Weight Loss

If you’re reading this I hope it inspires you along your own weight loss journey. To give you a little background on myself; my name is Rohan and I have had a weight problem for as long as I can remember. I am now 28 and have for the past 2 years been attempting to lose this weight so I could go into a career I can feel good about.
While my journey has made my body healthy eg: blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol all good, I was unable to lose the weight. My last confirmed weight before I met with Anna at The TOUGH Spot was over 200kg. This is my journey through 3 months of weight loss to lose the weight and to make myself feel good again.

The TOUGH Spot opening opened my eyes to a new way of training and it was an enjoyable day even before I found out I had won the 3 month weight loss challenge opportunity.

I met with Anna on the 5th to discuss my nutrition, I was unable to start working out until after the 17th due to the difficulty in getting a doctors appointment, however I sat down with Anna and discussed a meal plan I could follow that while strict was not unbearable, we were able to work around my likes and dislikes when it came to food. (while I love my veg there are certain ones that just make me want to gag).  We also decided that the isagenix program would be good for me to start on and on the 12th of May I met Gary who walked me through the requirements of the program and I took delivery of the products.

I won’t lie, I found the isagenix program hard in the first week, I am a former chef and the choc shakes for me had no taste they were just like thick water and ionix supreme was too sweet for my taste (it tasted vile). On the 17th I had my doctor’s appointment and had my first training session on the 19th at The TOUGH Spot. I have not had so much water to drink in less then an hour in my life, I was worked hard and while it hurt it was a good pain, I felt it was a worthwhile pain. I however learned one very important lesson; don’t train on a cleanse day. You have no energy due to the fact that you’re not eating food.

Weight loss for the week 1 kilo
Well you have so far heard about the 19th (training on a cleanse day see above) so now I was well and truly into it, training 6 times a week from them. My next training was the Thursday night (I should point out that I am writing these entries to cover a week from Wednesday to Wednesday) Systema. What can I say about systema but it was bloody fun, I have been involved in martial arts one way or another for the majority of my life, either training in them or working with the organizations helping with tournaments and such. We started off with a circuit warm up that included push ups, squat jumps, throwing medicine balls  and tyre pushing (and if you think tyre pushing isn’t exercise I will happily give you a lesson in just how hard you have to work while doing it :D). We then moved onto the lesson proper, I have trained in karate and I can tell you systema is nothing like it. It’s very flowing and quick. Onto Friday and this is where the hell started, I was actually a bit scared of my first workout with Anna because I knew she was going to push me to my limits, a 10 minute warm up on the treadmill and some stretching out and we were into it. To say the rest of the session was a blur is an understatement I think I have blocked it from my memory however I do remember a lot of pain for the next 2 days so I know I worked hard and well.

The weekend saw a break, I broke my diet and had a biscuit, now some of you may say “hey its just 1 biscuit it won’t hurt” I can tell you it does, The minute I finished eating it I thought of everything Anna and Gary and the rest of the trainers at the gym wanted for me and I felt disgusted at myself. From that point I resolved to myself to never break again and the rest of the weekend was spent strictly on my diet. Come Monday everything seemed to have clicked at last, the isagenix shakes weren’t causing me to pause before drinking them now and when I got to the gym that day to train with Anna I was happy and more full of energy then I had been in months. Warm up on the tread mill (including a spurt of jogging for the last minute or so) and stretching and we were into it again, Leg press’s and lat pull downs to start and I was starting to feel a bit cocky, If Anna realized this or not I don’t know but we then went to working with dumbbells on my arms and shoulders and then the penny dropped, Anna wanted me to do push-ups and not cheating ones like I had been for years on my knees, proper leg straight push up’s. I was terrified I hadn’t done a push up like that since I was 14 and knew I was going to fall flat on my face. I then proceeded to surprise myself and pushed out 20 in 2 lots of 10 and sure it hurt and I just wanted to go curl up and never go back while I was doing them but when I finished I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn’t believe I had done them. Were they good looking push up’s, hell no but I had just done 20 of the exercise I hated more then running and Anna was telling me that I had done good. The feeling was fantastic.

Come Tuesday and I was still feeling that feeling, I had a boxing for fitness class that night and I came in thinking this is going to be easy I have done martial arts for so long. I can tell you it wasn’t but it was fun and it makes you feel great to see the trainers out there with the group sweating away doing the class too.

