Having weighed 120kg (265lbs) when I was 31 years old and barely fitting into 44-inch waist trousers, being incredibly unhappy with how I looked and felt internally, I embarked on a body transformation programme. I lost over 35kg (72lbs) in less than a year, which completely changed my life. The change was so influential in my own life that I decided to re-train to become a qualified personal trainer to help others through their own body transformation. The photo below compares me at 120kg vs 85kg but what the image doesn’t show is the incredible result for my mental health and how I now live a healthy lifestyle, which all started off the back of an initial 12-week body transformation programme.
What a body transformation is and how I achieved this, is detailed below and is intended to help those who want to embark on a similar journey. if you want to know more about my story and how I now help other people overcome their own physical and mental challenges, you can view this here.
What is a body transformation?
In a nutshell, it’s transforming from being unhappy in your own skin, to becoming happy in your own skin while benefitting from the physical and internal changes that take place as well. Fitness is an incredibly powerful tool for positive change, and it helped me massively overcome my own demons with food, drug and alcohol addiction in my twenties.
It’s about creating lasting change both physically and mentally for my clients.
Sean – Addicted2life | https://www.instagram.com/ptwimbledon/
So when I refer to a body transformation, it’s a lot more than just an epic before and after photo of the 3-month body transformation programme that I run; it’s about creating lasting change both physically and mentally for my clients. When I train clients, the goal is always to make sure the client is feeling positive, regardless of the specific performance goals we set, because by harvesting a positive mindset, you will achieve anything you put your mind to.
How to get started on a 12 week body transformation programme
Just start would be my main advice. If you are anything like I use to be, you will always find excuses for not investing in your own health and wellbeing, and ironically, it’s how you look in the mirror that causes you the most frustration! The only way you get over that frustration is by getting professional help through a personal trainer/fitness coach who has the experience of tailoring a programme to your specific goals and tracking nutrition, supplements and giving you vital nutritional guidance. The benefit of getting a personal trainer goes far beyond just physical changes but the associated clarity of mind that comes with regular exercise. If you get a great personal trainer, they will make you fall in love with the programme, and you will want to attend every session simply because you enjoy them! The results then take care of themselves. I acheieved my Body Transformation in 6 months in total as I extended the sessions for another 12-week period. The results were amazing after the first 12-Weeks and I wanted to see what I could achieve with another 12-Week period.
We live in a society where everyone wants everything yesterday, but you have to create lasting habitual changes to your exercise and nutritional habits for the longer term and a 3-month programme provides sufficient time to start making those important changes.
Sean – Addicted2Life | https://personaltrainingwimbledon.com/
Most body transformation programmes should be a minimum of 3 months, training 3 x per week but you can start on an 8-Week programme that will give you the initial result to keep you coming back for more. The body transformation programme is designed to be intense for a short period of time (3 months is a very short time compared to a lifetime) as you want to be putting your body under sufficient stress for those 3 months to inhibit the results that you want. We live in a society where everyone wants everything yesterday, but you have to create lasting habitual changes to your exercise and nutritional habits for the longer term and a 3-month programme provides sufficient time to start making those important changes.
What is included in a successful 12 Week Body Transformation Programme?
Various programmes exist in the world that looks to take clients from fat to ripped in record time. Word of warning, you will not see lasting change, which is always the goal of a transformation, if you use crappy diets (shakes in particular) and get fit quick programmes. The difference between my transformation programme and a typical lose weight quick programme is down to the holistic approach that I developed from my own journey and creating lasting change for clients which is done through education and re-inforcement. The ability to create a strong core is vital during the process and lots of strength work allows us to do this. So what does my programme include that makes it so fantastic:
If you’re not tracking, you’re slacking!
Sean – Addicted2Life | https://personaltrainingwimbledon.com/
- The initial Body and Mindset consultation – Talking about what is happening over the 3 months, the mindset you will need and how to practice it are vital for maximising results. This is the time when very clear goals are set. Long term goal over the 3 months, medium-term goals from month to month and short term goals over the week.
