Hi. Almost 3 years ago, I started my journey to lose weight. I had always been quite fit as a teenager, but let the ball drop a bit towards the end of high school. By the end of my first year of work, my weight had gone from 75kg to around 98kg.
So I fixed my diet, and got myself a gym membership and started my journey. My commitment was not fantastic in the first 6 months, but despite this I managed to shed 18kg, dropping to my goal of 80kg, and I felt great. People were noticing, I felt fitter, could tackle more than 10 stairs without getting out of breath and even better, I had taken up taekwondo again and felt better than ever training there!
It was about this time that I decided to get serious. I upped the amount of time I spent at the gym, and cut back on my food intake (a mistake). I figured hey, I’ve come this far, why not shoot for the six pack!
I’ve learnt a lot since then about both the nutrition and training side of things, and know that I made a lot of mistakes back then. I cut back my carbs and took up running over riding, which required more energy, and strangely enough after 3 weeks I discovered I was run down and completely out of energy.
But now, for the last 6 months my diet has been much better, although not as strict as it could be, and I’ve changed my training to a mix of high intensity interval training, endurance cardio and resistance training (weights) which has seen me make good progress.
Now it’s time for a change.
For christmas, I requested some equipment to start a home gym. I mean a proper home gym, not a 5-in-one weight machine. To start with, I’ve got a kettlebell, medicine ball, some mats and a skipping rope, and soon I will add a barbell to the collection. I’ve also got a park right behind my home – this will be my new gym, and I will be cancelling my gym membership very shortly.
Over the next 3 months, my training will consist of a mixture of cardio (running and skipping) and resistance training using compound exercises that engage as many muscles as possible. During this time, I will also be trying to control my diet a little more strictly, however I have no intention at all of calorie counting, or spending half my life calculating how much protein I’ve had in a given day. I’ll just be eating as healthily as possible, reaching for fruit when I would normally reach for a cookie.
My aim: My main aim is to improve athletic performance. In a little over 3 months I will be taking a 3-day martial arts instructors course. This is 3 days of training, 8 hours a day and I want to finish the third day as strongly as I started the first. This is my main goal.
My second goal is to be “ripped”. After 3 years of mainly cardio activity I’m fairly trim with a reasonable muscle base, but ultimately I’d like to be ripping “like a spartan”. I’m not looking to be huge like Arnie, but a more utilitarian strength geared towards athleticism, ie usable strength.
So, here is where you can follow my three month journey and track my progress. I will be logging my workouts, as well as weekly photos of the progress made. I hope you come back often to see how I’m going!
Also, if you like my ramblings then please head over to my lovely girlfriends page, as she rambles even crazier things than I!
