So, I have one week of this diet and training plan left. I should really be done by now but I had a week off over Christmas so have tacked an extra week on the end. Half of me is really relieved it’s about to be over, the other half of me has got used to living like this. I am used to being hungry, I quite like going to the gym on my lunchbreak as it breaks up the day, I don’t mind getting up to train in the mornings as I’ve been doing that for three years anyway.

Once next week is over, I won’t be able to spring straight back to what I was eating and how I was training before this. I will have to ‘reverse diet’, and gradually cut out the cardio and increase my calories. This basically translates to carrying on as usual but with a tiny bit more freedom. I think that will be a nice balance between the lifestyle I have now adapted to and the lifestyle I had before I started.

Christmas wasn’t too much of a disaster. I managed to keep my training up to about 80% of what is usual/what was planned, but my eating wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped it would be. In all I think my training offset the damage but I didn’t make any progress, which is definitely not the worst case scenario. This is all down to my personality type. I am probably a bit too black and white for this kind of process. This is helpful when it comes to sticking to the diet, but I’m either ‘on’ with diet-mode or ‘off’, and Christmas was definitely off. I couldn’t get back into the swing of things until I came back to work this Tuesday.

So now it’s the final push. I am doing four weights sessions per week and at least three hours of cardio, and introducing some interval training. As well as that, Chris and I try to get out for a long walk every weekend, so physically I am quite drained. Mentally I’m feeling better than I have been for ages, and am quite tempted to say that this process, which started out feeling ridiculously tough, is actually okay once you’ve adapted to it. It’s just that the adaptation phase wasn’t very fun.

One thing I’ve learned is that twelve weeks is too long to run this kind of programme for and stay 100% committed to it. It’s a quarter of the year and in that time you’re bound to have social events. I’ve had my birthday, Christmas, four Christmas parties, an anniversary, New Year’s Eve, etc. to contend with. For most of these events I managed to be really sensible, but planning a transformation over Christmas wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. My advice to anyone wanting to do something similar would be to gradually and sustainably diet down to a point at which their ideal weight/body fat percentage is in reach, and then absolutely blitz it for six to eight weeks. That’s a length of time you can plan around and stay committed for. If you try to diet for any longer then unless you’re a superhero or fitness model, or have a really specific purpose (i.e. stage competition) then you’d be wise to accept and expect a tiny bit of flexibility. Staying 100% motivated for quarter of the year is tough.

Going into next week I am feeling really positive. I know I won’t reach the goal I had set out to, but I have learned more about my body now, and know that once I get to a lower body fat percentage the rate of fat loss drops dramatically. I wasn’t realistic about that to begin with, and so am instead concentrating on the progress that I’ve made. We will be shaking up my training which I am looking forward to a lot – I can’t stand to do another deadlift – and just generally trying to take every opportunity available for exercise and good diet during the final push. So close now.

Until next week,

So now that Christmas is over I’m sure that a few of us will be thinking about cutting out alcohol for a while or maybe doing “Dry January”. We’ve all heard or read numerous different things about the effects of alcohol, both good and bad. This blog will give you the unbiased information including what alcohol is, the effects it can have on the body, and how you can make smarter choices while still enjoying a tipple.

What is alcohol?
The active ingredient in alcoholic drinks is called ethanol, and this is the part that gets you drunk. Ethanol for alcohol is produced by the fermentation of certain sugars from plant material (i.e. grapes or grains). Yeast is the catalyst for this process, which creates ethanol and carbon dioxide.

What negative effects does alcohol have on the body?
As most of us have probably experienced, alcohol can help you lose your inhibitions and become more confident and self-assured. However, on the flip side of this, it can severely impair cognitive function and judgement, which can lead a person to act in a potentially dangerous way.

Liver problems are common with excessive consumption of alcohol. This is because one of the main functions of the liver is to neutralise toxic substances that enter the body, so it’s susceptible to alcohol damage. Heavy binge drinking can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, which is irreversible and leads to numerous other health problems.

The brain is something that we should all know is affected by alcohol! It is affected on both an acute and chronic level. In worst case scenarios, it can severely impair brain function, lead to an increased risk of dementia, cause brain shrinkage in elderly or middle aged people and even stop people from living independent lives. 