- The nutritional review is undertaken before we start, to see what foods you typically eat over a 7 day period. Using myfitnesspal to track your food via my Addicted2Life fitness app, everything is easily tacked under the one app. You can even sync your Apple/Fitbit smartwatch so we can see all your activity level as well. We will also set the calorie and macro levels that will be targeting the weight loss goal as we can tell with a great level of certainty, that if you train, eat and track, we will know where the gaps are in your programme because no stone is left unturned.
- Start 3 x training sessions per week, with scheduled rest days that should incorporate yoga/pilates/walking to keep the body moving and progressing even in a less intense setting. The sessions are specifically tailored to what we discuss in step 1, for example, the goal could be to lose 2 stone in weight or to drop three dress sizes, but ultimately the sessions are designed to maximise intensity and each session will target the areas needed to push you along to your ultimate body transformation.
- Provide support outside of sessions. This is easily overlooked by many trainers but when you are wanting to really change the way you look and feel, you have external factors that are continually trying to pull you back into old behaviours. I provide my clients with WhatsApp support so they can contact me at any time if they have questions or if they want to talk through something then can know that I am only at the other end of the phone. Support from immediate friends and family is always vital because the environments in which we spend the most amount of time can greatly impact our ability to stick to a body transformation programme e.g. cakes and sweets always being brought into the office (maybe a thing of the past now anyway!).
- If you’re not tracking, you’re slacking! As boring as it sounds, you need to track your nutrition and be held accountable for what you are eating because that is the greatest way for you to stop falling into bad habits! I can view everything you eat through Myfitnesspal on a daily basis and work with you to always make changes and tweaks to your diet to make sure that we are hitting your short term, medium and ultimately long term goals. If you have a smartwatch, you can also track your activity levels which give you ultimate control over your end results, because if you know what you eat and what you burn in calories, then you are able to work out whether you are heading in the right direction or not.
- Get sufficient supplementation to help you through your body transformation. Supplementation can be a complete farce when you do it blindly, but with the ability to test for deficiency before we even begin, we can make sure that you can be appropriately supplemented throughout your journey. Evidence-based nutrition is the future and it takes out all the guesswork when you start your journey. We use Aguulp for their amazing gut health tests and supplements (12-Week Starter Pack). The importance of gut health is explained in more detail here. We also recommend using NGX with their DNA testing and personalised nutrition – your Genetics make up a large part of your results so we leave no stone unturned.
- Use a meal planning service throughout your programme. If you want to maximise results, minimise effort, then using companies such as Muscle food, can really boost your end result. Nutrition is 80% of the hard work and having this meal service is vital for the best results.
- Lifestyle changes. The truth is, if you want rapid results in three months, you will need to change the way you live and take some of these changes into the longer term. I personally gave up alcohol three years ago and it’s a big part of how I lost so much weight in such a short space of time. The odd drink doesn’t hurt, but I use to drink 20 pints a week and that contributed to an additional 10,000+ calories a week including the poor food I consumed as a result. Snacking is a client favourite and helping you through the snacking withdrawals is a big part of the education process.
- Enjoy the process and the result will take care of itself. The whole premise of the programme is to help my client completely transform so they love fitness and understand how to eat more healthy so they can take this with them and build on what they have learnt during the 3 months. Having personally completed a 12-Week Body Transoformation programme, the results were so amazing I invested in additional 12-Week programme which mean’t that I acheived my body transformation in 6 months.
If not now, when?
The power of fitness to alter your life, not just physically, is incredible. If you have been putting off changing your diet, getting up and exercising and using lockdown as your reason for not being healthy, then now is the perfect time for you to start.
The article is intended to help you along the process of getting into fitness. It has the power to completely change the way you live, the way you view yourself and the way you live the rest of your life. If you are looking for a Body Transformation Specialist in Wimbledon, then please get in contact with me here and let’s start your journey of self-discovery and health! You can see our happy and healthier client’s feedback by clicking here.
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