Let me share a story with you about a guy whose life took a transformative turn after meeting a girl. It's also a tale of how I shed 50kg of fat.


I was always incredibly active growing up, able to eat anything and stay lean. However, when I turned 20 and left home, I continued eating the same way but stopped exercising. I'm sure you've heard similar stories before. I could list some great excuses here—like a busy life, stress eating, or poor nutrition knowledge—but I don't like excuses. The truth is, I got fat. To be precise, I gained 60kg in just over two years. While I was lifting weights during that time, some of it might have been muscle, but that's still a significant amount of weight to gain. With the weight came the usual side effects: low energy, painful joints, a sore lower back, and difficulty touching my toes.


Then entered the girl who changed my life—my soon-to-be wife. She's generally the sweetest, most encouraging person you'll ever meet. However, she did something no one else had done: she called me fat. Yep, she just came out and said, "Steve, you're fat. You need to do something about it." Great words from someone I was planning to propose to in a couple of months!


But her words did something—they forced me to confront the problem and acknowledge that I had to fix things.


Long story short, I started eating a lot of good food, exercised more and more as the weight allowed me to, discovered a passion for fitness, and addressed the unhealthy areas in my life that made stress eating an attractive escape. I went from 147kg in the top left photo to 97kg in the bottom right.


And I learned some things:


Start today. Not tomorrow, not on Monday, not after your cousin's, auntie's, or best friend's birthday party.

Don't make excuses. If you're overweight and/or unhealthy, do something about it. Don't know what to do? Find someone who does.

Expect to change your life. You became overweight/unhealthy living the way you are. There's a much better quality of life to be found by being leaner and healthier.

No one can do it for you. Advice, encouragement, and training are all useful tools, but you have to make it happen yourself because the biggest battles will be in your own head.

Lastly, have a clear endgame in mind.


P.S. Yes, my wife is amazing and a great motivator, but she's also a reminder that I make a choice every day to be a better version of myself—for my wife, my children, family, and friends.


My Story

April 28, 2024
We all start some where. Here is my story about how I got to where I am today.

Health and Nutrition

April 10, 2024
Everything we do around health and nutrition is based on some very simple principles.

Health and Nutrition - Second Principle

April 10, 2024
The second principle we follow is: What you do to get healthy is what you need to do to stay healthy. This simply means that if you choose a paleo, keto, Mediterranean, vegan, intermittent fasting diet, you will have to stick to it long term in order to retain your progress. This is where most people screw up, they pick a restrictive diet, have some short term success, then return to their old way of eating and regain all that weight. Life is a lot longer and more complicated than a simple 12 week challenge. Even in a year, 12 weeks is only a quarter of the year, you have the next 40 weeks to undo all that hard work. This is why you see people do 12 week challenges every year without it ever seeming to stick. You need to come to terms with how you relate to food (see my last post), and how you best like to eat and exercise (more on that later). Look to establish simple habits and routines, rather than follow fixed rules. For example a common thing people do in order to lose weight is skip breakfast. If you however have spent most of your life eating breakfast, you will probably go back to that habit in the future, thereby adding calories back into your diet without realising. So sticking to a pattern of breakfast every day and changing its contents is much more sustainable. 

Aim for mediocrity not perfection.

By test • April 10, 2024
Aim for mediocrity not perfection. This principle might seem counterintuitive at first glance, don't we all want to aim for perfection? But if you aim for what is the minimum rather than the maximum to still get results you create something much more sustainable for your long term health. For example, while training 5 times per week might be good, if the minimum needed to get stronger is just once every 7-10 days, you will be far less likely to fail, building 1 training into your routine. You can always add another session into your schedule at a later date, But if you start with 5 sessions then have to drop a couple due to being unsustainable you will feel like you are failing, despite still doing really well. A second part of this is to look for the next best option, not the perfect option. While a healthy home cooked lunch might be the best option you can have, if you forget to take lunch one morning, what is your next best choice, rather than completely messing up your food for the day. This means the best option available might be a steak pie from a bakery, because you know how many calories are in it, and it will stop you from using McDonald's as an all you can eat buffet. Now I am not saying you should be eating takeout regularly, but we all sleep in occasionally, or forget to buy groceries, so having a second best option for the times where you forget to plan is a great way to ensure you continue to have long term results. One last way this principle should be implemented in your life is the 90% rule when it comes to nutrition plans. I actively encourage people to take 1-2 meals per week off their nutrition plan. This doesn't mean an all you can eat binge at Pizza Hut, just eat something you like, that isn't in your plan. Because if you eat 3 meals per day, 21 per week, the 905 rule means you can have those 1-2 off and still make good progress. No one got fat from just one meal.

What is healthy?

By test • April 10, 2024
What even is healthy? There are all kinds of different metrics that people use, how they feel, fitting a certain clothing size, being a certain scale weight etc. But the most important, and most consistent is to measure and track body fat percentage. The healthy ranges for male and females are often up for debate, but as a guideline, men should be 15-20% and women 20-28%. This is simultaneously higher than most people think it would be, yet lower than most people seem willing to accept as healthy. The best way to measure this is using a simple tape measure. Look up a tape bodyfat calculator and enter the measurements. Within about 2 minutes you will have a decent idea of what your overall health is and how much work you need to do. A more accurate method is to use fat calipers, however this takes some practice to get right. Or you can book in for a full body scan at a health clinic. One thing to be aware of is the difference in quality of body scan devices, some simple measure bio-electrical impendence, others take into account the actual distribution of fat deposits in your body, it's worth checking before booking. However you choose to track, looking at bodyfat percentage instead of kilo bodyweight is a much better option for assessing health. This is because your weight fluctuates, depending on what you eat, how much water you drink, how much you exercise etc. But bodyfat takes a fair amount of time to shift, so it will give a much more consistent measure of what your health looks like. 
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