When Lee first came to see us, there was a sense of desperation. “When I weighed myself a few months ago, I was in shock. I was embarrassed, I could have cried”, he confessed. He was stuck in a rut, didn’t know how to fix his problems. “I couldn’t see a way out”, he told us. He wanted to lose a lot of weight, reduce his blood sugar levels and reduce his blood pressure, for both of which he was on medication.
39lbs
Cleared
Straighter!
3 months
The first activity in Lee’s programme was our ‘Set up for Success’ induction. This comprised:
Main problem was being majorly overweight – I was embarrassed… I couldn’t see a way out.
Here’s what we did to help Lee:
We suggested some swap outs for some of the things he was eating. For example:
It’s always important at the beginning of a programme to keep a frequent dialogue with the client to enable them to settle into a new lifestyle quickly. We made the following observations and took the following actions:
The exercise programme had the following elements:
Cardiovascular exercise to
Weight training to
Posture correction training to
We gave Lee a detailed calorie and macronutrient breakdown of all the meals he should eat in a day. We asked him to log his food intake so we could see how he was getting on and spot any problems. Recognising that this kind of structured food intake is a challenge for people to start with, we asked Lee to first and foremost hit his daily calorie target. After that, we asked him to hit his meal targets and daily macronutrient targets. Then, even better results would follow.
No food was banned as long as Lee hit his targets. However, we made sure Lee understood that some food choices would hinder his progress and explained the kind of choices that would make the weight loss easier and keep progress on track.
When I lost the first stone… the feeling was… I can’t tell you! Emotional, euphoric, amazing!
You’ll see from the before and after photos that Lee’s posture improved significantly.
Lee went from diabetic to normal blood sugar and from pre-high blood pressure to normal blood pressure. We measured a number of other markers. Take a look at Lee’s stats
Lee lost 39 pounds. So why did he miss his target of 42 pounds? First of all because of some deviations in his lifestyle choices but mainly because of the wisdom tooth operation that came near the end of the programme. The subsequent infection was so painful and debilitating that he was unable to exercise or even undertake the physical aspects of his job for almost 3 weeks.
Here are some of the gains in Lee’s key lifts. There are certain lifts that we regard as essential to any lifting programme, such as the deadlift and squat. Lee got stronger in these lifts week on week
Lee reported himself that he had a lot more energy, a lot more get-up-and-go, improved sleep, improved mental function. This transferred into his family life where he was able to take part in family activities once again, much to the delight of his family.
We’d like to boast that Lee’s success was entirely down to us. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Lee’s massive improvement was all down to Lee himself – his drive and determination to succeed. Whilst we helped him maintain his motivation and provide the accountability that he needed, the driving force was all his.
“I felt like I was 25 again! We do stuff as a family together again – I couldn’t recommend the training enough. It was enjoyable, different, mixed up… it was about my whole lifestyle.”
