The Weight Loss Regime (lessons from a Personal Trainer)

The first fourteen days of a diet are the hardest. You’ll have to change many habits. You’ll suddenly need to carve out time in your day to train – you were already busy before you started increasing your training, so it’s going to be tough. You also need to spend more time thinking about and prepping food – you can’t autopilot to convenience foods when you’re hungry. Let’s look at the best way to kick start a weight loss routine – what to eat and how to train.

I officially started these difficult two weeks yesterday – the beginning of my sixteen-week transformation. Here’s my start point: I weighed in yesterday morning at 73.9 kilos or 163 pounds. As you can see from the bio-impedance scale read-out at the gym, my body fat is 22.2%.

Day one body weight and body fat readings

Day one 'before' photo

During this first two weeks I expect to see a pretty dramatic drop in body weight – I am aiming for 70 kilos – let’s look at how I’m going to do it. Losing four kilos in two weeks isn’t easy so what changes will it take? It’s going to come down to both diet and training.

The Plan - Nutrition

The nutrition for this first two weeks is very simple. I will be following a reduced carbohydrate, hypo-allergenic diet. What does that mean? It means I won’t be eating any starchy carbohydrates such as pasta, rice, sugar or (obviously) junk foods. Hypo-allergenic means I’ll also be avoiding foods that people are commonly allergic or intolerant to. This means, no dairy, no eggs, no gluten and no wheat. I call this the Fourteen Day Challenge.

So, what does an average day look like?

Breakfast

Two home made Steak Mince Burgers with a handful of blueberries.

To Drink – One cup black coffee and one pint of water with fresh lemon juice and pink Himalayan rock salt.

Coffee in my Tolkien mug

Lunch

Slow cooked gammon with sugar snap peas.

Lunch prepped

Dinner

Meat (steak, beef mince, lamb, chicken or fish most likely) with green vegetables.

Snacks

100g of beef jerky.

The goal is to eat protein and vegetables at every single meal. If you look at every thing you eat and you see meat, fish or a vegetarian protein source and some vegetables – you’ve got it right. The nutrition at this stage is simple, though not easy.

The Plan – Training

I’ll be training four times per week. That’s about my minimum. You should start off training as little as possible, while still getting results. Why? Because the body is highly adaptable. If you start off training six days per week, and your body gets used to it, then what? Train seven days per week? Train twice per day? Starting off training four days per week gives me room to increase how often I train as my body adapts to this training frequency.

If you’re currently not exercising at all, the goal should be to do more exercise than you are currently – you don’t have to do too much. If you aren’t training right now, book two days in your diary per week to exercise. If your results slow down or stop then you can increase your training to three days per week.

Each of my four training sessions will last forty-five minutes and consist exclusively of resistance exercises. Resistance training at least four times per week is the corner stone of fat loss. This is for three reasons.

1. Each resistance workout burns as many calories as doing cardio (such as running), but often more.
2. It raises your metabolism post workout for up to 38 hours. Now you’ll be burning more calories even while asleep.
3. Resistance training also helps you build muscle – the more lean muscle you have, the higher your metabolism will be in general. That’s a big deal – you’ll be burning extra calories every single day.

Please ask me any questions you might have and let me know if you’re going to try the Fourteen Day Challenge with me!