As a personal trainer, it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t mention the effect that alcohol can have on weight gain. Alcohol is known as ‘the fourth macronutrient’ alongside protein, carbohydrate and fat. Alcohol contains more calories per gram than both protein and carbohydrate. Also, unless you are drinking pure ethanol there will be even more calories in the drink from the sugar that is present. Many people don’t realise how many calories they are consuming, leading to weight gain. As always, there are many contributing factors that can cause differences in the effects, like the type of alcoholic drink and drinking habits.

As well as the impact that alcohol can have on the liver, brain, and weight gain there can also be negative impacts on the following:

• Cardiovascular health
• Depression
• Cancer
• Type 2 Diabetes
• Pregnancy
• Alcohol Dependency

Are there any positive effects?
But it’s not all doom and gloom as far as alcohol is concerned. “Light to moderate alcohol consumption reduces the incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD), ischemic stroke, peripheral arterial disease, CHD mortality, and all-cause mortality, especially in the western populations” (Movva & Figueredo 2013). Red wine in particular has a number of health benefits, one being that it is extremely high in antioxidants.

With regards to type 2 diabetes, research has shown that moderate consumption of alcohol can help the symptoms of diabetes by reducing insulin resistance and also to reduce the risk of developing diabetes, unless it is consumed in large amounts, which increases the risk.

There is also research to show that moderate alcohol could actually reduce the risk of dementia, especially in elderly people.

Putting it all together
The truth is that most of the negative effects are a result of heavy drinking whereas light to moderate consumption of alcohol can actually positively impact most of these areas of health. As such, my overall conclusion will be left with Abraham Lincoln who once said “It has long been recognized that the problems with alcohol relate not to the use of a bad thing, but to the abuse of a good thing.”

At Christmas, all the shops on Oxford High Street seem to be selling food and drinks with more flavourings than usual – gingerbread latte’s, cinnamon hot chocolate – but not all of them are bad for you. Our personal trainer Pete has looked at the health benefits of some of the top Christmas flavours, so you can eat them to your heart’s content!

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Cinnamon
Ok, so here is some good news about cinnamon… as well as being delicious, cinnamon actually has a number of potential health benefits. One of the major properties of cinnamon is that it can help to reduce blood sugar levels, with some studies showing up to a 29% reduction in patients with type 2 diabetes (Kirkham et. al. 2009).  As well as this it has also been shown to have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer and lipid lowering properties. Why not sprinkle some on your next coffee?

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Turmeric
For those of you who don’t know what turmeric is, it’s the spice that makes curry yellow. Along with numerous other compounds, turmeric contains a substance called curcumin, and this is where the good stuff comes from. Curcumin is hailed as an incredible antioxidant (Menon & Sudheer 2007) and a highly potent anti-inflammatory (Jurenka 2009). With lots of chronic western diseases there are often elements of inflammation that play a role, so it is therefore no wonder that curcumin has been linked to aiding numerous different conditions. There have also been several studies that indicate it can also help brain function along with reducing the risk of heart disease and cancer. Use some turmeric in your post-Christmas Turkey curry to feel the benefits!

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Cayenne pepper
Now in cayenne pepper, the jazzy ingredient in this is known as capsaicin. Capsaicin has been shown in different studies to increase fat burning and to suppress appetite. Interestingly, there are different effects depending on tolerance levels, those people who did not regularly eat peppers saw a reduced appetite and an increase in fat burning by adding red peppers to meals. However, people who were accustomed to spicy food saw no significant effects. There have also been some studies on animals that have shown to help with some forms of cancer (Jang et. al. 1989; Mori et. al. 2006) but his has not been proven in humans yet so more research is needed before we can truly believe that. Perfect for spicing up your meat or vege over the Christmas period.

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Ginger
Unfortunately, I am not a fan of a ginger, but for those of you who are, let me tell you about all the good things ginger can do for you. The biggest is the effect it can have on nausea. Whether this is caused by sea sickness, morning sickness or chemotherapy, studies have shown that just 1 gram or more of ginger can successfully treat the problem (Ernst & Pittler, 2000). As well as aiding with nausea, ginger also appears to help with pain management and has powerful anti-inflammatory properties (Black et. al. 2010). Ginger can be found everywhere over the festive period!

