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.

This week I am much more cheerful! Getting back to normal at the gym after taking it easy last week has actually been a relief, much to my surprise! It is so much easier to stay motivated and stick to my diet plan when I am training harder. I have always been a very ‘all or nothing’ type of person, and I think this is starting to come out across in my 12-week challenge. I have certainly learned some good lessons to take into my next deload period in three weeks’ time, namely don’t take your eye off the prize, pausing doesn’t mean you can stop.

My training has definitely upped in intensity this week and boy can I feel it. Today is the first day since Tuesday that I actually feel like I can walk again. My hamstrings have been so sore, and I also gave myself shin splints thanks to relying on the cross trainer a bit too much for my cardio. I’ve been forced to use the static bike to try and ease the work on my legs. Another lesson for this week: nothing is more boring than steady state cardio, but you can get through it if you’ve downloaded yourself a great playlist or audio book.

I had some good news on Monday: my body fat dropped another percent this week – I’m on a roll! Thankfully that meant that my calories have stayed consistent and didn’t need to drop, and that I have also maintained the same amount of cardio. So the only thing that’s changed this week is the one extra weights session. Considering how much I’ve been going to the gym, one extra hour doesn’t feel too bad. Bar the aches and DOMS I’ve hardly noticed it!

It hasn’t all been plain sailing. The dark, cold, early mornings are getting harder, and my mood has dropped on a few days. My caffeine consumption is definitely going up and funnily enough, other people’s positive reactions are also starting to dwindle. Where they started off with full support, some friends are now starting to get annoyed with my fussiness around meal times and obsessive planning in advance. I totally understand, and luckily the vast majority still think I’m doing a great thing, but it does hammer home just how self-obsessed and shallow you have to become to complete this process. Getting annoyed when other people eat a takeaway or making other people worry about what they eat in front of you is not sustainable, and I am starting to become more aware that the support I am relying on from other people is costing them as well. It’s an important consideration, but I’ve gone too far to worry too much – I’m just going to keep doing what I need to do to get to where I want to be!

My motivation is sky high at the moment and I genuinely think it comes from seeing consistent progress and having such great support. Towards the end of this week I’ve noticed my top two abs start to make an appearance – an incredibly shy appearance, but I hope they will be here before too long! I have ordered myself some new trainers, and I’m going to let myself wear them when I get to 15% body fat. New trainers for me are about as exciting as birthdays, so I am hoping that this promise to myself will keep me on track! They are currently in the back of my car and I’ve not even opened the box; I’m being good as gold.

Hopefully over the next week my motivation stays, my abs become more obvious (i.e. I get leaner still) and my strength doesn’t drop off. By the time I write my next blog post I will be half way through, so it’s getting exciting, but the pressure is on!

Fingers crossed…

In two days from now I will be a third of the way through the challenge, which is a worrying thought! This will be a short blog from me, as I haven’t got much to report – it’s finally deload week.
Deloadingmeans cutting back on the volume of work done in training sessions. This allows my body to properly rest and recover from the previous weeks ready to go into a new set of programmes from next week.

My programme is split into three four-week chunks, with a deload week at the end of each section. It has been absolutely lovely this week to take a step back from training and I can tell that my body was ready for it, because even my deload lifting days have been quite tough, even though they have significantly less volume than I was lifting last week!

I have taken this as an opportunity to try and stick in a bit more cardio, but despite my new, harsher diet and my extra cardio, my scale weight has still stayed the same. This is the third week in a row that it’s not budged. This isn’t an exaggeration, I haven’t even lost 100g! But my last body fat reading revealed that I have lost an extra 0.5kg of fat, and an extra 0.8% overall of body fat, so the trend is going in the right direction. Perhaps this is just how much I weigh? Who knows… but as long as my body fat keeps going down then that’s the main thing. So far it’s down 5% in 3 measurements – woohoo!

I haven’t noticed the drop in calories to be honest, but I have started to notice social situations becoming a bit trickier and a bit more tempting. Still going strong though!

Over all, so far I am starting to feel a bit more confident in my body and a bit more like myself again, which is really great, and definitely a nice feeling! But if I am honest, my attitude to training and nutrition has become a kind of sad acceptance… I know what I have to do and I just do it without questioning it. I find writing it all out on a post it note and then crossing it off really helps to keep me accountable, and having the post it staring at me on my desk gets me off my bum at lunch time to do my cardio!

