Epsom Personal Trainer - Demo Diet - March 16 - May 16.

I have never been fat or suffered from long term bad eating habits for one reason or another so naturally found it hard to understand why overfat people struggled with weight loss. After my two months of calorie restriction I feel I understand where so many go wrong. Fat intake. Most run from it, I embrace it.

On March 16th of this year I embarked upon a body fat loss diet to see what all the fuss was about. Read on to see how I lost over 10kg and over 3 inches off my waist.

My results were as follows; the red writing shows the “after” measurements.

Height

6`1″

6`1″ (surprisingly)!

Weight

15st/95.25kg

13.32st/84.6kg

Waist

35″

31.25″

Belly button skin fold

16mm

7.5mm

My body fat at the end of the diet was about 10%

And just what did my diet look like during this period? Many of you would believe it was made up of cereals and salads. You couldn’t be more wrong. Hunger must be controlled if fat loss is to be successful - fat helps control hunger. So many people feel that fat in your diet is bad for you - I’ll tell you this for free - it’s far worse carrying too much body fat. Dietary fat serves to control appetite and helps you eat less. This is the stumbling block for nearly everyone I speak with. If you want to be wary of a food type, let it be sugar - The insulin spiking, inflammatory food stuff that swells vessels.

I knew I had to count calories for this to work, that is just unavoidable when it comes to fat loss I’m afraid - no matter what you read. My basal metabolic rate (the amount of energy my body uses in a day, at rest) was a touch under 1900 calories per day. I limited myself to 2000 calories each day. Simple.

You have to be realistic with yourself here. I am bigger than average and still my basal metabolic rate was only 1900, the average person will have a rate much lower than mine - perhaps 1200 - 1500 calories. Following my calorie plan may not work for you, following the principles however, will serve you well.

Keeping my diet simple and regular was key here, I picked a handful of meals I knew I would enjoy, could prepare easily and knew the calorie content of. That is a major factor.

A typical breakfast for me was scrambled eggs on toast or bacon, eggs, liver and sausages for the two days that followed a workout.

Lunch was either a yoghurt or a milkshake made up of gold top milk, honey, bananas and eggs. Fruit was always on hand as a snack if I got hungry.

If I was hungry for a dinner then it usually consisted of fish and vegetables.

That’s it, nothing fancy, no miracle supplement and no “special” times of day to eat.

I should mention here that every day I took three effervescent vitamin C tablets throughout the day with at least 4 pints of water.

I had my thirtieth birthday mid way through this experiment so keeping to 2000 calories per day was tough, I allowed myself a rest for a weekend around my birthday and knew I would put back on some of the weight I had lost (2kg to be precise). I didn’t then think that I was a failure or give up with the diet. I simply restarted the calorie restriction after my birthday weekend had passed. Simple.

I drank beer, ate chocolate and enjoyed Sunday roasts most weeks - there is simply no need to banish your favourite foods from your life when you are trying to lose fat. Just make sure you factor them in to your daily calorie intake. Simple.

I will say that you can quite literally eat what you want during a fat loss stage - health foods should be of little concern to you until you are first at a healthy body weight. Worrying whether fatty foods are bad for your health whilst you are overfat is akin to asking how to how to perform algebra before you can even use an abacus.

There should be some common sense here in as much as balance is required. Eating 1500 calories of chocolate per day will allow you to lose fat but it will also leave you feeling like shit and won’t cover you daily needs for proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. Use your brains people.

If I can give you just one tip to aid in your fat loss diet then let it be this;

Don’t go on a low fat diet, you will only feel hungry all day. Embrace fat as a healthy and useful tool in this stage.

Fat digests far more slowly than carbohydrates and thus keeps you satiated far longer, which in turn, helps you eat far less food throughout the day.

I logged my measurements each and every day of this experiment to see how daily fluctuations can appear in weight - they can vary as much as two pounds or more in a single day so I advise not to worry about daily measurements - weekly is fine but make sure they are standardised (same time of day for example). As part of the log I took before and after photos to motivate myself and present to you.

Oh and as a side note my workout schedule was simple- I lifted weights 2 days per week for thirty minutes in a circuit fashion. Full body involvement with a focus on big movements that use lots of muscles in one go. Maintaining as much lean tissue as possible whilst losing fat is the priority of a workout to keep a good body composition.

Looking below you will see my before pictures and some after pictures. I have also emulated a magazine “after” shot to show how different a person can look with a little bit of help from Photoshop (bare in mind I am a total Photoshop amateur)! Most cover models will not look as they do on the cover for more than a few days per year due to the dieting that it requires and the special touching up the artwork team at the magazine carry out. Enjoy.

If you have any questions then feel free to call me your Epsom based Personal Trainer on 07742 952 208 or email me admin@hamsfitness.com

The next few months will be a reversal experiment;

I will attempt to gain as much muscle mass as possible whilst maintaining some semblance of definition!

There will be a report on that too for all of you wanting to get bigger.

Tags: body fat, calorie restriction, epsom personal trainer, health, results, strength training