Eat right, get slim
Tale of the Tape:
Starting weight: 177.7 lbs.
Current weight: 164.8 lbs.
Starting body fat: 26.5%
Current body fat: 18.9%
Bean sprouts or pizza. Fat-free Greek yogurt or perogies. Clean old H2O or tequila.
When this epic fitness challenge competition at the Richmond News is over these are the choices that will make all the difference.
The real truth is that I never actually ate bean sprouts, however, I’ve had to completely re-think my diet, and that has been the biggest challenge and the most important factor towards losing more than 10 pounds so far in the past eight weeks!
It’s not impossible to eat healthy, it’s just hard work. Anyone can eat healthy.
It doesn’t take skill or advanced intelligence, it just takes planning, preparation, time, effort and most importantly, commitment to sticking to the plan.
The commitment to sticking to a diet or eating healthy has always been my downfall in the past. For years, I would resort to quick fixes for hunger.
Since I didn’t plan ahead, I would arrive at work hungry. I’d then eat whatever I could get my hands on — namely whatever my work colleagues at the News brought into the office.
One day it could be Irma’s left over cakes in the lunch room for breakfast, Veera’s super tasty homemade East Indian cooking for early lunch, or Pierre’s weekly muffin and donut run.
That would be lunch.
In the early afternoon, between meetings, I would visit McDonald’s for a cheeseburger and an extra-large, double double.
On the way home from work I’d stop at the gas station and grab a bag of Doritos on the go. Then there was dinner with some beers mixed in.
My plan and commitment has changed all of that. My wife has been a great help. She and I have been planning shopping trips to No Frills once a week and she has been making me early morning oatmeal with bananas for breakfast before I leave for work.
This has been a huge help, as I can now make it to about 10:30 a.m. without searching the lunch room for Irma’s cakes. I’m now prepared with my own food from the grocery store that I put in the office fridge. I have a selection of healthy, low-carb snacks to choose from.
Typically, around 10:30 a.m., I snack on a piece of cheese and or turkey bites. Then for lunch it’s a can of tuna with salad.
My afternoon snack typically consists of greek yogurt mixed with low sugar granola and a banana or berries.
While shopping and preparing all of this may be difficult and time consuming, I’d say my new eating habits at the office have been the biggest factor in losing weight. That, plus limiting my beer and nachos over the weekend and a steady regimen of cardio and gym sessions at the City Centre Community Centre with my trainer, Gabrielle Payne, and boom — I’m down 12.5 pounds.
Take that Mongoose!
In the hunt to win
Tale of the Tape:
Starting weight: 168.4 lbs.
Current weight: 164.2 lbs.
Starting body fat: 23%
Current body fat: 18.9%
Heading into week nine, it finally happened. I walk into the City Centre Community Centre (C4) and standing in the middle of the floor performing lunge squats in all his glory is my competitor, Collin “Après Ski” Neal.
This, my loyal readers, is the first time in nine weeks we have been working out at the same time.
Seeing the despair and concern on Collin’s face was, to say the least, encouraging. He had a look that, I’m not quite sure how to explain it. I suppose the feeling I had could best be described by nature programs on TV. You know the ones, they show them on PBS all the time, National Geographic or BBC documentaries where a tiger is hunting its prey.
That’s how I felt. Collin looked like a deer with shock and fear in his eyes as I approached to begin my bench press.
I loaded up the bar and started doing my set. This is great, I thought. After each set, I would sit up and taunt Collin. He was clearly rattled and uncomfortable in this situation. He couldn’t concentrate.
I should have done this weeks ago, I thought to myself as I went in for another set.
And then just like in the wild kingdom, in the blink of an eye things changed. Collin’s trainer took control of the situation. Gabrielle Payne stepped in, put an end to the nonsense and took her precious Collin away from me and scurried to the other side of the gym.
Then it hit me.
I am not a tiger, Gabrielle is, in reality. I am more like the deer. She was the concerned and proud mama cat and she was protecting her cub, Collin. In this situation, I was most likely similar to an obnoxious tourist attempting to distract nature on some African safari.
Two weeks to go, I am resorting to taunting and challenging Collin to push-up competitions in the office. Side note: Collin won by the way, 50 in a row to my 40. I thought I was doing well until after it was over when my colleague Lesley Smith said out loud to anyone who was listening, “Collin should go do the RCMP or CSIS training, he is a machine right now.”
When I pointed out that I held my own and 40 is a pretty good number of push-ups, given I just came back from an hour circuit at the gym, she said, “Yeah, but you looked like you were about to have a heart attack.”
Last week, when I sent my stats in for the fitness challenge story, listing my current weight and body fat percentage, my colleague, reporter Alan Campbell fired back a reply to the entire staff with, “Sorry, Rob, there seems to be a mistake, nothing has changed from the previous week’s stats?”
Yikes.
When I walked into C4, two women, who were working out, told me they were rooting for me, (thanks Janice) but also let me know now is as good a time as any to get it together. Taunting and words won’t win this thing, only hard work will. To this point, Collin has put in more work than I have and I am proud of him.
But it’s not over.
Until next week, Richmond. #TeamMongoose.