Weight loss for the week 2 kilos
Not quite the weight loss I wanted, I am after 3 kilos a week and it hurt a little that I hadn’t lost it but I was also excited it was the most I had lost in one hit in a long time. Thursday’s systema class was of great interest to me with it being more scenarios based which applied well to my line of work in the security industry.

I think I have identified one problem however in my training, By the end of the week and the time I come to write this I have been worked so hard that Friday ends up as a blur however I do have flashbacks of curls with a barbell and push ups , I am going to have to start writing down exactly what I do on Fridays so that you can all see what I do (and so I can remember what hell I am putting my body through for it to turn into this lean mean machine its meant to be).  Saturday and Sunday I did the bare minimum of walking I needed to do to try to meet the 3 kilo weight loss for the next weigh in because my body was rebelling and saying no more. Come Monday however I was back into it, circuit training in my session with Anna (after of course the good 10 minutes warm up on the treadmill, getting faster and faster each time I do it.) Involved was dumbbells kettle bell  pushups sit-ups and a reminded of my schools days a medicine ball (ohh how I hated sports days at primary school), Anna pushed me and pushed me and even when my knee couldn’t take anymore she pushed some more after modifying the exercises to avoid aggravating the knee anymore, 30 minutes later I was off home to ice my knee.

It seemed it worked because I was back for a boxing class the next night and this is where I got a real wake up call as well as a bit of a boost. In this class are a number of trainers and I happened to square off against one. To see a trainer sweating and tired by the end of the class like I was made me feel like we are all just people doing our best, something The TOUGH Spot and Anna really push the idea of. Up until that point working out by myself is what I preferred because the only person to disappoint then was myself, working with someone if I was unable to keep up I felt like I was denying them as well and that’s something I refuse to do. Yet this entire time here is a trainer pushing me to keep going as well as the trainer leading the class pushing and offering alternative exercises when previous or current injuries offer an obstruction.

Weight loss for the week 2 kilos
Well this week has been an interesting week; it saw the last of my Wednesday cleanse days, systema cut short early for my on Thursday night due to family commitments and my first Saturday training session at the gym.

Thursday night unfortunately I had family commitments that required me to leave systema early, it was shaping up to be a very fun lesson.

Friday, Hell day as I have come to call it in my head. This is when I do my weigh ins and to say I was disappointed with the result was an understatement, I was frustrated already due to other things and not reaching my target weight just added to it to the point of wanting to go do one of my other favourite stress relive activities. I was also due to have my measurements taken on Friday and I was dreading the result because I hadn’t seen a change. I know that seeing yourself all day everyday it’s always going to take longer for the individual to notice changes then someone else looking at you. In total I had lost 33.5 cm’s off various areas of my body, this lifted my spirits right up from where they were heading. From there the session started, squats holding logs (not sure how heavy but after the second set of 20 you stop caring because everything feels like it weighs a ton) to doing push ups off what I believe was a medicine ball with handles, that’s tough to do believe you me it wants to go side to side if you don’t keep the weight balanced right. Next I was off for jerry can carries, 40l’s of water total back and forth 3 times then back to the logs and push ups. To finish the session off it was tyre flips, what has to be my favourite exercise of all time. Starting off with the 80kilo tyre it was decided it was too light and I was moved up to the 140 kilo tyre. To finish the session it was push ups off the tyre.

Saturday was my first Muay Thai class which started off with skipping, something else I haven’t done since primary school and I proved woeful at it. From there we went into some basic’s learning some of the blocks and kicks that would serve as a basis for the martial art. My partner for the day left a nice bruise on my stomach which took a couple of days to disappear but I left the class feeling happy as well as sore. I was really starting to enjoy myself with the variety of exercise I was doing something a regular gym always let me down on. Sunday was the first day I started my new cleanse day (so I could attend the gym more as well as to help when I start studying next month).

Monday I was back on with Anna and we were on circuit training again, this time on weights and machines. Leg presses, push ups (getting better but I don’t think the loathing of them will ever leave me), leg curls, bench press and dumb bells were the order of the day and I was definitely feeling the burn by the end of it. Anna is a task master but at the end of it you know you have done well.

