I moved into a new apartment about six weeks ago with a good friend of mine. We discuss training/nutrition sometimes and we had a chat about helping him drop some weight.
He can’t really train right now having undergone knee surgery in the past month, and he likes his food (he won’t mind me telling you that;) ) so a total diet change wasn’t going to work right off the bat.
The one change I insisted he make was to get rid of the Coca Cola and replace it with a sugar free variety. Anytime I saw him with cans or bottles of Coca Cola I was going to pour it down the toilet. I’m mean like that (I also throw out any chocolate or cake I find when I’m at my parents house)
He agreed and has since replaced it with Pepsi Max.
What kind of effect do you think this could have over a 6 week period?
He has lost over a stone. Jeans that haven’t fit him in years now fit perfectly. Crazy eh? He has literally made no other changes to his diet or lifestyle, was immobile for at least a week of this time after the surgery, and yet just reducing his sugar intake has had a dramatic effect. He looks great!
Imagine if he had been training with me as well!
It just shows that while it won’t give you the best possible results, you don’t have to change EVERYTHING to make progress. Subtle changes can still have a powerful effect.
So ditch the sugared drinks (milk/fruit juices are just as bad) and watch weight fall off. Oh and give me a call to get training and accelerate the process while building lean muscle too.
(I don’t work for Pepsi by the way, their normal drink is just as bad )
It’s August 2009 and I’m sitting, out of breath, on the stairs of the 4th floor of my apartment block in Park West, Dublin. I live on the 7th floor and the lift is broken. I’m having heart palpitations and genuinely worried about whether I am going to collapse. At 25 years young, I’m touching 140kg /22 Stone. I’m prediabetic with constant numbness in the ends of my fingers. I’m into the official “Morbidily” obese category with a BMI of 41. (Over 40 is morbidly Obese, over 30 is Obese, over 25 is overweight.) My bodyfat is at least 50%. Everyday simple things like getting in and out of my car have become a chore. I am eating all the time, but always tired and sluggish.
Various photos from ’09
How did I get here? Well as result of a combination of things. Many years of eating the wrong foods at the wrong times. Many years of an almost totally sedentary lifestyle. Numerous failed attempt at weight loss due to poor advice from fitness instructors and my Doctor to name a few.
The first thing your Doctor will give you when you need to lost weight is a copy of “The Food Pyramid”. Nutritional advice that, if followed, will almost assuredly result in little to no weight loss, or worse, you getting even fatter. (I will go into the reasons why this is in further blog posts).
The first thing that will happen if you join a commercial gym looking for weight loss is one of the fitness instructors will give you a generic cardiovascular based program. “30 minutes on the treadmill” “30 minutes on the crosstrainer” “30 minutes on the bike” etc. Not only is this insanely boring and uninteresting, when you are carrying a LOT of extra weight it’s really tough to achieve. 30 minutes straight of doing anything is a huge strain on your body. It also does nothing to aid in weight loss. (for reasons which I will go into in further training blog posts). They may also give you nutritional advice which will be similar or identical to what your Doctor gives you, and again it won’t work and may even make the problem worse.
Any time I had previously attempted to achieve some significant weight loss I followed this poor advice, as I’m sure many people reading this have. Little to no results and constant hunger left me disheartened and I would always give up.
This time was different, however. Being unable to climb a few flights of stairs at 25 years of age without having chest pains was too much. I decided instantly I would change this, no matter what it took. So what did I do? Well the same thing I always did previous, went to my Doctor. He cleared me for exercise after some tests and of course handed me the nonsensical food pyramid, and off I went.
Back to eating wholegrain toast for breakfast and peeling the skin of the chicken breast for my chicken salad at lunch time. I had decided to rejoin my local commercial gym so I could do my hour of cardio each day again. After all, this would have to work if I could just stick to it right?
Luckily this time, before setting out on another futile attempt, I happened to be sitting around wasting time on Facebook, when a familiar face popped up in the ads on the side. “Bryan Kavanagh: Personal Training Dublin” I hadn’t spoken to Bryan in a few years and didn’t realise he had opened a Personal Training studio in Dublin. I decided to give him a call about this before handing over my hard earned money to the local gym.
I immediately knew from our first conversation that if I followed everything he told me to do I would reach my goals, without question. A weight was lifted, it’s amazing how much easier something is when you have someone with extensive knowledge on the subject to guide you along with it.