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Garlic
Finally, we have garlic, and luckily the benefits of garlic are much better than it’s smell. Interestingly both the smell and most of the health benefits both come from the same compound which is called allicin. Garlic can be used primarily for preventing the common cold (Josling, 2001). It has also been shown to reduce total cholesterol and/or LDL cholesterol for those who have high cholesterol (Silagy & Neil, 1994) and to lower blood pressure for individuals with high blood pressure (Ashraf et. al. 2013). Why not put some garlic in with your roast potatoes?

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So there we go – plenty of healthy festive seasonings to inject some spice into your Christmas recipes and give your health a boost too!

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Season’s greetings!

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References:
1. Kirkham S, Akilen R, Sharma S, Tsiami A. The potential of cinnamon to reduce blood glucose levels in patients with type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. Diabetes Obes Metab. 2009;11(12):1100-13. doi: 10.1111/j.1463-1326.2009.01094.x.
2. Menon VP, Sudheer AR. Antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of curcumin. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2007;595:105-25;595:105-25.
3. Jurenka JS. Anti-inflammatory properties of curcumin, a major constituent of Curcuma longa: a review of preclinical and clinical research. Altern Med Rev. 2009;14(2):141-53.
4. Jang JJ, Kim SH, Yun TK. Inhibitory effect of capsaicin on mouse lung tumor development. In Vivo. 1989;3(1):49-53.
5. Mori A, Lehmann S, O’Kelly J, et al. Capsaicin, a component of red peppers, inhibits the growth of androgen-independent, p53 mutant prostate cancer cells. Cancer Res. 2006;66(6):3222-9.
6. Ernst E, Pittler MH. Efficacy of ginger for nausea and vomiting: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials. Br J Anaesth. 2000;84(3):367-71.
7. Black CD, Herring MP, Hurley DJ, O’Connor PJ. Ginger (Zingiber officinale) reduces muscle pain caused by eccentric exercise. J Pain. 2010;11(9):894-903. doi: 10.1016/j.jpain.2009.12.013.
8. Josling P. Preventing the common cold with a garlic supplement: a double-blind, placebo-controlled survey. Adv Ther. 2001;18(4):189-93.
9. Silagy C, Neil A. Garlic as a lipid lowering agent–a meta-analysis. J R Coll Physicians Lond. 1994;28(1):39-45.
10. Ashraf R, Khan RA, Ashraf I, Qureshi AA. Effects of Allium sativum (garlic) on systolic and diastolic blood pressure in patients with essential hypertension. Pak J Pharm Sci. 2013;26(5):859-63.

This week my blog posts have had to make way for a fantastic blog post by our personal trainer Becky, on Weight Gain Over Christmas, a subject which seems particularly relevant to me this year!

Over the last two weeks I have had three Christmas parties: my own work one, our Hall Training team one, and one with the team at Studio PT in Summertown. I’ve actually been very impressed with myself, as over the three of them I drank two glasses of champagne and two small glasses of red wine. Those of you who know the old me would know that would just be me getting started at a Christmas party usually! But what I’ve found is that I’m not actually missing alcohol anymore. I’m perfectly happy with water or a Coke Zero, and don’t have any worse a time not having any booze. This is a really nice realisation for me and my drinking habits will definitely be different going forward!

It’s my birthday today and we’re going out for a nice dinner with my family. I’m going to try and eat quite sensibly but still enjoy myself and follow the same logic on Christmas Day too. It’s a hard time of year to diet with all the social occasions, but it’s not as hard as I thought. This is down to one word which actually sums up my last two weeks: guilt.

When I started this process I knew it would be mentally tough, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the way it would distort my thinking. When I was younger I struggled with an eating disorder, at times very severe, for seven years. This diet process hasn’t caused me to relapse – although I have had a couple of wobbly moments – but a lot of the thinking processes are the same. For those who compete or take on a short and extreme transformation process like this, everything has to revolve around food for a period. This means extreme guilt when I eat something ‘wrong’, like the half a mince pie I ate last night. It also means feeling like a failure even though I know I’ve done well.

