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!