Next week we step up another gear with my training, adding in an extra weights session and even some dreaded drop sets. I am looking forward to getting back into it, because although the rest has been lovely this week, compared to the previous intensity I am feeling really lazy!
I’ll let you know how I get on…

I’m going to be honest. Week three has not been fun, and saying that after the week in which I had a chronic ear infection is saying something! This is the first week I have found sticking to the diet plan to be hard work and mentally draining. There haven’t been any points when I’ve nearly cracked, but I have been craving loads of different foods, and becoming generally really food obsessed. When I realise I can’t have the foods I am craving I feel a resigned acceptance. I know in the long run it’s for the best, but it won’t stop me staring at the chocolate trolley when it trundles past on the train. Or wanting to inhale the whole lot.

I have also learned an important lesson about preparation this week. I’ve been all over the place with long train stints and relying on clients to provide lunches (pre-ordered chicken salads). This has meant long periods of hunger, not being quite sure what to track, and struggling to pick appropriate snacks at the endless train stations. I had thought that throughout this process I would be able to take quite a strict approach to what I eat, a relaxed approach to planning my eating, but as time goes on, it’s becoming clearer that everything needs to be planned down to the final detail when I’m not somewhere I can access food easily. Sunday afternoons will now have the extra fun job of planning meals as well as food prep!

In the last two weeks I have lost 4.1% body fat, which I am absolutely blown away by and really pleased with as a start. However, since my 1kg drop in the first week, my scale weight has stayed resolutely put. Now, there are many potential reasons for this: my body has been ill and therefore stressed, I could be holding onto excess water weight. But on a 12 week plan we don’t have time for any bad weeks, and if my scale weight stays the same over the weekend, there’s every chance my body fat won’t have dropped again on Monday, which is a delay I just can’t afford! To reach my target I need to lose an average of 1% every week until the end of the plan, which is a tall order.

This means that next week it’s more cardio, and less food. The thought of this isn’t doing my mood much good at the moment, but as long as I can fit a Grenade bar in my macros most days (these are manna from heaven and Jamie Alderton is a demi-God for inventing them/having those abs) then I think I will cope.

Saying this, my training has been great. I have managed to fit in a lunchtime cardio session (just 30 minutes) on one of the only days I’ve been in the office, and I’ve really enjoyed all my sessions. I’m training harder than ever, and this morning managed to get my hip thrusters up to 100kg (for 12 reps, after 3 sets of 8). So there are positives! I have one more weight training session to do this weekend, and am aiming to get 1 hr 30 of cardio in on top, plus a potential wintery walk somewhere!

I think it being Halloween this week is very apt for my doomy and gloomy blog post, but when I started this I knew it wasn’t going to be plain sailing. For now, I am just happy that my body fat has continued to drop, that my training is going really well, and that I am managing to resist temptation (even if it makes me sad inside).
Next week I am looking forwards to trying to hit the cardio a bit harder, hoping to get a slide on my scale weight and easing back on the weight training slightly to let my body recover! Fingers crossed it’ll be a good one!

Until then…

The clocks have gone back and the evenings are darker, but the pace of fresh new research into health and fitness hasn’t slowed down at all. Here are five things we learned last month that may well be useful for your own training! Especially if you suffer from DOMS or a stitch…

1. Certain people experience higher levels of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) than others – bad luck!
Delayed onset muscle soreness is expected after a heavy weights session or a tough interval session, not only in untrained people but also in experienced athletes. This is due to the damage inflicted on the muscle during the workout. The level of soreness may depend on how hard the person trained or how new the person is to that particular programme or exercise. However, a new study has emerged suggesting it might not all be in the training, but in a person genes. So, if your training partner experiences more DOMS than you it may not be that they’re training harder, but caused by their genotypes.

At Hall Training we write personalised programmes for each client to prevent them from training the same muscle two days in a row. Our advice would be to follow the same programme for 5-6 weeks to allow the body to adapt, and to allow approximately 48 hours before training the same muscle again.

