For most of my life I had never had an issue with being overweight. In fact, if anything , I generally had trouble trying to put ON weight. As I hit with 30s, 40s and now 50s my weight would go up and down a bit and then one day I looked in the mirror and said this is not me!
And it was the efforts of others that caused me to look at myself in a REAL way. One of our patients, Nadine had lost about 15 kg, my brother in law, Derek had lost about 20kg. Another of our resident gym junkie patients, Kerri was always going on these 8-12 week challenges at her gym and she is in supreme shape. Their inspiration drove me to start a 12 week challenge at my gym.
Here are some rather unflattering but very real pictures of me on Aug 7, 2019… (I’m not flexing, sucking my stomach in or deliberately sticking it out)
My weight was 83.6kg.
A body scan showed that my muscle mass was 35.5kg.
I also had 19kg of body fat .That equated to a 22.7% body fat. (The ideal is 10-20% body fat).
My level of visceral fat ( this is the dangerous fat) was an 8 (anything over 10 is dangerous).
I was running 5kms most mornings and was going to the gym x4-5/week and had a very good diet (with a few exceptions). My lifestyle was pretty good compared to most but the key is not to compare yourself to others but to compare yourself to the best version of yourself. That’s why I knew in order to return to the best version of myself over the following 12 weeks I was to reduce my body fat percentage to 10-15% range.
Don’t compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to the best version of yourself.
Today marks the halfway mark of the 12 week challenge so I went and got another body scan done….
My weight was 78.6 kg, a loss of 5kg but actual weight loss isn’t a reliable health indicator…fat loss is.
The new body scan showed that my muscle mass 35.6kg ( a gain of 100 g of muscle).
I had 14.7kg of body fat (a loss of 4.3kg of fat). This equated to a 18.7% body fat ( a 4% drop).
My level of visceral fat dropped to 5.
So everything is on target. (I’ll post follow up pictures at the end of the 12 weeks)
I’m not sharing this to impress you. I sharing this to impress upon you that if I can do it, anyone can.
Some of you may be wondering “What did you do to lose 4.3kg of fat in 6 weeks?”…
I continued to do similar amounts of exercise. I cleaned up the areas in my life that I knew weren’t up to standard. For me that meant giving up on my evening mug of chai latte, having a box of Jatz biscuits with a tub of French Onion dip and not eating (and not buying) any junk that I had a weakness for like Arnotts Savoury Shapes and potato chips. Any time I felt like eating after dinner I just drank water or herbal tea. I have not had one bit of alcohol which isn’t a huge stretch for me as I don’t drink much. I substituted white rice with brown rice, black rice and cauliflower rice ( my favourite as it is quicker and easier to prepare). I ate very little bread so I made wraps instead of sandwiches. The rest of my nutrition was meat, chicken, fish , veggies, fruit, eggs, nuts and seeds.
The biggest challenges so far have been keeping this eating pattern while attending many parties and birthday celebrations. I found drinking water, sparkling mineral water or kombucha was an easy substitute for drinking at parties but I still allowed myself to have birthday cake. I don’t know if it was the quality of the birthday cake or the fact I had rarely eaten anything remotely unhealthy but the cake tasted better than any cake I have tasted! It taught me that if you choose not to indulge as much, the rare times when you do indulge it feels more indulgent and pleasurable.
So when you look at it, it wasn’t a large change to my lifestyle that resulted in this fat loss. It was a small change to my lifestyle done for a long period of time…that’s what creates the results.
If you are struggling to find the motivation to make healthy lifestyle change click here to find it