When I started this process I had a certain goal in my head. In all honesty it was unrealistic and I knew it, but I thought it would be best to be over-ambitious than under-ambitious. These last two weeks I have had to come to terms with the realisation that I’m not going to get there, and the difficulty comes in recognising the progress I have made. It’s been since my last blog that everyone has started to say that they can see I am looking leaner, that I’m looking good, but to be honest I feel exactly the same as I did when I started. My perspective has started to go and it feels as if I’ve failed completely because I haven’t reached the goal I set. I am trying hard to reverse this feeling and concentrate on the positives, but it’s something I’ve heard from others in the fitness industry and who compete – you never feel lean enough. That’s something everyone should be prepared for before they start something like this. Not trying and feeling a bit rubbish about yourself is one thing – you’re not doing anything to make a change. Trying really hard for ten weeks and still feeling rubbish is a totally different thing to get your head around. Support from friends who have been through similar (and much more extreme) processes is invaluable.

But on the bright side, I still have a couple of weeks left. My training is better than ever, I will be able to rest a lot over the Christmas period, I think my abs are there somewhere, and when I’ve finished I will have done exactly what I set out to do – show people how hard it is to really apply yourself for a 12-week period and get a solid six pack. Now to try not to eat all the other mince pies at Christmas…

Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

With Thanksgiving behind us and Christmas and New Year only days ahead, it’s an exciting but also nerve-wracking time for those trying to maintain weight lost over the year or even for those wanting to continue to lose weight.

It is commonly reported in the tabloids that most people put on a shocking 5 lbs. or 2.2kg over the Christmas period. It’s not uncommon for our clients to avoid weighing themselves to try and avoid the damage. But does this statistic actually hold up?

Well, the good news is that it may not. A study focusing on the holiday period found that weight gain between September and March was actually pretty insignificant. Weight was taken in the pre-holiday period, holiday period and post-holiday period in 195 adults. It found that holiday weight gain came to an average of only 0.48kg, not nearly as high as reports above [1]. Another more recent study looking at weight gain over Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas in different countries also backed the above study, showing weight gain of between 0.6-0.8kg over the holiday periods [2].

Most of the weight gain you may see straight after the festive period (the week bewteen Christmas and New Year) is water weight from the extra salt and carbohydrate consumed through all the meat,chocolate and alcohol – Yum! So, some might say we should all stop fretting and enjoy the Christmas period for what it is. A time to enjoy ourselves a celebrate another year!

Though there is another way to look at it. It really has become a ritual in most countries to relax as the year comes to an end, with the plan being to start fresh and tackle the world (and your waist line!) in the New Year. It is a cycle that we all follow year in year out. But if we do this every year and then don’t quite manage to stick to the diet that’s planned, there’s a chance that this cycle is causing a slow increase in our weight year-on-year that goes unnoticed until five to 10 years down the line.

Weight gain in adulthood is common. No one is expected to be the same size they were at 18 when they turn 30. But why?

This is when that 0.6-0.8kg holiday weight gain may be more significant than it seems. 165 participants in the first study above came back for a follow up the following September. It was reported that most had not lost this small holiday weight gain since the last festive period. Now going into another holiday period, they will be facing another almost 1kg weight gain. Making a total of almost 2kg. Again it may seem insignificant, but go 10 years down the line and it’s looking more important. Something to keep in mind as the New Year rolls in.

At Hall Training our advice would be to kick back and relax over the holiday period, enjoy your time with family and friends. The marginal weight gain is worth it to save yourself from being miserable, but get back into gear in the New Year and find that old training/eating regime to prevent the slow increase in weight year-on-year. As the famous saying goes, “It’s not what you eat between Christmas and New Year that’s important, but what you eat between New Year and Christmas”. 

References:
1. Jack A. Yanovski, Susan Z. Yanovski, et al. A prospective study on holiday weight gain. N Engl J Med. (2015)
2. Helander EE, Wansink B, Chieh A. Weight gain over the holidays. N Engl J Med. (2015)

I’ll be to the point: my weekend in Belgium didn’t go exactly as planned. Although my eating was okay (the calories lacking from my mussels were balanced out my all the steak and frites I ate, and my breakfasts were perfect), I drank far too much beer. Luckily this occurred only on the Saturday, and I was too tipsy to manage any dinner, so my calorie count was probably about right, even if my nutrition was miles off. I came back half a kilo heavier than I was before I left, and didn’t drop any body fat on Monday. Bear in mind this was doing 45 minutes of cardio per day when we were out there… this leaning up malarkey isn’t easy!

BUT since we got back, I have dropped two kilos. That stubborn scale weight finally seems to realise that my body is getting rid of fat and now it’s playing catch up. I arrived back in the UK to another de-load week, but as I was feeling strong I kept the intensity up a bit and also maintained my three hours of cardio. I’ll find out what the results are tomorrow but like last de-load week, it was lovely to take a small step back and have a bit of a rest.

