Well Aged Fitness

     Last year, we did a Transformation Challenge for my co-workers and I. It started on the beginning of October to the middle of December. It was very simple, you get to choose what you want to do, lose fat or gain muscle, and the method was up to you. Here's my results from last year. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give myself a 6.5. I hoped to have a bigger change after 10 weeks but I was okay with my results, more definition around the shoulders and chest, and a bit off the waistline.  Fast forward to this year's competition. I decided to try and bulk, put on some muscle. Something I never tried to do. Up the calories, and up the weight. Sounds simple, let's see.  UPDATE: it's been about a month into this years competition and I got to say, bulking is harder than it sounds. After about a year and a half of trying to keep the calories down (roughly around 1700-2000), I'm not programmed to eat as much as I need to (preferably around 2500-3000 ca...

I've never been one to count calories. I've always ate what I wanted, whenever I wanted, still do for the most part. Last year I started to become more aware of the calories that I was putting into my body. It was actually the first time I committed myself into losing body fat, mainly around my belly #dadbod. And really the concept was simple, less calories equals lass fat, more calories equals my fat. You need to know how many calories you need to maintain your body first. Many apps like MyFitnessPal, or a quick google search will lead to a calorie calculator, such as this one  https://www.freedieting.com/calorie-calculator .  In recent years, there's been a focus on making people aware of the number of calories they are consuming, hence, menus at restaurants having the number of calories beside each item. They've been doing it in the US for a long time now, but it's been introduced to Canada within the last few years I believe. If you've ever used...

      Everyone has that one, or more, picture that make you say, "is that what I really look like?" Here are my mine.  These were taken back in 2011. At the time I was working at the hotel, didn't exercise except for playing men's league basketball once a week and didn't care about my diet. It was two years since we had my daughter Kya, and at that pint, the gym was the last thing on my mind.  Seeing these pictures is when I started to put my gym membership to use. Although I still didn't go as often as I would like, once or twice a week, I did start feeling comfortable with myself.  I would go before work around 7:30am to get a workout in. Despite my body not going through a big transformation at the time, it was still a step forward and it made a positive change in my lifestyle. If you were like me, and were unhappy with how you look or feel at any point in your life, remember it takes that one step to get you moving forward. Start cre...

Before you start exercising, you probably have a goal in mind. The most common has to do with weight. "I want to lose 20 pounds." Seems a like a reasonable goal right? So you start working out, get into a good routine of going to the gym, or outdoor exercise, and start a healthy diet/lifestyle. Depending on your fitness level, there's a chance you can you can drop 10 lbs within weeks, then after a couple month you find that you weight stays the same. Even after you've doing everything the same, you start to question what's wrong, and thinking they didn't get the results they wanted. People tend to judge the results by the numbers, I normally ask, how do you feel and how do look? After three months, you may have not lost as much weight as you wanted to by what if your cardio is better? What if you slimmed down a few inches off the waistline? Not the 20lbs  results that you wanted but does that work for you? I'm been there before, wanting to put on ...

Late last year, my co-workers and I did a 10 week Transformation Challenge. We were able to transform our body the way we wanted to, either by losing weight or putting on muscle. No restrictions on the competition. Everyone did their own thing in terms of nutrition and exercise. At the end, before and after pictures were revealed to the rest of the break room and they voted for who they thought had the best transformation. This was our eventual winner, Pete. He received 90% of the votes with his transformation. And by the pictures below you could see why. I think it's great how he knew what changes he needed to make for his nutrition and exercise himself and then executed them. Here's a Q&A about the his transformatio n.    Tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I’m Pete. I’m a 34 year old single father of 9 year old daughter.  When I’m not busy with work or hanging with my gf and my daughter. I like to play video games build with LEGO, p ractice ba...

"How do you make more time?"   I had a co-worker that would always ask me that question. He knows my story, long work hours, three young kids, daily household chores/duties, etc,. and still found time to fit in alone time such as exercising. He would always talk about not having time to exercise saying he needs to make more time.   When people first start off, they see "exercising as a chore."  Nobody wants to do chores, they'll put it off until it's necessary. Remember that time you needed a spoon, you look in the  drawer and there's none there, they're all dirty, so instead of washing one, you use a fork? Come on, we've all done it. haha. In this case, it is easy to put everything on your list before you start a workout. It's like your body tells your mind that it doesn't want the exertion and work you'd be putting on it.   Exercise doesn't need to be hard at the start. I always recommend starting slow, make it f...

     As someone who never or rarely works out, how many times have you opened up a fitness magazine and thought "wow, these workouts are too hard" or "these are too advanced."? Did this discourage you from working out? Wow, I just realized this sounded like an infommercial, haha. My bad. I always tell people to start off slow or they will be sore for days afterwards where they won't be able to workout or even worse, could end up hurting themselves. One co-worker that came back from maternity leave told me she wanted to start to go to the gym but she was scared to. I recommended doing home workouts such as push ups, sit ups, and squats. She tried it. A few weeks later she showed up at the gym and said she felt better about coming since she started doing those three exercises. She would do those exercises before showering to come to work. 10-15 mins depending on how she felt that day. She made it fit into her day and she was happy she did. For those who haven...