So you’ve read my Weight Loss with Exercise post and you want to learn more. This is going to blow you away without freaking you out. I’ve had a number of emails asking me what type of juice based diet or meal replacement I’ve been taking. Have I been on the 5 2 diet or how many meals do I skip a day? The answer to everything is not at all. There was no diets involved and the only additional supplement I took was protein powder. You can use any but I chose myProtein due to the ease of mixing, favours and the discounts available. Now this wasn’t a process I took on my own. It was started after an opportune meeting with my now good friend Tim introducing me to Rory from RFF Nutrition. What Rory put in place was a tight knit program of support between Tim, Rory and I to share our days, track our nutrition plans and jokes to keep each other going. Changing a lifestyle isn’t about dropping everything and quitting life. It’s about making intelligent changes little by little to slowly ensure that there’s no changes and it slowly becomes your lifestyle. Managing portion size was key and allowed me to eat the foods I enjoy within reason. No foods were banned and this included chocolate as long as it fit in with the rules Rory’s words will resonate with me when we first had a conversation over Skype as I was sitting in my car because it was bed time for Dorothy. We introduced ourselves, what our goals were and how we were going to achieve them. I spoke about my past life as a pro-golfer, hitting the gym 6 days a week and walking miles every day. We discussed my back problems, how weight had slowly shifted on and the reciprocating nature of eat/pain. Rory said “This isn’t a diet, it’s a lifestyle change. Diet’s are for tomorrow and a change is forever!” There was also another bit of crucial information that I neglected at the start, you have to bring your family into the changes. There’s elements that aren’t going to be easy. If you come home from a long day’s work, your partner has been working long hours, there’s a piping hot dinner waiting for you when you get home and you say that you can’t eat your dinner because it doesn’t match your ideal. I can promise you this your ideal isn’t going to last long and you’ll be out on your ear. Now of course this was a program that was tailored for me and I can’t give all the information away. There’s an element of personalisation based on my size, weight and goals and also Tim and I had completely different aims and changes. This started at the amount of food I had to consumer as well as the protein levels and water consumption. I would say in all it was split into four elements: Giving up Alcohol This was a personal choice but I pretty much gave up alcohol. Having worked so hard to get my weight down as soon as I’d go out, I would put on a kilo by the next day. In water and calories alone, is it worth it? You work so hard to throw it all away. So I personally only had a few nights on the beer in the past six months and do you know what, I don’t miss it. Water till you’re Sloshing! The phrase sloshing was a favourite of Tim’s and it really did mean sloshing. You drink enough water until you can’t drink anymore. You’ll start to notice an increase in the amount of times you need to go to the toilet and your body will seem bloated but having a glass of water with every meal fills you up like you wouldn’t believe. Honestly! Even soda water with the meal and you’ll not need dessert.
Protein to replace fat with Muscle Now this is a difficult one. You’ll end up eating so much protein breakfast will include it, lunch will and you’ll even try to have some in cakes! I experimented with protein flapjacks, pancakes, syrup literally wherever I could add protein powder. Now I’ll tell you this! Butternut squash home made soup with two scoops of flavourless protein powder not only makes it really creamy but gives you an added 40g of protein in that one bowl. That’s a win! You’ll need to pick a really good protein as I ended up going through three types. I didn’t have a fancy mixing shaker to being able to prepare and shake was my lot. Any more than that was too much hassle. In the end, I added a scoop of peanut butter to my mix with peanut cookie protein. This really gave me a breakfast of champions!
I needed to hit my protein targets so added no chicken/fish proteins were essential when working away. One thing to remember about replacing fat with muscle. Your weight will go up and down almost daily. As muscle weighs more than fat, as you burn fat you replace it with denser muscle pushing your weight up. With the added water don’t be surprised if you look larger than normal before hitting your biggest losses. I don’t know why, it just is!
Rory’s Simple and Secret Eating Techniques
The third part is what you eat. This isn’t broken down into calorie counting, but does involve lots of planning and preparation. Controlling what you eat as well as monitoring it is all so vital to reducing your calorie intake. But it’s fun and you can see exactly what’s happening in your world and what’s going into your body.
Being creative with some guideline gave the power to go wild! I really did push the boundaries of what I could eat staying inline with goals. Here’s just a few options that all were amazing and seriously good!
I invested in a set of Bluetooth scales that worked with my Apple Health App. Having everything ported into one App meant I only needed one place to look for progress. I’m not going to give you Rory’s secret. He is a nutritionist and personal trainer who helped me dramatically on top of all of the above. He was there every week supporting us, available on Whatsapp for support and letting us know when we needed a kick 🙂 Please visit Rory here for any further questions on his Nutrition Plan: https://www.facebook.com/rffnutrition/ there is no diets, products, pills or gym needed. In the first 4 months from October to end January I dropped 16kg in weight with the majority of loss through diet and lifestyle changes! These changes dramatically changed my body, reduced my joint pain like you wouldn’t believe. I could now almost touch my toes and the thought of exercise just made me more determined to eat healthier and reduce my weight more. The journey was well under way and the reduction in weight had a really positive effect on my mental state as well as my confidence in myself. I’d always looked at myself in the mirror as a 15stone 20 something but in reality it was very different. I was getting back to where I imagined I was and where I wanted to be. Feel free to contact Rory or ask me any questions you’d like.
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