I only have four weeks left (argh!) of the transformation programme. I can certainly see a difference from when I started, and because there is such a finite time period left my motivation is through the roof. Those of you who know me will know how much I used to hate cardio – suddenly I love it. It’s my best friend. I can happily do an hour on the cross trainer listening to my super-cheesy playlist. In fact, I went to do two cardio sessions today. That’s right, two. I don’t recognise myself. I need a new hole in my belt. What has this diet done with the real Georgey?

By the end of Week 9 I don’t think I will be quite so upbeat. We have just painstakingly calculated how many calories I will need per day if I want to get to my target, and the deficit is pretty big. Forget that, it’s actually massive. As well as creating the deficit through even less food and even more cardio, I will also have four weights sessions and one metabolic session to do. That means at least twelve trips to the gym each week, which is a lot, even if you want to do cardio twice per day. It’s only four weeks that I need to keep it up for though – the end is in sight and having put in so much hard work already I really hope I end up looking how I want to! There’s still a long way to go, hence the brutality of the regime.

No more beer or trips to Belgium for me! Just lots of chicken, turkey and green veg… Have a mince pie for me!

Until next week,

Need last minute ideas for your Christmas list, or want to stock up on stocking fillers for your gym loving other half? Fear not – our junior trainer Tobi has given us a list of his top ten gym bag essentials. In no particular order, here they are:

1. A Good gym towel – Nobody likes to lie on a bench or sit on a resistance kit with someone else’s sweat on it. Wiping that sweat off your forehead or the kit you are using will keep everything hygienic and stop you getting evil looks from the next gym user.
2. Water bottle – Although most gyms have water stations, I think it’s essential every workout bag contains a water bottle. Research recommends that you drink 500ml of water 2 hours before exercise to promote hydration (Convertino et al. 1996). It also suggests that we should be drinking at regular intervals while we’re working out to replace the fluids lost through sweating.
3. Gloves – If you’re into your resistance training then I highly recommend wearing gloves to prevent blisters and calluses forming on your hands. They may not be essential all the time, but heavy lifting can sometimes be painful for your palms, and the gloves should help.
4. Watch (with stop watch function) – For those that take their training seriously, a watch is a good way to monitor your time when training. Trying to count seconds accurately in your head can be tricky and when counting seconds for rest periods, sometimes we may be give ourselves too much rest time (guilty).
5. Phone with a circuit/HIIT counter – Some mobile apps are great for circuits/HIIT training.  My top app to download is “Seconds”. There’s a free version to download and you can input your workout times, rest between sets and rest between intervals. The full version which costs £3.99 will save your previous circuits and timers. Well worth the purchase.
6. A good playlist – Working out to music that you like can improve your performance. A study last year compared running to music that you prefer and music that you may not like (Cole & Maeda 2015). It found that participants ran further when listening to music that they had chosen. From personal experience, I know that I work harder when I am listening to songs that I like.
7. Lifting straps – There’s nothing more frustrating than being limited by your grip. You know your legs could work harder but you can’t physically hold the bar. Lifting straps can be really helpful in getting through the last few reps.
8. Liquid chalk – For the same reason above, but liquid chalk also helps with exercises like pull ups and chin ups or when you have sweaty palms. A must have if you tend to get a bit hot and sweaty during your workouts, which let’s face it, we all should be!
    
9. Resistance bands – Sometimes you may need to use a bit of kit that somebody else is on, or have a particularly long rest period, or just want to keep moving between sets. Resistance bands are a great way to get some non-taxing work in, and are an essential part of a good mobility or stretching routine. A red band and a purple band should set you up well.
10. Exercise Diary/Log Book – This goes without saying, without it how will you know if you are progressing in your lifts or improving in your run distances? Unless you have a photographic memory then I will be forever jealous. I never leave the house without mine as I need mine to tell me what I am training, what exercises I need to be doing and what weights I should be lifting.
11. BONUS ITEM (if your bag is big enough!): Foam Roller – I recently invested in a foam roller and I must say it is one of the best purchases I have made. The benefits of foam rolling – or Self Myofascial Release – are widely known; reduced soreness after activity, improved recovery and muscle relaxation just to name a few. Spend 10-15 minutes after your workout rolling out any areas of soreness and knots.

