Men’s Transformation Winner: Neil van Tonder

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

Hi fellow Sleeks,

My name is Neil van Tonder, I’m originally from Cape Town but am currently living in a lovely small town called Sligo in the North West of Ireland.  My reason for joining the Sleekgeek 8-Week Challenge was purely for the motivation and accountability aspect of it.

The 8-Week Challenge was a great tool to help keep me focused on clean eating and consistency in my training. The strong sense of community helped with the motivation to get off the couch and do some sort of physical activity, to achieve my goal, as I knew that I wasn’t the only one struggling to stay motivated.

Yes, I had my days where I just wanted to go home and lay on the couch and watch Netflix or YouTube after a day’s work.

From past experience, I realised that after an intensive training session in the gym, I not only felt good and happier (endorphin rush) but more energized. The hardship I experienced during the day disappeared and I would go home stress-free.  I had my struggles sticking to clean eating habits and the occasional carb creep happened, but by remembering the goals I set, I tried to get back on track as quickly as possible. 

What I achieved over the last 8 weeks was the following:

1. I managed to discover determination and willpower, especially on long and hard days when I just wanted to go home and relax.
2. I pushed through and went and exercised and noticed that I pushed a bit harder than usual. I managed to increase my weight weekly. By experiencing the small gains in the gym, I was motivated to stay on my diet for longer and that motivated me to push harder in the gym.
3. I also managed to increase my daily steps; I set a goal of about 55 000 steps a week and exceeded my goal to 75 000 per week. Some weeks I got fewer steps in due to rainy weather. As my body started to change and I noticed the changes, it encouraged me to continue with my eating plan.

I enjoyed the information that was made available on the Sleekgeek website. The community on Facebook and everyone else’s small victories, tips, questions, and advice helped me as it showed me that I wasn’t the only one struggling.

The Sleekgeek Challenge is a unique platform to guide, help and encourage you with your weight loss/transformation journey. The community is helpful and friendly and everyone shares the same dream with the same goal, hoping for the same result and that is to improve your life by losing the unwanted kilograms you put on over the years.

There are groups to help you with accountability, information, training advice, and even meet and greets to become more active. My wife and I met some of our friends at a Parkrun just by wearing a SG cap. Nobody has the perfect eating plan, nor the perfect training program or habits but with the community, you can learn from other people’s mistakes and make improvements to your own journey.

I mostly did a form of Keto/carbohydrate restriction with fasting, sometimes OMAD, to reduce calorie intake along with weight training and step counts for cardio, as I have a job that requires that, I didn’t do any extra cardio.