FAQs

1. What is the FitFam.com program?

Hah! Wouldn't you like to know? Wild horses couldn't drag it out of - ooh, stop that. It tickles. Tee hee. OK, OK, I'll talk.

Actually, it's quite simple, and can be summed up in three annoyingly cute little misspelled words: Wheee, Ahhh, and Yummm. Sometimes to be extra cute, I put exclamation points after them, even in the middle - Wheee! - of a sentence.

Wheee!: joyful movement, not painfully boring and uninspiring workouts. Most gyms are soul-crushing pits of preening and comparing, or oxygen-deprived factories where we distract our minds with iPods or TV or magazines about famous people we want to look like or sleep with or feel superior to while we move machine parts up and down and around and around so we don't get fat like those famous people who had bad childhoods and binge to make themselves feel loved. (Pause for deep breath.)

Wheee! is about running, jumping, playing tag, playing games, dancing, leaping, climbing, rolling, and having a good time with this fabulously cool and amazing body we've been given this time around. Added benefits:

• natural movements help rehab and prevent injuries (prehab)
• you can Wheee! with your kids, instead of leaving them at home or putting them in some sorry excuse for daycare in a room at the gym
• you burn more calories in 10 minutes of intense play than 60 minutes of low-intensity jogging or stationary biking
• you can multi-task - get fit, have fun, and parent - instead of having to give up two of those goals to achieve the third

Ahhh!: gearing down, relaxing, breathing deep, practicing mindfulness and mindfulness, being grateful, slowing down, taking time, recuperating our energy, and doing all of the above without having to drive to the high school parking lot at 11pm to buy a little bag of leaves from a kid you hope will never date your daughter

Yummm!: see question 2, just below.

2. What is your diet philosophy?

Don't diet - livet! (Can you believe I just made that up? Sometimes the muse just sings in my ear…)

• Eat plants and plant-based foods with minimal processes: fruits, raw and cooked vegetables, beans, raw nuts and seeds, whole-grains.
• Avoid dairy foods - humans are not equipped to handle baby food designed to turn a calf into a 600 pound cow in 7 months
• Limit meat consumption in two ways:
  • quantity - it's a condiment, not a free weight
  • quality - avoid factory-farmed, hormone- and antibiotic-riddled meat completely
• Eat mindfully, using human-sized, not troll-sized plates, bowls and spoons
• Go organic or local (or both!) whenever possible
• Sit up straight, and get your elbows off the table. Don't talk with your mouth full. You've got a little crumb on your upper lip, just there. (Sorry, I was channeling your mother there for a minute.)

The fun and challenging part is learning how to create meals that feature whole plant-based foods quickly, easily, conveniently, deliciously, affordably, and joyfully. That' where FitFam.com shines. We don't give you 200 recipes and say, make these, you're on your own, good luck, if you like them we've got another 200 coming out next month. That's just overwhelming.

Instead, we show you meal templates. Our upcoming cookbook, whose name keeps changing (when we feel confident enough we'll share our thoughts and let you vote on the worst name), features just 4-5 recipes. Unlimited variation, but only four recipes. It's like when you start playing guitar, and all you can play is 5 chords and the first three bars of "Stairway to Heaven." Once enough people yell at you to stop playing Stairway to Heaven, you discover that those five chords can get you through 95% of the entire Rock and Roll repertoire. And where it can't, you just buy an amp and a processor and play louder with distortion, and nobody notices anyway.

Where was I? Oh, yes, 4-5 recipes. When you understand how to create a single wrap, you can create hundreds of different wraps, for different days, different tastes, different dietary preferences and requirements. The same holds true with dinners, breakfasts, snacks. Learn a single template, and customize infinitely.

3. Why is FitFam.com different from other health and fitness sites?

First, we are much more serious and button-down than the other sites.

Third, we pay much more attention to detail.

Second, we look at fitness and health behaviors in the context of the systems and structures of your life, and not as if you were an island, completely disconnected from the world around you.

Most fitness programs treat you like a person who either has or hasn't got willpower, and lays out a program that you "should" be able to follow. If you lack self-discipline, or consistency, or motivation, or whatever, then it's your problem.

We don't see things that way. Instead, we wanted to create a model that could work for people with ordinary amounts of motivation, regular doses of self-discipline, and less time than the average program wants your attention.

In order to succeed, we focused on three main things:

• Embedding the program into your existing routines, structures and habits, rather than turning your life around and upside down three times before Thursday
• Expanding the focus from the individual to their environment, including their family
• Stealing Borrowing strategies and techniques from the fields of systems theory and organization change, because they really work and most of the books about them are so boring and confusing and technical that we're doing you a huge favor by shielding you from them and pretending we thought of it all

4. What are you selling? How much does it cost?

How much have you got?

Look for books, CDs, teleseminars, courses, and coaching. Real soon.

Right now, we're recommending fitness gear we use and the books we've found helpful, as well as some meditation and relaxation CDs for kids. Our business right now is building a community - a movement - by sharing information on how to grow your own Fit Family. Our goal is 1 million fit families by 2010.

Either that, or a radio show on NPR. Maybe "Tick and Tock, the cardio brothers." Except we're not brothers. One of us is much better looking than the other, and funnier too.

5. Who are you clowns?

Peter Bregman is founder and CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a New York based change management firm. He’s been leading large-scale projects in organizations for over a decade and a half. He’s an expert in getting people to change behaviors individually, and in groups. He’s also an avid outdoorsman and skier, a yoga instructor, and a husband and father of two girls. In other words, he needs his energy!

Peter has a nose for making complicated things interesting and simple. One of his business maxims is, “Get it 80% right.” In other words, do the quick and easy things that give you the biggest bang for your buck, without worrying about getting everything right from the get-go. 

Howie Jacobson is Director of FitFam.com, and has a PhD in Health Education. His doctoral dissertation involved implementing stress reduction programs in schools. He discovered that he could work magic with the kids, but as soon as he left, all the improvements evaporated. He contacted Peter to learn how to create long-lasting change organizations, and ended up working at Bregman Partners for two years instead of jumping into the jaws of some university’s tenure track.

Howie acts as a filter for heath and fitness information – he reads tons of articles and studies, and separates the truth from the hype, and the real experts from the clowns. And he passes on the best of the best to you, hopefully in a clear and interesting way. He lives in North Carolina with his wife, daughter, son, a big hairy dog and a small furry hamster.

We decided to put together our skills to help people transition successfully to a healthy and fit lifestyle.  Howie’s more of the “What to do” guy, while Peter’s more of the “How to do it” guy. By combining the best health information with cutting edge change strategies from the business world, we produce health and fitness information radically different from anything else on the market.

We’re also the chief testers of all the materials we create. We seek to live in vibrant health, within healthy and loving families, and as part of healthy and sustainable communities and societies. We don’t recommend anything we don’t do personally, and we’re continually looking for better ways to incorporate health and fitness into our family lives.