Fit and Fabulous in 15 Minutes Review: T-Tapp Reference Book

fit and fabulous in 15 minutes review

I am not a fitness nerd. I have never liked exercise classes, and the only “exercise” I really enjoyed was kickboxing, which I did a lot of in University, but then became distant from it after leaving school. So when I was offered the opportunity to review this book, Fit and Fabulous in 15 Minutes, I was intrigued. The author, Teresa Tapp has created her “signature” exercise method called “T-Tapp” that has helped thousands of people shed inches and pounds. Here’s what I thought of the book.

What I liked:

1. The T-Tapp workout is done with no equipment, so it’s easy to do anywhere.

2. The workout is suitable for people of any fitness level, any age, and any body type. Teresa mentions people with different physical ailments that do the T-Tapp workout successfully and benefit from it.

3. Description of her “God-Made, Man-Made Food Plan” in Chapter 6. Teresa presents a really interesting way of not dieting – eating cleaner, unprocessed foods for a few days (God-Made Food), and then allowing for a day of “Man-Made Food” (not binge-eating, but allowing for “cheats”). I think it could work well for people who don’t have any food-related sensitivities and who have trouble sticking to one diet. I personally would not do it because most “Man-Made Food” just wreaks havoc on my system, but even if you’re just looking to start transitioning to “clean eating”, this could be a good way to do it.

4. She provides very thorough explanations and rationale for the exercises and why they work. If you ARE a fitness nerd, you will likely appreciate this. There is definitely some science behind it. Also, she does have photos of series of movements for different exercises that made a HUGE difference for me in terms of learning the workout.

What bugged me:

1. The first 3 chapters of the book were very… “rah rah, T-Tapp is awesome and amazing and the best workout EVER!!!! YEAHHHHH!!!!” If you like reading “real life stories” of how people shed inches and clothing sizes, then this will be right up your alley. I’ll be honest. I started skimming and wondering when we would get to the actual exercises.

2. The descriptions of how to do the exercises. Wow. They are very detailed and wordy descriptions, and I found it difficult to follow. She provides a lot of information about what she is trying to achieve with the exercise, which could be important to some people, but it is hard to weed through when you are just trying to learn the exercise itself and walk yourself through it. I brought the book with me to my personal trainer to look at, and see if she could figure it out more easily than me. We spent about 45 minutes going through the T-Tapp Basic Plus Workout in Chapter 4 (this is the one that’s supposed to take 15 minutes) and trying to figure out what the actual sequences were.

Here’s how my first few days looked doing the T-Tapp Basic Plus Workout:

Day 1: Scrunch my face and furrow my brows as I read through descriptions and try to get myself into positions. Then get out of position as I try to read through, flip pages and scan to the next step after all the explanation about “leverage isometrics”. Spend 30 minutes trying to work through what I think is the entire workout, then discover that I only completed the “Primary Back Stretch” – not actually part of the workout at all.

Day 2: Attempt to get through Primary Back Stretch quickly so as to move onto the actual workout – feel very doubtful if I’m doing it correctly. Start into the workout portion where I get very confused about how the steps are numbered, what movements go into the next, and how to sequence them when you’re supposed to go back and do some of the steps again. Takes 45 minutes to get through it all.

Day 3: Finally I am able to get through everything in 35 minutes, but am glossing over the parts where I can’t figure out what exactly I’m supposed to do.

I did the 15 minute workout (my version of it, anyways) 3 days in a row, then took a week off because I got sick, then did 6 days in a row, and then every other day for 2 weeks. I was getting to the point where I could do it in about 25-30 minutes. In my 3rd week I was able to get it down to 20 minutes. I’m still not entirely sure I’m doing the exercises correctly, but do feel that I have a better handle on some of them. What would be awesome is if the book had a summary page of all the different components of the workout as a quick reference sheet.

(The book also has the T-Tapp Total Workout which is supposed to be 45 minutes in length. Honestly I did not go through this because I was anticipating taking 1.5 hours to try to navigate through it, time I just didn’t have in my day.)

Although I am complaining about how difficult it was to learn the workout from the book, I did feel that it was “doing something”. I asked a few co-workers to do it with me during our lunch hour, and though it took about 25-30 minutes, we all felt we had gotten a workout. What’s great is that we are all at very different fitness levels (some not exercising regularly at all, others who run regularly and exercise almost daily) but we all felt some benefit from the workout. It is now becoming a regular thing for a few of my co-workers and me to do at lunch because it IS a quick enough workout that we can do and still have time to eat. It’s also pretty low-impact so nobody is sweating profusely at the end.

So – did I lose a dress size or two? Short answer is no. I did lose a few inches overall, though. I took pre and post measurements according to the book, and went down 5″ from various areas in total. It’s certainly possible that I am not doing the exercises correctly, but it may be a stretch to say that you can lose a dress size in a matter of weeks just with the 15-minute workout. However, it was nice to see that there was some change.

Bottom Line: Is Fit and Fabulous in 15 Minutes worth the purchase? It is significantly cheaper than buying the DVD sets, so if you aren’t a newbie to fitness, you’ll probably be able to navigate through it. I do think the workouts themselves have merit and are worth doing; it’s just deciding what medium works best for you to learn them.

What is your go-to workout?

(Disclosure: I received a digital copy of the book Fit and Fabulous in 15 minutes in order to facilitate this review. No other compensation was received and the opinions expressed are my own. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the Amazon.com.ca, Inc. Associates Program, affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com & amazon.ca. This post contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase products via these links, a small percentage of the sale will be given to me at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting juicygreenmom.ca!)

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