Just under 10 weeks ago I started a body changing experiment, asking myself the question: “Without the use of a gym and living a fairly normal life, how much can my body change in 10 weeks, and how much improvement will I see?”
So for 10 weeks I altered my diet, exercised regularly at home, or occasionally in a hotel, and kept up my running to a fairly normal degree.
Did it benefit me?
Well without wasting more time, here are the results:
BEFORE
5K PB – 22mins 18secs
10K PB – 48mins 0secs
Body Fat figure – 67 (Skin 8 fold with the use of callipers – as seen in pic)
Arm girth flexed and tensed – 32
Waist girth (min.) – 79.6
Gluteal girth (max.) – 99.4
Calf girth – 37.4
Weight – 12 Stone
AFTER
5K PB – 21mins 0secs
10K PB – 44mins 0secs
Body Fat figure – 44 (Skin 8 fold with the use of callipers – as seen in pic)
Arm girth flexed and tensed – 31.5
Waist girth (min.) – 74.5
Gluteal girth (max.) – 92.6
Calf girth – 36.5
Weight – 11.5 Stone
Immediately the first thing noticed is that I managed to cut my body fat down by 35%. I was told by Gareth Nicholas, my MaxiNutrition nutritionist, that this was a brilliant achievement and something that’s very hard to do.
Despite losing a lot of body fat, my muscle girth on my calf and arms stayed relatively the same, which mean’t that I lost the fat and replaced it with muscle.
Doing all these exercises and shredding fat naturally made me leaner. As a result, I became faster, my 5K time improved by more than a minute, and my 10K time improved by a whopping four.
Anyone that knows running, will know that to cut a 5K time down by more than a minute is a big achievement, I was very happy. To my surprise however, I felt so much better over the longer distance. When I ran that 10K time, I didn’t even set out to run a PB, I just felt strong, quick and that I could keep a sustained pace for quite a while.
When I run now, I feel stronger, my body feels quicker, it’s an odd feeling, but doing this has really helped.
From a personal point of view, it’s nice not to have a flabby belly, I even have the shadows of a six pack murmuring through. It would have been nice to have been fully ripped, but by doing running it’s counter intuitive, you burn both muscle and fat, it was never going to happen. Especially in such short amount of time and without the use of weights.
But the point of this was never to get ripped, it proves that resistance training and an improved diet will make you healthier, leaner, stronger and quicker. You don’t necessarily need to spend £50 down the gym every month, when you can do it all at home.
Moving onto the diet, it probably wasn’t as strict as it should of been, I still occasionally drank alcohol, I even ate a McDonalds. You can still live a perfectly normal life and attain each of these goals. It’s all about the little changes.
Week on week you have seen my diet for yourself, the proof is there.
I hope by showing you that doing very little can actually change a lot, will inspire you to live a healthier lifestyle, and possibly even save you some money.
I would like to thank the support of my girlfriend, family and work team, as well as the help I have received from MaxiNutrition.
A special thanks to Connor Frampton (@ConnorFrampton) at Nuffield Health Chichester, who did all my measurements, he’s an excellent PT and is highly recommended.
What next? Part of me wants to carry on this lifestyle in some form, but I am glad I don’t have to be so strict with food anymore. I think I’ll probably introduce weights to bulk up a little more, but as for now, I’m going on holiday!
