Monthly Archives: April 2012

Motivation

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It’s interesting in life what can motivate people, wealth, power, greed?!?

In my case it was a feeling of feeling lonely and isolated, I also wanted more out of life.

I’ve started the road back to fitness and along the way it seems like I’ve motivated people.

I work in a team of at 5, it was common place us to all live off junk food then after people noticed me dropping the kilos all of a sudden the reduction of junk food occurred. Now   I can’t take all the credit a couple have do or are traveling overseas but all in all they have turned their diets around.

Mind you the bastards still get KFC from time to time, they no better to ask me if I want it. I’ve actually had KFC a couple of times in the past few months, but it’s been a small serving I’ve only eaten half of a regular chips and the chicken has been in a twister not a fat laden burger or piece of chicken. I actually prefer to cook my own on my new cookware.

The other motivation which is now turning to be co-motivation is an ex college and friend Leigh, he’s started his own journey and even posted about me http://www.77in7.com/2012/04/shout-out.html?spref=tw Leigh’s plan is to loose 77lbs in 7 months about 35kg.

Best wishes to Leigh

I’ve also had a couple of great motivators in my journey (there are many) but will share two important ones.

PT, my PT is a great guy, I’m motivated, a little bit too keen at time, he’s coped with my injury really well and we’ve been doing modified workouts for the past month or so. We’re down to 30 minutes a week and apart from moving stations I’m seated the entire time.

I’m not cleared for any weight baring exercise, so even with that limitation I still give my upper body a damn good work out and fatigue those muscles!

Emma “bouncing Emma” or “Emma on caffeinated protein shakes” is one of those annoying fitness people but all in the right ways.

A group exercise instructor at my gym she’s instructed an aqua x-train class as well as a boxing x-train class. There’s something about this woman that makes me give 150%, well beyond what I think I’m able to give, yet she smiles and coarseness you all the way, it hurts you sweat but some how your drawn in for more.

Emma has moved on from the gym but we are still keeping in touch. This is great as she’s been a real inspiration despite me splashing her during one of the classes and striking her in the chest with a punch when she got distracted while pad holding.

Tough but fair is our Emma

The begining

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You have to start somewhere so lets wind the clock back to the start of 2011

I’m lucky to enough to work somewhere where there is a commercial kitchen on site that prepares meals for a few hundred folk a day.

I approached the catering manager and asked if it were possible for the kitchen to provide lunch for me (obviously at a cost to me) we agreed and lunch started.

In the past for me any exercise “kick” has had to follow diet changes. If you live on junk food you aren’t getting the nutrients your body needs to function.

As a result your always tired, have no energy or motivation.

I used to eat way from home for 99% of ALL meals.

So lunch started being provided and instead of eating “the burger special” from the local lunch shop I now had fresh salads and meets with a piece of fruit. Typically a banana or apple.

I don’t remember the exact order in which this occurred but 2011 gave me a couple of decent health scares. Firstly I woke up one morning with severe chest pain, felt like I was sleeping under an elephants foot. I knew it wasn’t heart burn because I’ve had that before. This was chronic pain. I logged onto the heart foundation website to check to see if I was having  a heart attack.

I honestly wasn’t sure, being a bloke I figured it would pass, so despite feeling really poor I got dressed and headed for work. The pain was so bad I could hardly cope having the seat belt on my chest. I got to work and the pain killers kicked in and it cleared.

I decided that if that was a warning I head i loud and cleared. Visited my regular GP and got a referral to a cardiologist.

Quickly got a stress test done and despite being very unfit (I only half completed the test) I past.

Later in 2011 I had routine blood work done and my blog glucose was showing as impaired.  My GP had me do a glucose tolerance test and yep, I had a glucose level that diabetics strive for. So Doc’ tells me if I don’t soon do something I’m headed for type 2 diabetes if I don’t make changes inside of 12 months.

This was on top of my blood pressure which I’m told at the time I very high.

Time to do something.

I had consulted a dietician some years ago and her and her husband run a dietary and personal training business.

