Q&A: Wynand Hattingh – 1st Place Men’s Transformation

We sat down with Wynand Hattingh who placed first in the Men’s Transformation Category of our Winter 2002 8-Week Challenge. We wanted to find out the secret to his success and he was happy to share it with us.

Please give us a short history of your journey to health and fitness before the challenge.

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Due to my love for sugar and sweet things I always had a bit of fat around the waist.

I try to stay fit by cycling when I got a chance, and I also started running less than 3 years ago but was never a fast runner or a long-distance runner.

I never went to the gym.

I would rate my fitness level before I started with Sleekgeek a 3 out of 10.

What prompted you to join the Sleekgeek Transformation Challenge?

My girlfriend has been a Sleekgeek member for years and asked me to join and give the challenge a try.

My first challenge was fun, but I did not change my eating style and did not do as good as I could have. In my 2nd challenge, I did better and was nominated for 8th position in the Transformation category. In my 3rd challenge, or the latest winter challenge I pushed hard.

Give us a quick overview of the nutrition and eating plan that you followed during the challenge.

I went from 3 spoons of sugar per cup of coffee (10 – 15 cups of coffee per day) to no sugar per cup and less than 8 cups a day.

I never drank water if it was not in coffee, now I drink at least 2 litres of water per day.

My daily sweets and chips treat stoped to only once per week as a spoil.

I eat more vegetables and fruit but did not measure or weigh any of them.

Give us a quick overview of the training and exercise plan that you followed during the challenge

One of my goals was to complete all the roadblocks in full by myself, and so I did. It was tough at first but became fun to complete it in full and push for more. I joined a gym for some extra weight training by myself.

If you could give 3 pieces of advice to future challengers, what would they be?

1. Look at your food intake and try to measure and weigh your daily intake, try and stick to an eating plan daily. I can feel everybody’s pain in trying to eat correctly, I struggled every day.
2. Exercise regularly, and push yourself a bit until you find a nice rhythm that works. I work early in the morning every day, so I went to the gym after 17h00 and did my roadblock activities after 20h00.
3. Make sure to fuel your body accordingly for your exercise activities.
   Set yourself a reasonable goal/s, either a weight lost kg goal, transformation goal or eating less of the bad things goal.

Why should people enter the challenge?

If you want to improve your fitness and health, look better, feel better about yourself, and want a healthier mindset, let the Sleekgeek challenge be your stepping stone. This challenge helped me improve my health, improve my running and endurance for fitness activities, it will do the same for every person.