Tuesday I arrive early for the boxing glass and did 30 minutes on the treadmill, 20 minutes straight my longest ever time and in that time I did 3 lots of 1 minute sprints which is something I haven’t been able to do in years, I was ecstatic. Boxing and it was upper body work that night, I had been to see the myopracter earlier in the day to see about trying to treat my injuries and I was still feeling tender in my shoulders from the work he did. It didn’t stop me doing the absolute best I could in my state and even after the first round of boxing and time to switch pads and gloves and me admitting I couldn’t handle any more I was kept busy with shadow boxing so that my heart rate was up and my body kept warm but was not experience the impacts which were causing problems for my shoulders.

Weight Loss 0kg (read Friday entry)
Wednesday, my first Wednesday off the cleanse days and it was Muay Thai. Very Interesting session, expanding more on what I had learned on the Saturday and a focus on cardio, skipping still woeful though.

Thursday with systema we worked on grapples, while a lot of the pace was slow (working around a partner’s neck you don’t want to be too rough) was a hard workout that left me sweating at the end.

Friday I weighed myself and was very distressed to notice that I hadn’t dropped any weight. As well as the fact that other things going on in my life were stressing me out I was running late for my session with Anna and instead of doing an actual training session we discussed my nutrition and modified some aspects of it to try to shock my system for the next week. She also sat me down and had gave me the verbal version of a head slap (yes I am a NCIS fan) to knock some sense into me and help me see some of the things that were causing me stress and to cut it out of my life. After that I went home for a while to do some thinking before heading back in for my first power lifting class that night. I have been using weights on and off for a number of years and if I never went to another class of power lifting (not likely) the class at least fixed my technique on lifting weights. It was however a good way of working stresses out of the system.

Saturday was back again for Muay Thai and it was just me in the class, If you think that meant I was going to get it easy your dead wrong. I was pushed harder then I ever have been in a martial art’s class (something I have done for many years) but it was very gratifying not having to hold back the power I can put behind the strikes and kicks while working with the instructor Conrad like I feel I have too when against another student and it was even more gratifying to hear him praising how I was going, it was something that I have gotten to hear less and less of over the years.

Monday was a public holiday but that didn’t stop me from working out, I spent 2 hours running stairs in the nature park down from where I live.

Tuesday was back for boxing, I was hoping to make it to caveman before hand however I got held up and couldn’t make it. Boxing was a big cardio session this week, lots of quick movement and running. By the end of it I could barely move my legs.

Weight loss 2kg
Wednesday was Muay Thai and I got a real nice surprise I wouldn’t have to do skipping as a warm up, however my enjoyment of this idea faded very fast when I was shown the alternative, bouncing on a tyre. It’s easier then skipping on the impact side of things but otherwise it’s just as hard and gives you the same amount of exercise as does skipping. After a couple of near misses of falling my rear end while bouncing it was into the lesson proper. Another high cardio session that left me absolutely totalled by the end of it.

Thursday was once again systema and this time I had a friend of mine along for his first lesson Continuing on from the grapples of the previous weeks and how to escape them. Slowly we are being introduced to more techniques to do with striking and a lot of the focus is on using a person’s own body weight and momentum against themselves.

Friday’s session with Anna was almost put off due to the fact I had been sick during the majority of the week but the determination that has resulted from spending time with Anna and the rest of the trainers and members of The TOUGH Spot wouldn’t let me quit and instead I did 30 minutes on the tread mill of continuous movement which was 10 minutes longer then I had done previously in one go, that alone made me feel good but during that time I also had a couple of bouts of jogging/sprinting and even some incline work instead of just flat the entire time. After this I headed home determined that I was going to be back for power lifting that night. It should be pretty obvious that when you see that sort of sentence not all went to plan, Needless to say I didn’t make it back into power lifting because of my unwillingness to accept when I am beaten earlier in the day. I felt rotten that night and ended up going to sleep at a very early 8pm.