I had emailed her some months prior asking if I could consult with her again and she said it would be best for me to meet with one of her dieticians on staff.

I never followed up.

I made contact with this dietician and i started from there.

It was great, this guy seemed to want to listen to pilko’s story, his view was that he wanted to learn how we got here. Simply really, stop riding your push bike when you get your drivers license, fall into the wrong crowd who live off take away and have a home environment that hates to cook.

So we started to learn about what to not eat and what things to eat. Each fortnight I’d start off with a new list of things to try and we talked about “trolley control” that is, don’t keep temptations in the house, if you don’t put them in the trolley they don’t get into the pantry.

I was also taught to read food labels, important to work out what goes in your mouth.

I went grocery shopping and it took ages, I stopped bought things I’d never bought before or in a long time.I must of spent a good 15minutes at the dairy case looking for “healthier cheese” and a good 10 minutes in the breakfast cereal aisle making sure I bought “the right” cereal.

So I had my diet getting under control.

What the hell do to about exercise.

Two options personal training and group classes.

So I emailed this private PT gym and spoke with the managing director, we met had a chat worked out what I wanted. He paired me up with Sean. We met and started weekly workouts for an hour.

I also started group classes

I can’t remember how it developed but my exercise program was thus:-

Sunday 45 minutes Group Aqua Class + 90 minutes Pilates (group basic class)

Monday 45 minutes Group Aqua Class (later dropped for the 6:15am 55 minute boxing x-train class with Emma who I’ll talk about later)

Tuesday 1 hour Personal Training 1 one 1

Wednesday 45 minutes Group Aqua Class

Saturday morning 45 minutes Group Aqua Class

That was a lot, but it was working well, I started to drop kilos, exercise was great, loving the adrenaline made some new friends and made this a lifestyle change. It all fitted well into place.

Boxing

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20120406-190117.jpg
So at my prime I was up at 5am headed to gym for a 6:15am boxing class this is a before photo. Yes the bandanna makes me look like a tool but with boxing comes sweat, with glasses that’s a problem. With bandanna no more sweat issues, just remember to wash it!

I love to work out frustrations and I like a mental and physical challenge.

I have no sense of co-ordination just ask my work mates about how pilko is legendary for not catching things. I’m a big guy so I tire quickly.

Put that all together and boxing is a great way to burn off fat, increase fitness while working out frustrations. I won’t tell you just yet what I focus on when hitting the pads!

Exercise

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So when I first started exercise it was one hour a week with my personal trainer.

I’ve engaged PT’s twice before, once at my membership gym and once at a private PT studio.

The one session at the gym as a gift voucher was fun but I wasn’t interested at the time.

In the private studio I had a young whippersnapper female PT wouldn’t know what fat was. This didn’t go well.

My new PT is a guy and was matched to me by the Managing Director of the Private PT studio. Funnily the same one as one I mentioned before.

With the right match comes the right results. My PT and I work well together as we should.

It took me years to find the motivation I now have. Even though now I’m carrying an ankle fracture and leas ions on a tendon and a couple of spurs I’m still keen as all to keep moving.

Over the past couple of months I’ve gone through a lot of pain and frustration, but for me

I created my own mantra “you can slow me down, but you can’t stop me”

Easy to say, hard to do.

My ankle injury was caused by me ignoring my body. I’m now paying the price in more ways they one.

Listen to your body, if you don’t understand what’s it telling you seek advise.

Be careful who you ask advise of, bush lawyers, housewife’s tales and Mum’s old remmides might side like a good idea, but trusting your gut instincts often works well.

pilko.co goes live

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Howdy,

So with my friend Leigh starting his blog 77 lbs in 7 months I thought it time to start my own blog.

I’ve added content onto Facebook before but never blogged regularly.

Need something simple and easy to manage and collecting yet another domain name seemed the way to go.

At work people call me pilko and to start with it annoyed me, now I’m embracing it.

I’m pilko I’ve already started changes in my life to get back to a healthy weight, this is a starting point I’ll post some more over the easter weekend to bring you a history lesson of how I got here.