We started training in October 2009 and I started following Bryan’s nutritional advice right from the start. The first thing I noticed about his advice was how different it was to everything I had been told to do before. It was also far more interesting and didn’t leave me cutting fat out of everything and just eating the same bland starchy carbohydrates. It was strange at first but soon became enjoyable ( and I still eat that way now, almost 2 years later, and always will) For the first time in years I was always full of energy and found it far easier to be active as a result.
140kg/50+%BF – Wisconsin, September ’09 – - – 89kg/15%BF – Dublin, July ’10
Within 7 months of training 3 times a week and eating properly I had lost 100lbs. Results that, to most people, don’t even seem at all realistic. In mid July 2o1o I had gone from 140kg/308lbs at 50% bodyfat to 89kg/196lbs at 15% bodyfat. Unbelieavable results. I’m sure this is beyond a lot of obese people’s wildest dreams and starting out it was for me too. But I wasn’t finished.
We then decided it was time to start packing on muscle mass, as I looked somewhat scrawny at this weight. Bryan changed the training programming to suit this goal and we tweaked the nutrition to help with it too. By April 2011 I was back to 101kg/221lbs and just over 16% bodyfat. A significant gain in muscle mass.
April ’11 101kg/16.5%BF
I had also just started a Personal Training course as by this stage I had decided that I wanted to do for others, what Bryan had done for me. That is, totally change their lives for the better. I can’t begin to explain how much better and easier life is when that excess weight is gone, not to mention the obvious health benefits it brings. I want to help as many people to achieve this same goal as possible.
It was time to drop bodyfat again while retaining as much of the lean muscle mass as possible, so again Bryan changed up the programming and we tweaked the nutrition. 4 months on (today) I am back to 88kg/195lbs and 9.9% bodyfat and still going.
August ’11 88kg/10% BF
What I have achieved to this point is something that, for years, I certainly never believed was possible. Failed attempts at weight loss had left me accepting that I would always be obese. If that lift hadn’t broken down or if I hadn’t seen Bryan’s advert, who knows what situation I would be in. I would almost certainly have contracted Type 2 diabetes and be currently injecting insulin. It could even be much worse.
I have now finished my training course and I want to go and help other people who are currently in the same situation as I was. I know there are thousands of people in a similar situation in this country. I see them every single day as I’m sure you do too. I want to show them that there is a way out, and it’s not even as hard they imagine. I’ve been there, I’ve done it, I’ve experienced all the pitfalls and know what it takes to get over them.
That is why I have set up this blog. To share my story and to help you start and finish your own. To achieve what you always dreamed of but never thought possible. The sooner you start the sooner you will get to that goal. I guarantee you that if you follow my training and stick to my nutritional advice, nothing will stop you from reaching that goal. Contact me now to get started, you won’t regret it.
Ireland is getting fatter. Latest statistics suggest that 2 out of every 3 Irish people are overweight, with this number on the increase. There are over 300,000 overweight or obese children in Ireland with this number increasing by 10,000 every year. Disastrous stuff, but what’s worse is that there is nothing currently in place that will stop these numbers rising. In fact, anything that the government currently has in place simply contributes to the problem.
I was eating out earlier with two friends. We had just consumed a high fat, low carbohydrate meal. Standard behaviour for us, something we do all the time at essentially every meal. In this instance it was 2 beef patties, with cheese, mushrooms, a fried egg, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, onions. (We smeared peanut butter on the burgers too but that may be a a little too weird for you haha) The meal was delicious and filling. It was also the exact kind of food that your doctor and the Irish Health Association would tell you to consume in strict moderation due to the high fat/saturated fat contents.
We then went to get some coffee (the lads did, I’ve never been a coffee lover!). Ahead of us in the queue were 3 young women, 2 of whom were overweight. I couldn’t help observing what they were ordering. All 3 ordered Low fat bagels with low fat cream cheese and cappucinos with low fat milk. Clearly these girls are conscious of their weight and are attempting to lose weight or at least maintain their current weight and not gain more. That’s the only reason I would imagine they would make all the low fat choices. And this is the tragedy, right here. They are doing exactly what they are told to do by the Irish Health Association. They are eating from the bottom rung of the “food pyramid” with their bagels. They are cutting out the fat like they are told to. I imagine that the fact that it doesn’t work and they are carrying this excess weight, even when following the standard advice, means they probably think they are destined to be overweight forever. They probably look at their lean friend as being lucky that she doesn’t gain weight, and chances are she is lucky and has a good carbohydrate tolerance. I also imagine that if they had witnessed us eating our food 10 minutes previous they might look at us and think “Oh those lads are lucky, they can clearly eat whatever they want and stay lean” The fact I used to weigh over 22 stone should show that this is far from true.