Saturday I was up and at it again back into gym for Muay Thai. Class outside and boy was it a big class, the biggest yet. A lot of basic technique which help hone the stuff already taught. I have been finding the Saturday session’s to be particularly good due to the pushing me to get out of the house and do something, Weekends used to be sit around and watch TV or play games for 7 hours a day and just bludge where as now I am feeling a need to do as much as possible on the weekends (its actually gotten to the point of not having enough time to do everything I want to do)

Monday was power lifting at midday with a planned training session with Anna afterwards. I was quite pleased when i found out I had surpassed my previous sessions limit on the dead lifts and seemed to have fixed up my form on the bench press. I have decided gloves might just be the way to go however as the bars hand holds started to cut into the skin on my hand.

Boxing on Tuesday and I felt like I was on fire that night, it was the first session that by the end of it my arms weren’t wanting to fall off there and then. I don’t know what came over me but I am not going to deny that i really enjoyed it. The feeling was close to the feeling I experienced when I had a car accident a few years back, everything just slowed down and the only thing in the world was myself and the pad’s that we use to hit.

Weight Loss 1.6 kilos
Wednesday I was in for Muay Thai and the session was brutal. I had injured my ankle enough the night before to cause me problems even walking, but I have gotten to the point of feeling that if I am not working out I am wasting my time so I pushed through. I have a stubborn streak a mile wide and I have in the past been known to push myself without letting injuries heal.

Thursday was systema and it was a fun night, lot faster paced then it had been over the previous weeks. Takedowns and escaping from grabs and basically incorporating everything we had been doing over the previous weeks into a practical format that seemed to make it all click together (its actually kind of fun getting thrown around a bit)

Friday I had my session with Anna at 1 and it was an upper body weights session. Lat pulls downs I am enjoying and bench press are nothing new for me. But included were inclined presses and curls with the dumb bells. Then came the part that scared me, Chin up’s. I have never been able to do a chin up in my life however instead of you standard pull up chin over the bar and back down it was modified into the cardio form that involved jumping up. This was one of the hardest sessions I had done with Anna yet and I ever got to the point of failure with the inclined press on my second time around. After I was finished I checked my ankle and it was decided I was not going to be able to do power lifting that night or Muay Thai the next day. Instead I went home and iced the ankle hoping it would be all good for Monday.

Monday came around and I have shown up for power lifting. Anna checked my ankle and decided dead lifts and squats were out for me but I could do bench press. So after a progressive warm up (starting with minimal weights on the bar and going to above you maximum) it was in for 15 minutes straight on the bench press. 40kilo’s and 60 reps later and I was exhausted. I was then straight into a session with Anna, Dumb bell and kettlebells exercises dominated the session and to finish off was push up’s  (on the knee’s to keep the pressure off my ankle) and crunch’s both normal and side. I noticed doing those that my crunches were getting easier to do.

Tuesday was a boxing session and for the most part I kept up until I was an idiot, I dropped down to a push up position without thinking and twisted my ankle again which effectively killed the session right there and then for me. After I finished that night I went into a funk, why was my body letting me down? I knew I had injuries over the years it comes from being my size and being interested in the activities I was but the ankle was a case of an old work injury.

I thought I would try something a little different this week with  my diary, While I am basically telling you what’s going on during my gym sessions not much has been said over the last few entries as to what I have been thinking and feeling. A lot of this has been down to the fact that I have been dealing with trying to get organized to start TAFE and the various problems that brings up so I haven’t had time to sit down and analyse my thoughts but I would like to from now until the end of my 3 months give you 2 sections of the diary to read a week, the first part to deal with the workouts and what I am doing in them and the second part which will be about a paragraph long on my thoughts and feelings for the week.

This week I have started to receive comments from people that I wouldn’t normally expect encouragement from, I know for myself it is not something I am used too, friends and family should always encourage you to improve yourself however for the longest time I believe I was looked on as a bit of a lost cause. While my mother was generally supportive my sister and father couldn’t care less to start with. However in the past week I have been getting signs of some changes in their attitude towards me. Even more of a boost has been comments from some of my friends who while supportive before had seen me fail time and again. In the past week alone I have gotten comments mentioning that I looked like I had lost weight and seemed happier. Most of the people making these comments have seen me over the last few months a couple of times but at least 2 hadn’t seen me in a longer time then that, one almost 6 months previously and another almost 4 years.  This perked me up a lot and pushed me out of a funk I had gotten into over dealing with other aspects of my life.

