Stats Before After Height 175cm 175cm Weight 88kg 79kg Chest 109cm 107cm Waist 100cm 85.5cm Calves 40cm 38cm Arms 35cm 36cm Thighs 57cm 58cm

Back in February this year I ran into December’s Monthly winner of BodyBlitz and eventual Grand Champion, Jeremy Zadow. I commented on how much weight he’d lost and he advised me of the BodyBlitz competition. This was perfect timing for me as I’d just started getting back into some weight training, and I thought that this would be an ideal opportunity to challenge myself and get back into shape.

I used to train four to six days a week in martial arts, the majority of this time would be standing around instructing rather than actual training myself. I found that I was spending too much time away from my family and friends and more time training/instructing. So I made an executive decision to spend some quality time with my wife and socialising with friends.
But this socialising was detrimental to my health and I started to get lazier and lazier and it became too easy just to go to the fridge and grab another beer instead of going for a run or a ride or practising my techniques.

I was 91kg when the alarm bells rang and I decided to hit the gym again. I’d dropped to 88kgs before running into Jeremy and decided to enter the challenge. I thought that if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right.

My wife, who is a beauty therapist, was my main motivation; she could see how not training was effecting me, so she encouraged me to enter and was a great help when I was feeling crap or felt like a beer. She would encourage and remind me of why I was doing this and remind me of my goals.

She told me about a new machine they had at her work that gives you a break down of your body composition and cellular health analysis — it’s called a Vitality Life Assessment. So I decided to get a test done at the start and a test at the end to compare my results.

It told me my ideal weight was 75kg. I knew I was over weight — initially I was 20 per cent body fat and had 47.65 per cent active tissue mass. Finally, after the 12 weeks of hard work, I got down to 79kg — 15.58 per cent body fat and 50.55 per cent active tissue mass.

I had another test about half way through, when I felt as if I wasn’t getting any results — I felt as if I’d hit a plateau but the test confirmed to me that I was still dropping weight, but adding muscle, hense why the scales weren’t dropping. I found this to be a great motivational tool also.

The hardest part for me was trying to eat at the right times — I’m a shift worker and we don’t get allocated a meal break. Usually you have your meal when you can or at post. This affects everything, from your metabolism, to your body clock and your recovery.

I really had to be organised, prepare my meals in advance, pre-cook dinners and have meats that could be eaten cold, otherwise I’d be in all sorts of trouble. This kind of challenge is great for those who work nine to five, when it’s easy to get up and train and have your meals at specific times throughout the day — no worries.

But when you’re a shift worker and have quick changeovers (when you finish at 11pm and have to be back at 7am ready to go), night shifts, and morning-arvos, not only do you suffer from lack of sleep, you don’t allow your body enough time to recover from your training.

You also have the added stress of the actual work. There were several times over the past 12 weeks that my alarm had gone off to have a meal, and I was stuck at a job and couldn’t stop to have a snack — not professional at all and not good for the metabolism. So this really was a challenge for me, but really worth the effort. IM