So there you have it. I hope this blog has been helpful in giving you an idea of what to include in your own gym bag. What weird and wonderful things do you keep tucked away in your bag? Let me know in the comments section.

Being over half way through is certainly a weight off the shoulders. I can’t believe that once next week is over I’ll only have four weeks left! The last seven weeks have flown by, apart from the many hours spent on static cardio machines, during which every minute feels like a day. There is a TV in the screen of the cross-trainer I use. It turns out that Deal or No Deal and A Place in the Sun are great daytime TV shows to watch with no sound or subtitles… You can actually follow what’s going on! Most cardio sessions I wonder who I’ve become, actually doing cardio, and better still, scheduling it around daytime TV. I hardly recognise myself!

This week we have added lots of extra sets to my training, and also some horrible, painful drop sets. My workouts have been physically painful as opposed to just hard or slightly uncomfortable, but I am really pleased with the progress I’m seeing in my upper body in particular, and I have really been enjoying the challenge. Towards the end of last week, I did feel as if I may fall to pieces – knees popping during cardio, not being able to lift my arms, but this week I have managed to push through it and am feeling really positive!

Results wise, I have dropped another one per cent of body fat, which means I’m just two per cent away from being able to wear my new trainers – woohoo! I said a few weeks ago that my scale weight had stayed put. That’s still the case. Since I started this programme I have only lost 1.5kg. I am starting to appreciate more than ever the dangers of relying on ‘weight loss’ as progress to keep you going. Can you imagine how I’d be feeling seven weeks in if the only statistic I had was that I’d lost 1.5kg?! I would have given up. Knowing that I have lost six per cent body fat on the other hand, keeps me going. That’s a good start, and everyone can now see a visible difference in my physique, which is encouraging!

What I have appreciated more than ever this week is the enormous benefit that having a personal trainer brings during a project like this. There have been so many dark, cold mornings when getting up, de-icing my car and driving 40 minutes to the gym have been the last thing I’ve wanted to do, but I’ve had to because Michael (and Pete and George) have been there waiting for me, always cheerful, always ready to help me achieve my best. Accountability is key on such a tough regime. On my own I think I would have probably fallen off the wagon by now. If you ever decide to do something similar, work out who or what will keep you accountable first. It’s absolutely essential!

This blog post is a bit early, as I’m actually off on a weekend break this morning. We are going to the Christmas markets at Bruges, which will be magical and great fun, but also a huge challenge for my diet. I have front-loaded my training this week, getting in as many of my sessions and as much lunchtime cardio as possible, but I will still need to do cardio when I’m out there, and try not to eat all the Belgian chocolate/frites/mulled wine/wine in general/puddings. The only silver lining is that I really don’t like waffles, so I’m at least safe from those! Going away with heavy-drinking, non-dieting people will be my biggest challenge yet, but I hope I will be able to resist temptation. It’s too close to the end now.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

I haven’t been naming these blog posts so far, but if I was doing so, this one would be called “The two Me’s”, who have shown themselves in force this week.

The first me is the one I was this morning, who desperately didn’t want to get out of bed but then thoroughly enjoyed every second of the training session. The second one is the one who was curled up in a heap on the floor last weekend because there was no hot water and I wanted a bath, and then because I couldn’t iron a pair of trousers properly. This me was a sobbing, wailing wreck.

Unfortunately, over the last couple of weeks this second me has made a couple of appearances. A lot of it is down to sheer exhaustion – recently we’ve moved house twice, I’ve changed jobs and everything has been pretty crazy. This is not helped at all by my training schedule and the whacking great calorie deficit I find myself in. Although most of the time my energy levels are fine, when they drop my mood follows them down. When usually any of the things that are upsetting me would be just one straw on the camel’s back, now every straw breaks it. I am actually feeling worse about my body than I have been in a long time, which is silly because I’m in better shape than I have been in a long time, but somehow now perhaps as there are less imperfections, those imperfections seem bigger. I have been forcing myself to be more cheerful since the breakdown last weekend and that seems to help, but I hadn’t realised the impact this project was going to have on my mental health. It’s definitely something I am going to be monitoring closely going forward.

