Anderson and her famous Method for losing weight and shaping up. Tracey Anderson is Gwyneth Paltrow's trainer and used to train Madonna. She runs a studio in NYC.  It is 2 x 1 hour exercise sessions per day plus following a strict diet of about 1,000 calories per day for 30 days. Tracey Anderson is famed for the baby food diet(ie eating freshly pureed fruits and vegtables rather drinking fruit juice)  The exercise sessions are divided up into one hour cardio -- dance and one hour -- strengthening exercises that concentrate on the smaller muscle groups.
I am sure her system works.  It is an increase the movement, decrease the food intake (drastically) type of thing.
But do I have 2 hours per day to devote to it? As my husband pointed out, even when you are training for a marathon, you are rarely spending 2 hours every day on exercise. At the moment, I do one hour per day -- either cardio, strengthening or a combo. I don't do dancing (except at the Harlequin party) because I have two left feet. Dance routines invariably end up with me putting out someone else's eye. I do see the point of combining both cardio and muscle strenthening toning exercises. I also agree that theses exercises need to be for long and lean muscles rather than body building bulk.
Yes, I could eat better but I like my food. I like solids, have done ever since I was a toddler. The key is keeping your calories down and incorporating more veg and fruit is not a bad idea. Having less than 1,200 calories per day though is not very good for you and certainly is not sustainable in the long term. I suspect that it coudl be done for one month. But goodness me, I get hungry just thinking about it. Purees for a whole month? Oh yuck and depression.
So for the moment, I am going to keep this method on the back burner for when I really decide that I need to get super fit.
It all comes down to finding a system which you are comfortable with.
If she intrigues you, she has written a book which includes a dvd of the exercises. She also has several full length dvds. But now I know and can stop feeling guilty every time I read an article about her in the Times.

1 comment:

Leah said...

OMgoodness, have you read this post recently Michelle? It is so funny how far you've come in relation to this post. There was no way to predict what Tracy had in store for your future!