2. Struggling with energy lows? Oat bran could be the answer
On your feet all day with little time to eat? Want to reduce those energy highs and lows? It would seem it’s as simple as pre-loading on oat bran. Eating oat bran before a high carbohydrate meal helps to lower post meal glucose absorption by 25%. The most effective dose was 25g, with every 1g seeing a reduction of 4.35% reduction in glucose absorption.
The mechanism is not yet fully understood but scientists believe the gastric emptying of the stomach is delayed by the increase of viscosity/thickness of the stomach contents. The mixing of foods with the digestive enzymes is then reduced, thus slowing glucose absorption. A handy trick if you’ve got a long active day ahead would be to try adding a tablespoon of oat bran to your porridge or morning smoothie. It may also prove useful for stablising blood sugar in those people who have elevated blood glucose levels.

3. Feeling SAD? Brave the cold!
As the nights turn darker and the days get shorter your bright happy mood may start to diminish. According to the mental health association 1 in 15 people in the UK suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). This is a form of mild depression that comes into effect as the seasons change, usually from summer to winter. It can range from a mild form of the winter blues to being so disabling you cannot function between the months of November to February. SAD is usually caused by lack of daylight and is rare in people living within 30 degrees of the equator, where daylight hours are longer.
Your mind may be telling you to wrap up warm, hunker down and hide from the world but recently, psychologists are telling us to brave the cold through water therapy. This could be a cold shower or if you’re feeling particularly low, a long cold dip in your local lake might do the trick.

The simultaneous firing of all skin-based cold receptors—thought to be three to ten times denser than warm receptors—from jumping into the cold may result in a positive therapeutic effect.

4. You might be breathing wrong
Obviously you’d be dead if you weren’t breathing, but surprisingly we all pick up bad breathing habits due to the way we sit and move. Now, we all know the importance of a good warm up before exercise; ideally improving the mobility at each joint through stretching and foam rolling. But how many people reap the benefits long term through these techniques? As a personal trainer I can tell you minor benefits will be seen immediately after the warm up, but clients seem to revert back to their old selves by the next session. They then begin to rush the mobility/warm up routines as the months go on due to lack of long term change.

This month, the Hall Training team had its own ‘Eureka’ moment during a visit from local physiotherapist and ciropractor – Austin Lawrence, who taught us the benefits of proper diaphragmatic breathing on posture and movement quality.

It can be as simple as lying on the floor for several minutes and focusing on breathing deeply into your stomach, letting it expand like a balloon. Spending a couple of minutes doing this each day could be the answer to looser calf and hip muscles, meaning deeper squats and deadlifts and a far more efficient body. Not only this but breathing correctly can also improve muscle activation in the glutes by loosening the sacrum. We suggest fixing your breathing before spending hours with that painful foam roller. Over time breathing through your diaphragm will become second nature.

5. What exactly is a stich? Who knows?
A stitch is an all too familiar feeling, not only with fitness newbies but with seasoned athletes. But what is it? What causes it? And how can we make it go away?
It turns out that the stitch was quite the mystery until a series of studies were conducted over the past decade. An Australian researcher called Darren Morton ruled out popular theories. He induced a stitch by feeding volunteers carbonated drinks followed by running on a treadmill. Then, using electrodes to monitor abdominal muscle and monitored breathing and found no change during the stitch, ruling out abdominal spasms and respiratory muscle spasms.

So, what’s the answer? Well, there still is no definite answer.

Stitches seem to arise often in people with brain lesions or compressed nerves in the thoracic spine (upper back). A 2010 study found a link between the degree of curvature in the spine and susceptibility to stitches. They found the pain can come from extra pressure from the abdominal cavity when the stomach is full and there is excess curvature of the spine. This causes friction on the outer layer of abdominal muscle causing the stitch.
If you find you are particularly susceptible to stitches, we suggest working on your posture daily through mobility exercises and steering clear of food 1-2 hours prior to exercise.

Reference:
1. http://www.innerself.com/content/living/health/healing-disciplines/9542-a-cold-splash-water-therapy-for-depression-chronic-fatigue.html
2. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/s/seasonal-affective-disorder-sad
Baumert P; Lake MJ; Stewart CE; Drust B, Genetic variation and exercise-induced muscle damage: implications for athletic performance, injury and ageing. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2016 Sep
3. Steinert, R.E.; Raederstorff, D.; Wolever, T.M.S.Effect of Consuming Oat Bran Mixed in Water before a Meal on Glycemic Responses in Healthy Humans—A Pilot Study. Nutrients 2016, 8, 524.
4. Lawrence, Austin at Hall Training day, 2016
5. Alex Hutchinson’s ‘Which comes first, cardio or weights?‘

Week two got off to a flying start. We did my body fat on Monday, and I had dropped far more than I had expected to in two weeks, let alone one! But then on Tuesday I woke up with a really painful ear infection. I managed to push through my training session and that day of work, but ever since then I have been laid up with visits back and forth to the doctor, and I missed my training session this morning. At the moment there’s still some hope for the week – If I can get a decent night’s sleep tonight, then can try and fit in my remaining two training sessions over the weekend.