I have also had a couple of setbacks with my progress. My body fat only dropped 0.5% this week, which is nothing compared to previous measurements, and my strength plummeted in one of my gym sessions. For a motivated perfectionist, both of these things were bad news, but I am focusing on the next few weeks rather than the one just gone. I can’t expect everything to go perfectly all the time, because it won’t. What I can do is stick in a bit of extra cardio, try to rest a bit more, and keep a close eye on my eating. It’s tough trusting the process but hopefully over this week it will have worked. Since my bad gym session, I have had two good ones, so that’s a step in the right direction!

During this process I have already learned a lot about nutrition and fitness and my body. I am also learning a lot about what is possible. I am pleased with what I have achieved so far, but it is tough. I feel more strongly than ever about these personal trainers pretending that such an extreme, unsustainable process is easy or fun, or even to be recommended. I know the team at Hall Training would never usually suggest something like this to a client unless there was a bloody good reason, and now I can see why. In order to get anywhere your training has to become before anything else, and that’s not something most people are willing to put into action. My top tip for anyone else looking to go down this path would be to be fully prepared for everything that lies ahead before you commit: socially, emotionally and physically.

I am now half way through the regime. Over the last six weeks I have had some incredible highs, but also some beastly lows, and as a summary I am much leaner but tired. I am looking forward to the next six weeks, and most importantly to overcoming the challenges that they bring. At this point, I just need to keep going.

As we run up to Christmas every man and his dog will be talking about what they’re ‘going to do’ in 2017 so I threw together some of my favourite hacks for creating change and ultimately making it stick! Hopefully some of them will be new to you, and remember that although at Hall Training we’re mainly focused on changing your health for the better, these can be applied to all areas of your life, so Good luck!

Get Clear On Where You’re Going
First and foremost, you’ve got to know where you’re heading. A well-defined end goal provides you with the direction, and from there on it’s simply completing the necessary tasks each day that will afford you the pleasure of reaching that ideal! When things get tough it’s far too easy to fall into the trap of ‘analysis paralysis’ where you find every excuse under the sun not to start or continue to the end. Overcome this by finding someone who’s already achieved what you want and consistently reminding yourself of them, this will inspire hope and motivation for the emotional side of the brain. Also, on the road towards your destination, don’t obsess about falling off the cart, everyone does – recognise it, brush yourself off and get back on it! Keep that dream alive with hope and distinct direction.

Ensure You’re Using Large Contrasts
I was going to suggest breaking your larger goal down into smaller ones but everyone says that – let’s try something else.
Our brains are naturally pre-wired to ignore small changes, it’s just how they work. Checking yourself out in the mirror every day will give the perception of little to no progress because day to day changes are so small and incremental. That’s why I suggest taking progress photos every 30 days and using those as comparisons rather than relying on your daily vanity check in the mirror. Your brain will accidently trick you otherwise, don’t fall prey.

Simplify Your Daily Habits
Habits drive most of our everyday tasks and free up valuable thinking power for more complex situations. We want to build habits that are stitched into our everyday routine, essentially we want to create autopilot actions. Whatever change you’re attempting to make, whether it’s to stop nipping down to your favourite restaurant every lunch break or simply drinking more water each day, habits have to start easy and small otherwise they become overwhelming. Try making a simple salad for just one of your meals each day or carrying around a 2L water bottle – these are simple yet small nudges towards kick starting a new habit. As well as designing constructive habits we need to be wary of destructive ones.

As the famous investor Warren Buffett says – “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they’re too heavy to be broken” What destructive habits are holding you back?

Use The Environment as Your Ally
By altering your surroundings, you can either make change much easier or significantly harder. Most people take a step in the right direction but let’s go a level deeper. No doubt you’ve been told that if you don’t have ‘bad’ food in the cupboards then you simply can’t eat it. This is definitely true and unsurprisingly works every time! Now, if you’re among the few that can resist the temptation to even place said evil item into your basket then well done, but some of us aren’t that lucky. Maybe a more effective strategy would be to order your shopping online as to avoid stumbling upon unwelcome items in the store. Or paying at the pump instead of in the shop where you spend 5 minutes queueing alongside some of the most tempting confectionery known to man. Yes, they know what they’re doing! Simply put, you can’t rely on willpower alone so how can you shape your environment and ease change?

At the end of the day, change requires commitment and effort, but it is possible, and small tweaks can achieve amazing results! Hopefully these tips have given you a few more ideas to take forward into the New Year. Why not start now, and see what you can achieve by then?