Give us a short history of your journey to health and fitness before the challenge.
I have had a long history of attempts to keep my health in check, it all came with many setbacks and many lessons that I had to learn the hard way. I finally made the decision in 2015, when we found out that my wife was expecting our first child, that I had to make some very big changes in my life. I smoked for 13 years of my life and had a very active social life.
The first day back at the gym in 2015 after my last couple failed attempts had me coughing my lungs out, I could barely run on a treadmill. I must admit that when I heard I was going to be a father an alarm bell went off in my head, I really did not want my children to have an unhealthy role model, so I started my journey.
I weighed in at 105kg’s at the time going on 106kg’s. By then I had heard of The Sleekgeek 8-Week Transformation Challenge, but I just did not have the guts to enter yet, although I kept following all the mails and all the success stories as motivation.
It took me a better part of 2 years to lose all the excess weight I had packed on but every day I felt better, faster, healthier and it did indeed also increase my confidence levels. The next three years were the hard part, building a good-looking physique, finding the activities that make you want to get up and be active, and very importantly finding the perfect balance between work, training, and family. I was starting to gain great progress and maybe got a little too confident with how great things were going.
Everything changed in an instant, the Covid-19 Pandemic struck Africa, we went into lockdown and my world fell apart. I felt depressed and quickly started eating and drinking way more than I should have. All my efforts started going out the door. My wife said that she wanted us to change our lifestyle back to our healthier lives but neither of us knew where to start, that is when the Sleekgeek email landed in my inbox and I decided to take action. Both my wife, who has been crushing her weight loss goals, and I wanted to get back on track and the challenge helped us do just that.
What prompted you to join the Sleekgeek Transformation Challenge?
When one of the Sleekgeek Challenge emails landed in my inbox, I shared it with two of my buddies. We started chatting and all three of us felt like we needed something to get our fitness on track, diets in check, and help with a motivational distraction to keep our minds off of all the negativity that came with the pandemic. So, we decided to enter together, each going on our own journeys and probably each having different more personal reasonings but my reasoning was that I needed this to help me through a very tough time, where bad eating and drinking habits were creeping in due to high-stress levels and depression.
Give us a quick overview of the nutrition and eating plan that you followed during the challenge.
I followed the Mod-Carb Plan (Appropriate for a person weighing 81-100kg) that was made available in the Challenger Vault. It is one of the best set out eating plans I have seen out there.
It appealed to both myself and my wife and I could adapt the meals for my kids to enjoy with us as well. It covers all your nutrient needs and allows you to eat red meat but in healthy portions. It was not complicated to cook any of the meals and the plan comes with recipes plus a shopping list, again a very well thought out plan!
Portion control I found was where I struggled in the beginning, but I have become used to the portions and so has my family, we have incorporated the plan into our daily lives.
Give us a quick overview of the training and exercise plan that you followed during the challenge.
I trained every day of the week, except Sundays, which was my rest days, well when I was not trying to sneak in a run. Due to the lockdown, my training was all home-based, made up of all the equipment I managed to put together from various sources or training sessions in one of my neighbor’s garage and running on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
I used a lot of the training exercises made available from the vault for at-home training and incorporated some of my own exercises. I ensured to start off each session with cardio followed by training a specific muscle group. It was challenging to train without proper weights, but I managed to pull through with my resistance bands I ordered from Sleekgeek and my bench weights that came with the small secondhand bench I sourced. I trained for about an hour and a half each day.
If you could give 3 pieces of advice to future challengers, what would they be?
- UTILIZE THE CHALLENGER VAULT first, read through everything, decide on a meal plan, take from the motivational reads the ones relevant to you, and your needs and download all the tracking sheets. Choose your exercise plan if you don’t have one planned out and follow the instructions as per the vault. Again utilize the vault it has everything you would ever need to help create a better you.
- STAY CONSISTENT, don’t lose track, utilize the tracking sheets in the vault, and stay on plan. If you keep it constant and if you keep it focused you will find it easier and easier to maintain. Track each day, even the bad stuff, track it and keep it consistent.
- Whatever you do, DON’T GIVE UP! If you feel like giving up, go on to the site and look at the before and after photos of past winner and challengers and tell yourself, I want to be on this page, I want to be one of these people that committed and made it. Talk about the challenge to your close friends and family, explain why you are doing the challenge so they can help you stay committed. Chat to the people on the Sleekgeek challenger FB page, tell everyone how you are making progress, how you are eating, and how your training is going.
Why should people enter the challenge?
Ask yourself: Am I comfortable with myself and how I look?
Do I feel the need to eat healthier and live healthier?
Do I feel the need to challenge myself to be a better version of myself?
If you said yes to these questions, then you need to enter this challenge. It helped me out of a bad spot, I was heading into the wrong direction, eating badly and I quickly lost all the progress had made before.
Now I am back on track, I am motivated and I am living each day trying to be a better version of myself. You should enter this challenge, because at the end of the day if you feel good about yourself, you will feel the need to remain motivated, you will feel confident and you will most of all feel positive, you will automatically want to become a better version of yourself each and every day.
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