Food wise, I have managed to stick to the diet plan on the whole. I have eaten precisely 18 chocolate buttons (they had smiley faces, I hoped they may cheer me up) and a small serving of plain homemade popcorn last night to accompany The Fall, but those are the only two things that have been off-plan. That being said, I’ve been tracking but not making sure that I’ve been hitting my protein targets, so I have probably been quite under this week. Still, 12 weeks is a long time and although my goal is going to be really hard to achieve, I think it’s important to be realistic and cut myself some slack when I’m ill, as long as I get straight back on it as soon as I can. Not everything can go perfectly, and I can’t beat myself up about it all the time – better to learn that now than have a breakdown about it in week nine.

On last week’s blog I had a couple of questions about what plan I’m following, and as I don’t have much to report this week, I thought I’d share now!

I have started off relatively easy: three one-hour weight training sessions per week. They are all total body, but one of them has a greater emphasis on upper body, and another on lower, the final one is evenly split. I will follow this plan for four weeks in total (so two to go after this week, one of which is a de-load week) before the training ramps up a gear. As soon as my body fat or weight stops dropping, I will introduce a cardio session, but for nowI am trying to keep as many cards up my sleeve as possible. For those of you who’d like to see exactly what I’m doing, I’ll be sharing pictures of my programmes on my Instagram over the next few weeks: @georgey_r

My macros have been plotted carefully for me based on my weight, food preferences and exercise schedule, but I am currently aiming for 40 per cent of my diet to come from protein, with the remaining 60 per cent split evenly between carbs and fats. So far, this seems to be working a treat, but we will find out on Monday whether I’ve managed to lose any more body fat this week (if not I blame the chocolate buttons). Here are the drops I made from starting:

I am not expecting the same amount of progress on Monday, but a little bit would be nice!

Until next week…

Working behind the scenes at a personal training company means I am constantly surrounded by a team of incredibly fit, determined people. It also means that I hear the struggles their clients are going through to achieve their dream results, and the expectations of people who come to Hall Training looking for support.

I had hoped that being surrounded by this uber-fit team would mean some of their dedication would rub off on me, that all clients would find it super easy to achieve their dream bodies, and that people turning to the team for help would realise how hard ‘being super fit’ actually is. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been the case!

At Hall Training our focus is nearly always on health over aesthetics, and on sustainability over sudden, drastic changes, unless of course a client comes to us with a tight deadline such as a holiday or wedding. On other personal training websites, it’s common to see pictures of incredible transformations, from overweight to six pack in just 12 weeks. But how realistic is this, how much do you sacrifice, is it worth it? Well, I’ve decided to find out.

For the next 12 weeks (well, 11 and a half now you’re reading this!) I am going to try really hard to stick to the workout and nutrition plan that the team have set up for me. That means no weekend wine (huge sacrifice), no snacking on the yummy food in the office (more for my colleagues!) and a lot of early starts.

I am going to write a short blog every week so you can see how I get on. I promise now not to sugar coat anything – the highs and lows will be here for everyone to see!

So far, it’s day 4 of 84 and things are going well. Other than underestimating how many grams of carbs were in the sushi I grabbed on the go on Tuesday, I’ve managed to stick to my nutrition plan perfectly. It’s actually quite tough to get the calories in when you’re in diet mind set! I’ve only done one workout so far this week, the other three are all scheduled over the next few days. My hamstrings still hurt from that one, so we’ll have to see how the next three go…

We hope that this blog will make it clear exactly how much hard work a client and their trainer have to put in to make a big difference in a small space of time, but also show what can be achieved if you really put your mind to it. On a personal level, I’m just really hoping that I can stick to it and also that I end up feeling a bit more like ‘me’ again at the end. I can make all the excuses in the world – a new job, two house moves, stress at work – but I am hoping to find that the truth is, if you plan and make time, it is possible to achieve your health and fitness goals and have a life, even through Christmas party season! If everything goes to plan, my last day will be the 8^th January, and fingers crossed I will be a better version of myself by then!

Until next week…