David Chiu

Is it really possible to transform your body in 30 days? Eric Paskel thinks so.

Heather and I along with 28 other people, have been recruited to participate in Eric’s new XFlowsion fitness and diet program in order to create an infomercial showing the weight loss effectiveness of his system. For the next 30 days we are required to attend XFlowsion classes taught by Eric every other day/4 days a week and follow a special diet.

I first met Eric at the casting session for the infomercial. Heather and I were sitting against the wall of the yoga studio waiting for our turn to be interviewed, and this skinny guy walks in with designer jeans, t-shirt, sunglasses, tattoos and curly blond hair. My first thought was “who is this punk?” Turns out it was Mr. XFlowsion himself - Eric Paskel. Eric sat down with us during our interview and seemed very laid back and personable. After our interview he shook our hands and said he hoped to see us in class.

Yesterday was the photo shoot for the “before” photos. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a humbling experience. After arriving and completing some paperwork, I was instructed to remove my shirt and step on a scale. The scale read 182.8lbs. After recording this on paper, the two women started measuring every part of my body - chest, arms, upper thighs, hips, upper abs and lower abs all the while instructing me to relax my stomach and let my gut hang out. After the measurements were finished I then had to continue the humiliation in front of the camera under the bright studio lights once again being instructed to relax my abs and let my stomach hang out. They then took pictures of my half naked body at every angle. I had to keep reminding myself that in 30 days I’m going to be ripped and these before pictures won’t even matter.

Well today was the first official XFlowsion class. After an hour’s worth of introduction, questions and explanations, we started a killer workout that combined yoga, martial arts and dance into a fun and challenging routine. After the first 15min I was sweating just from the yoga warm up. By the end I was drenched in sweat. This is the first time I’ve ever really done any kind of yoga, and Eric’s routine made the poses and movements very accessible. The combination of yoga and martial arts moves stretches the muscles and also keeps the heart rate going. I really enjoyed the workout and I can see how doing this kind of workout every other day for 4 weeks will help you lose weight. Tonight they also gave us a print-out of our diet guidelines. For the most part, it’s a vegetarian diet, but they said we could substitute the tofu with lean ground beef or turkey. They also suggested that we shop at Trader Joe’s and buy as much organic food as possible. The diet itself is nothing that I haven’t seen before. It’s similar to the Abs Diet but puts even more emphasis on veggies.

After class I had to rush off to my audition technique class, but Heather went to Trader Joe’s to start buying ingredients for our diet. For dinner I decided to have leftover organic beef chili that Heather made the day before because it was easy to heat up, but also fit the guidelines of the diet.

Now I’m about to sleep but are already feeling the effects of the workout in my quads and hamstrings. I might have also over-streched something in my hip since my left hip feels slightly sore. But I will have to recover quickly since we have class again tomorrow.