A New Year's Transformation

The New Year has started, guilt hangs thickly in the air, and most of us need to go on a bit of a diet. Overindulgence around the holidays can leave people feeling pretty soft around the middle. The heavy food, excess of snacks and too much drink can result in feeling very crappy. But ‘it’s OK’, you tell yourself, ‘I’ll fix it in January!’.

Come 2nd of January the gyms will be rammed, there will be twice as many joggers in the park and we will all attempt to eat our body weight in lettuce leaves. Having worked in gyms for over ten years, I’ve seen it repeatedly. Of course, as a Personal Trainer (learn more about me HERE), friends and family assume that I don’t suffer from the January guilt. But trust me, I do.

This year I’m trying an experiment – and I want to bring Steemit along with me. Over the next 16 weeks I’m going to transform my body. With an injury hampering training for the last two months, and having three separate Christmases (Vicar of Dibley style), I’m truly in need of it. I’m in the worst shape I’ve been in since I travelled in a campervan around New Zealand for eight weeks – and that was bad.

Over the next four months I’m going to drop from my current 20%-ish body fat to sub 10% - I’ll be getting accurate measurements done at the start of the programme, next week. I'll post official before photos and measurements once I have them done on Monday - that's going to be embarrassing. But I'll remind myself that this is my starting point and what you don't measure, you don't change.

Twelve week transformation I did post travelling four years ago

Every week I’ll post updates and guide you through the steps I’m making to get lean, strong and fit. Each strategy I use will be one that I’ve used hundreds of times with clients over the years – proven, real world strategies for real results. At the end you’ll see how far I’ve come – this before shot here and a dramatically different after shot.

When you see before and after photos – you just see a snapshot. It tricks the brain into thinking that those changes came instantly. Though they show what can be done, they don’t tell the real story. They don’t tell you about the cravings, the fatigue and pushing yourself to wake up to train when all you want to do is sleep. Those photos don’t tell you about the hard work it took – the day in and day out slog to achieve something great. I’m hoping this blog will help rectify that.

Fifteen week transformation (previous Personal Training client of mine)

Finally, let me just address something. We are all at different stages of our lives and our journeys. I’ve seen clients of mine lose forty kilos and others lose non, but all of them ultimately feel better in themselves and their bodies. It doesn’t matter where you start or where you want to be. It matters that you follow your own journey, don’t worry about other people, and always aim to improve. To paraphrase my favourite author, Brandon Sanderson, ‘the first step is the most important a man can take’. See you next week!