THE EMPIRE
During the first lock down I was faced with a choice. I was looking in the mirror and I knew I could be happier with what was in front of me. It was at that moment, March 28th that I decided to put myself on a diet in order to get in the best shape of my life. As of August 10th I’ve lost 13kg. Here’s how I did it…
With Ronas revenge being in full swing and most of us not having any work, getting into the habit of staying in bed until 11am with no immediate consequences almost becomes tradition. But long term we would have all missed out on the opportunity of becoming a better version of ourselves. Gaining weight is something a lot of people can do really easily whereas losing it is seemingly impossible but that’s only because very few people actually know what they’re doing and how to do it. That’s where I come in. First and foremost I just want to say that your weight loss goals will absolutely not happen overnight. Change takes months, but with all this time we now have to ourselves we are now presented with an opportunity to build a damn strong foundation for great things to come.
As a personal trainer I’ve learned that, even mentioning the word calories turns people away. Instead, people want their daily meals written out right in front of them. They’ll stick to that meal plan for a week, then give up because they get sick of it, and come out of it saying diets are bad. Diets aren’t bad. Meal plans are bad because they are impossible to sustain with almost everyone falling off and calling it quits. That’s why, as a trainer, I will never put any of my clients on meal plans because they’re nothing but empty promises.
Instead, I teach my clients about calories. Proteins, carbs and fats are all calories, they’re energy for the body, and the body burns energy simply by moving around, pumping blood, digesting food and maintaining its core temperature. The issues around weight loss come in for people when they have to find out how many calories their bodies burn since everyone’s bodies are different. Someone might be able to eat five thousand calories without gaining any weight, whereas, others might only be able to eat one thousand calories a day.
So, with all that said I’m going to show you how I lost 13kg in 16 weeks while barely losing any strength in the gym and without limiting myself to the classic chicken, rice and broccoli diet…
To start off you need to take an educated guess on how much calories it requires for your body to lose weight. Sounds really technical and tedious right? Good thing we have technology! Download MyFitnessPal and punch in your details and your goals. The app will then give you your set number of calories to lose weight but remember that this number isn’t accurate, it’s simply a ballpark figure to help you guess where you’ll need to be in order to lose weight. Entering in your calories throughout the day is super easy since you just type in what you’ve eaten and select the amount and the app will add it to your daily total, or you can use the bar code feature to make things even easier!
With that all set up I want you to step on the scales every day for the next 2 weeks while staying under your daily calories each day, weigh yourself after you’ve been to the bathroom each morning to get an accurate measurement and then record the results. Then, compare the average weight of the first week to the second. If there’s less than 0.5kg difference then you’ll need to lower those calories by about 300 until you see that 0.5kg disappear. And that’s how you lose weight. It’s simple and it basically allows you to eat whatever kinds of foods you want as long you don’t exceed that caloric limit. All it takes is consistency and your body will respond to what you tell it to do.
Here’s a few tips and tricks to help you along the way:
Sauces and drinks: condiments and drinks have a lot of extra calories in them, during my 16 week transformation I was stuck for two weeks until I realized the mayonnaise I was using on my sandwiches was an additional 300 unaccounted for calories. It doesn’t mean you need to cut these things out altogether, you might need to simply introduce an alternative like I did with a low fat mayonnaise or switching to diet and zero drinks if you haven’t already.
Fruits and veges: fruits and vegetables are great because they pack a whole bunch of fiber and very little calories! A really good cheat code that i introduced during my transformation was to allow myself to eat fruits without counting them. All expect avocados and bananas simply because those foods are high in carbs and fats. Just little things like adding lettuce and tomato to a sandwich to avoid feeling hungry for longer goes a long way
Water: super obvious one here. A good rule I like to use is before a meal try to drink 500mls of water so you don’t consume as many calories since you’ll have less room in your stomach
Exercise: exercise is great in general but for weight loss it’s even better. Don’t stress about the exact amount of calories burned, instead just use the general rule that 10 minutes of walking burns about 60 calories. Meaning however many calories you burn on walks you can then eat what you burned without adding that food into your calorie counter or without worrying about it hindering your progress since you already burned those calories off!
any questions please don’t hesitate to ask! I’m happy to help as many as I can for as long as I can! cheers
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