Kayla itsines Bikini Body Guide 1 (BBG) – The Review

Many people have asked me over the last few months what workouts I do and I wanted to wait until I had finished week one to twelve of BBG that I was following before I said too much about what I have been doing.

The guide lasts for 12 weeks, which is split into 3 sections. Each section has a variety of exercises, exercise type and a different body part to work out. I decided to start this guide because I saw SO many inspiring progress photos of women who had completed the guide and looked amazing, so I thought it was worth a try as I wasn’t happy with what I was doing at the gym and get bored easily. BBG is perfect because with a few bits of equipment you can do it at home.

It’s suggested that you track your progress through taking photographs and weighing yourself once a week at the same time every week for consistency. I did this as I felt it personally helped me track my progress, this isn’t something that you have to do but it’s suggested that you do it to monitor your own progress.

Weeks 1-4

Before I started the guide I thought I was reasonably fit, I had been going to the gym for a while and was a gymnast and cheerleader for several years. The guide does reccomend that if you’re a beginner to do a few weeks of walking to build up your fitness before starting BBG as there are cardio and strength exercises in every workout. What I didn’t realise (because I didn’t read the instructions correctly) is that you are meant to do circuit 1 and 2 for 7 minutes each and then repeat and within each 7 minutes you repeat the circuit until the time runs out, which gets harder the further you get into the guide.

Weeks 1-4 suggest that you complete the following workouts:

• 2-3 sessions of strength training

• 2-3 sessions of LISS – 30-45 mins of 6-6.4 mph walking

• 1 stretch session

Kayla advises not to do LISS/HIIT and strength traning sessions at the same time however I personally don’t have time to go to the gym twice a day so I either do a strength session followed by LISS or go for a walk at lunch time to fit the sessions in.

Weeks 1-2 were the hardest for me because my body needed to adjust from doing just strength training to strength and cardio exercises in the circuit and then doing a session of cardio too. This got easier as I got used to the layout of BBG. I found that physically there wasnt much change in the appearance of my body in these weeks, so please dont feel disheartened if you follow the guide and experience this.

This guide will only make a noticable difference if you are eating well too, Kayla does a ‘help’ guide for food to purchase however I didnt buy this as I am pretty good at eating fairly healthily.

Weeks 5-8

By this point I was pretty proud of myself for still doing following the guide, I was so inspired by the results from other people that I was seeing that I just had to keep going.

Weeks 5-8 suggest that you complete the following workouts:

• 2-3 sessions of strength training

• 4-5 sessions of LISS – 30-45 mins of 6-6.4 mph walking

• 1 stretch session

At this point I started to notice a physical changes in my body, I had lost weight but I was more worried about toning my body. The workouts at this stage are harder than weeks 1-4 and so you can’t repeat the circuit as many times in 7 minutes as you can at the beginning, I was quite hard on myself for this and in hindsight I shouldn’t have been because it is going to get harder as that is how the guide is designed. It’s suggested that you try and do 4-5 sessions of LISS and to be totally honest I was lucky if I ever got to four sessions.

Weeks 9-12

I made it to week 9 and was so pleased with myself as I’ve never stuck to a guide this long and was seeing results so that made me happy. Since week 9 I havent lost any weight at all, some weeks I gain it and others it goes back and that’s fine, our bodies fluctuate and we shouldnt be so hard on ourselves for the odd pound! This was the stage in BBG where I really started to noticed a difference between my body from when I started. I didn’t see much change from weeks 9-12 however I did feel physically fitter and more energetic. My body shape changed very slightly, less than I expected but I think it was down to me not doing all the sessions that was suggested because I have been so busy recently.

Weeks 9-12 suggest that you complete the following workouts:

• 3-4 sessions of strength training

• 2-3 sessions of LISS – 30-45 mins of 6-6.4 mph walking

• 1-2 sessions of HIIT – 10-15 mins of 30 seconds walking and 30 seconds of running

• 1-2 stretch sessions

This was the hardest section of the guide, which was expected however I didn’t realise it would be as hard as it was. I had to adapt a few exercises because of injuries so that I could complete the sessions. Each week I completed no more than 2 sessions of strength, 3 LISS and where possible I fit in HIIT sessions too. I tried to spread out the days that I exercised because the workouts were getting harder and I wanted to avoid injury.

I don’t want anyone to be under the impression that I stuck to the guide 100% because I didn’t. Some weeks I only had enough time to do one workout and others I did all the workouts it was suggested. The same thing goes for doing the HIIT and LISS training, sometimes I simply didn’t have time to fit everything in and that is okay as long as you do what you can, it’s a guide not a ‘you must’ and it is not tailored to every individual so if it’s too much then pace yourself and see what you can do. I know that if I do too much impact related activities that my feet go numb so when there were exercises that I knew would affect this I adapted them so I could do the whole workout, it is about finding what is best for you and going with it. Another thing that I don’t want you to think is that I eat healthily all the time because that would be a lie, I don’t. I prep my meals for work for the week and I try and eat a nutritous breakfast and have good snacks throughout the day but I love to treat myself and its so important that you do otherwise it’s easy to become unmotivated and binge.

I feel that had I have completed the guide as strictly as advised I would have had better results but that wouldn’t be realistic, I’m a busy person and I love to eat! So please don’t feel like this is something that you have to be really strict with to achieve results, you just need to be mindful and focused and hopefully it will help you achieve your goals.

I am now about to start the guide again to see what I can achieve second time round, I’m hoping that my fitness will continue to increase as it has this time and that I will continue to see progress in my transormation. I go on holiday in a few months so I have a goal to aim for!

Overall I really like the guide which is why I’m going to repeat it, it’s very challenging but I love this because it means that I didn’t get bored. If you complete the guide I think it is worth the cost of purchasing as it would cost more to use a personal trainer and you can use it from your own home. The only thing I don’t like about it is that there is a lot of jumping but as I said you can swap out exercies or adjust them to make them more suitable to yourself.

Please note: I’m not a fitness or health expert so any information that I have written is my personal opinion. Any actions taken by the reader of this post are at your own risk.

Please follow me at: Saffydixon (instagram) to keep up to date with my progress using this guide!

This guide costs: £41.32 (buy here) to purchase or if you wanted to try weeks 1-4 you can buy Kayla’s book which has over 200 recipes and a pull-out guides for workout week 1-4.

I hope you enjoyed reading todays post, if you have any thoughts or questions please let me know!

Thanks for reading,

love Saff x