Well thanks to my idiocy on the Tuesday night previously mention this week was a bit of a bad one for me. While I did systema and a training session with Anna I was really restricted in what I could do. This led to my one of my lowest points yet however it wasn’t low as in depressed it was low as in frustrated and feeling like I was being lazy. This is a definite attitude change to previously when if i missed some time working out I was more relived then upset. It was a shaping up to be a bad week for me over all, I ended up getting sick Friday night and while I shouldn’t have even thought about going to Muay Thai on the Saturday i was determined to go even with a sore ankle a plan which was put to a stop with being sick. I however got a pick me up on the Saturday night. I have a once a week meet up with some friends and instead of the usual plan of spending time at their place they came to visit me at mine and we got talking on the subject of weight loss. Essentially the conversation was ended and the night over they ended up leaving however a friend called Dave pulled me aside before he left and said to me to keep going and push through with it because I would get there and to not let this injury get to me. This was a real pick me up after what was a week of my brain essentially telling me that you lazy and worthless. I knew I wasn’t and that it was just an injury however having Dave say that too me just really made it stick home. Sunday night was even better, I went to a friend’s housewarming and I was expecting to be my usual self sitting in the background observing people and staying out of everyone’s way. Instead I was in the middle of the conversations and was even getting checked out by a couple of the women there. This was something that I haven’t experienced since I was 17-18 and the feeling was fantastic. Monday came around and the feeling hadn’t left me, I took great pleasure in telling Anna about the weekend just gone that the time on the session i was doing with her went by in a flash, I hadn’t been that happy in ages and it carried right through Tuesday for boxing (which I was able to do again and keep up with the entire way though with only a minor twinge here and there) and is still there even as I write this. I have had more energy during the week and have been pushing myself harder and faster. Next week I start at TAFE and as i head into the final 3 weeks of my challenge I am looking forward to hit my target.

To say I was nervous this week is an understatement, it saw the start of my return to study and I was still trying to work out in my head how my gym sessions were to work in with TAFE. Between the 8th and 11th it was all pretty standard, work hard at the gym and keep my determination to lose the weight in balance with my over eagerness to get in and do as much as I could which could result in more injuries. Anna and others had explained to me over and over that pushing myself too far on my injured foot would just end up slowing me down in the long run, But being male as well as being stubborn it was taking a while to get through my head. The injury I was dealing with had led to Anna doing upper body workouts with me, lots of lat pull down and bench press along with dumb bell work. There is an exercise that I have a fear of and that’s (don’t remember the real name for the dip’s off the bench can you fill in the name please), due to my fear of heights. While the height from the bench to the floor is maybe only a foot I am unable to see what’s underneath me which causes me to freak out a little. Anna pushed me past that on the Friday and got a full 20 out of me and I know that due to that pushing I am not going to have another problem with them.

It finely got through my stubbornness as results of actions I took on the 12th, My first day of TAFE I decided to walk to the train station a good 6 and a half K’s away, afterwards and for the rest of the day the ankle was fine and i went on too enjoy my power lifting session and a personal training session with Anna. She put a question to me that I haven’t ever really thought about before and have had to think about since, asking me about an outfit I have always wanted to wear and I for the life of me couldn’t think of one. Tuesday comes around and what do you know a sore ankle, its finely starting to get through my head that not listening to advice can have consequences and in this case it was a sore ankle and not being able to push myself as hard as I wanted at boxing on Tuesday night.

Well it is that time again the start of another blog and what better day to start off with then Wednesday, This day saw me at the doctors finely getting my foot checked. The diagnosis was far from what I needed to hear. He couldn’t tell me what was wrong so I had to get x-rays (I was fairly sure that was going to be the case anyway) but I was also told to stop what training I was doing, at this point I bet your thinking “well he said in his last blog that he had finely learned to take advice and he actually did it” well the old stubborn streak hadn’t disappeared yet. I have been seeing results with The TOUGH Spot and I would have to be six foot deep before I stopped going. I got through the training sessions for the rest of the week with a minimum of pain but a lot of apprehension. I can’t deny that the doctor’s words rattled me but I was determined to see this through to the end. Upper body was once again the focus of the training sessions with Anna and all I can say is damn I was to curl up and die from exhaustion by the end of those sessions. Taking it easy is just not in her vocab, While the workouts I can do are limited with my injuries I have never sweated so much or been is as much pain as when I am having to pump out my 3rd set of 20 reps of side arm raises with a pair of dumb bells and quitting just is not an option. 
This was my 3rd last week of the 3 month challenge and I all I can say is it hasn’t got any easier.