You see, the Irish Health Association are contributing to, and are arguably the main cause of the obesity epidemic. Not on purpose of course. They believe (wrongly) that their recommended diet and the food pyramid are “healthy”. They followed the same bad science that other countries did that left everyone believing that high fat diets cause heart disease,obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and play havoc with your cholesterol profile. This has all since been debunked with solid research but unfortunately this hasn’t caught on yet. It may never catch on. Imagine the reaction if the authorities were to turn around and say, “Sorry, we’ve been wrong for the last 20 years. Sorry we killed your parents with terrible diet advice. Cut out the starchy carbs and replace them with fats and you will lose weight and improve all of your heart disease risk factors”. Imagine the reaction from the Irish Farmer’s Association if the Irish Health Association were to turn around and say that not only are potatoes not “good for you” they are inherently fattening? I can’t see them doing it any time soon. They will continue spreading their nonsensical “heart healthy”, high carbohydrate, low fat diet advice and the country will continue to get fatter, diabetes will continue to increase, heart disease will continue to increase, and that there is the tragedy.
A lot more to follow on nutrition and specifically high fat vs high carb.
Contrary to popular thinking, the most effective training you can do for weight loss is heavy resistance training, not cardio. The calories your body will consume repairing and building lean muscle mass far outweigh any calories you will burn in the “fat burning” zone on a treadmill/bike/rower. Stop aerobic exercise. It is literally useless in terms of weight loss. Only this week the American Journal of Medicine published the results of a meta-analysis (a combination of results of numerous studies/clinical trials addressing the same hypothesis) of isolated aerobic exercise and it’s effect on weight loss. The outcome of this study of 14 trials is the following “Our results show that isolated aerobic exercise is not an effective weight loss therapy in these patients “. Don’t get me wrong, there are many benefits to aerobic exercise, weight loss just isn’t one of them. Lift heavy and lift often, at least 3 times a week. Same goes for you ladies, ditch the treadmill and the pink dumbbells and get lifting heavy. Don’t be afraid of getting “big and muscley” . You don’t produce enough testosterone for that to happen. You will replace lost fat with lean muscle and look and feel all the better for it.
The biggest part of any successful weight loss will always be the nutrition. You cannot out-train a bad diet. All the hard work you do in the gym will be quickly wasted if you are not eating right. It’s important to realise that changing the way you view food is not the same as being on a “diet”. Diet’s don’t work. If you view it as a diet then you see it as a temporary change that you can abandon when you hit whatever your target weight may be. Think about it… If eating “normal” resulted in you being overweight in the first place, how can you ever return to eating that way without ending up being overweight again? It may seem hard to completely change the way you eat and initially it will be. But after a few weeks it starts to become your new way of eating and as time goes on you will find it difficult to imagine ever going back to the way you were, specially once you see the serious results you are getting and progress you are making. What way should you eat? Keep an eye out on the Nutritional Advice section of the blog and I’ll tell you soon.
Decide what it is you want to achieve and make a promise to yourself that you will do it. An often cited study found that 95% of people who attempt to lose weight put all the weight (and sometimes more) back on within three years. Don’t be one of these 95%, be one of the 5% who get the results they dream of. I’ve been through it. I started out with more than 100lbs of body fat to lose and I did it. Chances are you have a lot less to lose than that, so what’s stopping you from doing the same? If you want guaranteed weight loss results all you need to do is contact me and avail of my personal training service. I’m not like other trainers who never knew what it was like to have a lot of weight to lose. I remember what it was like and how intimidating those first steps are, the fear of failure….. not believing I would be able to achieve my goals….. I will help you get rid of these fears and achieve the body you’ve always wanted. Click HERE to Give me a shout and I’ll get you started right away.
(I also throw out any chocolate or cake I find when I’m at my parents house)
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