This blog is going from the Wednesday to the Friday, I has been quite a hard blog for me to write as this will be the final entry I make. My previous blog said it was the 4rd last week apparently my count was off. I had my second last session of systema at The TOUGH Spot on the Thursday before it moved to another venue and then came the Friday session with Anna, More upper body work and i never thought I would hate the sight of weights so much, When I started 3 months ago I hated cardio and now I would give anything to do it over the weights but upper body it was. Power lifting the Friday night and it was tyre work which I do highly enjoy. Monday rocked around and the session with Anna was back on the bike. During the session we chatted about numerous things a lot of which pointed towards my state of mind at the time such as how I was handling TAFE and dealing with other such dramas in my life. While Anna push’s you as a trainer she really does care about how you are feeling which is something a lot different to a lot of trainers I have met. The rest of the week was pretty standard fare for boxing and such. Quite happy not to have any injury related pain crop up during the training for once. Friday comes around and it seems Anna was saving the hardest for the last. I came on the day expecting just a pretty normal training session and was informed that my count was off and it would be my final session one on one with Anna. Starting with a quick 5 minutes on the treadmill led into the hardest half hour of my recent life. Lat pull downs and inclined press’s were pretty standard fare but then came stair runs, 2 laps up and down and anyone who has been on the stairs at tough spot they are hard even just walking up them to get there let alone running them twice in a row. From there it was out for some dumb bell work and pull up’s. The whole time my body wanted to quit but Anna wouldn’t let me and I think that if it had I would have just pressed through anyway.  I did my final weigh in on Saturday and it read as 176.6 from a starting weight of over 200kg to say I was happy was an understatement.

As I said this is my last entry for the blog and I really feel I should mention some people here.
First to Gary for the advice and for being my isogenix supplier and always lending an ear if I needed to talk.

 Thanks go out too Alex, Conrad, Thahn and Andrew. As trainers you made the sessions fun and kept me wanting to come back even when I felt like absolute hell afterwards.

 To all the members of The TOUGH Spot you have all pushed me and made me feel welcome which is something I have never experienced at a gym before but 4 in particular I would like to mention are Shane, Raj, PJ and Shawn (think that’s the right spelling guys), you pushed me in the sessions to keep going and I really appreciate it.

Big thanks go to my friends and family, too many to mention here but 3 come to mind. Matt and Nick for coming to systema, Said you would enjoy yourself and an big thanks to Grace I wouldn’t have even gone to the open day if it wasn’t for you.

And finely Anna and Taco you have both been such a influence on my life in the 3 months of the challenge, You have offered me a chance at life again and always been there to talk if I needed it. You have pushed me when I needed to be pushed and been there to listen when I needed to talk to someone. I know there is no way I can ever repay you for what you have done for me. But like I said on the Friday your not getting rid of me anytime soon either.

Executive Results is changing one more persons life after this 3 month month weight loss challenge! This is the ultimate weight loss package, it is worth over $50,000 and includes a lifetime gym membership.

This is a serious investment from our side, one not to be sneezed at. We want to be 100% sure that this one will not only change someone's life, it will safe someone's life.! We have made a good choice with our first contestant (Rohan) and will hopefully find another candidate who deserves this second chance just as much.

The winner will be annouced in December around Chistmas, making this the perfect christmas gift! I won't kid you on this one, we will make it hard to pass the initial assessments which we will start the moment you send us an email telling us why you think you should win. Tell us your story. We will make you try and quit before it even started, if you pass the tests and have what it takes, then we will invest our time and money in you... Don't want to wait? Just join our big people classes that we have each week, or join in on the every day classes if you feel comfortable enough, we won't judge you.

Know anyone that could really use this? Let them know about this page, help out!

12 Week Weight Loss Challenge Testimonial

Chris gave himself 12 weeks to get back into shape and lose weight. Here is his story so far.

One on One Session at the Gym

Other Lose Weight Links

Lose Weight Brisbane | Weight Loss | Weight Loss Journey | Testimonials | Why Us? | Our Services