Twelve Weeks

As anyone who has worked in a gym for more than six months will probably know, people tend to be somewhat overly optimistic about how much weight they can lose and how long it will take them to do it, especially when holiday time looms.
The good ones will, perhaps, begin hitting the gym a month before. What is more, the norm is for people to hit the gym manically two weeks before they step on the plane. There are even the highly delusional few who think a week is enough if they come every day. The fact that it took years to acquire their present girth is immaterial.
The most basic way to lose weight, the easiest explanation that any layman can comprehend, is calories in, calories out method. That is to eat fewer calories than you expend. Without a laborious, scientific breakdown of the exact way in which the body burns and utilises calories or energy, it is enough to know that the fewer calories consumed to those burnt will work to lose weight, especially if used over an extended period of time.
I myself am going on holiday and having recently seen a video of myself, realise I am nowhere near beach body ready. Fortunately for me, the holiday is in November. That gives me twelve weeks to get in shape. As I have never really stopped training, my starting point is not too bad. Eight to twelve weeks should be the minimum a person should allow for pre-holiday training.
I am treating this holiday as if it were a fight – we will be going to a Thai training camp – so will be approaching it as such. Hopefully, barring injury, I should be able to drop the excess weight I’ve been carrying for the past few years. There is also the added incentive of not wanting to look awful in front of my students and peers, especially having taught kickboxing for over twenty years. Ego can be a wonderful motivator.
Truthfully, I am looking forward to the training, taking it up a level. It is the diet I’m not looking forward to. My food discipline is non-existent, I have never seen a chocolate cake I didn’t want to eat. All the foods that are ‘good’ for you – vegetables, fruit, beans – are not very high on my list of favourites, nor am I likely to embrace a reduction or cessation of eating red meat, I am a carcass carrying carnivore.
I am trying to be more scientific about my approach to weight loss, that, of course, means more gadgets – another unnecessary purchase, a blog for another time – so I can track all the metrics and measurements. What prompted this sudden focus and desire to get in shape was seeing myself on film, sparring in my kickboxing class. Not a pretty sight. One’s image of oneself is very different to the actuality. As I am not a person to take or get into photographs, my only real gauge of my girth is the tightening of my clothing.
Hopefully twelve weeks from now I’ll be trying to get in every picture and video around, filling up the interwebs with my ‘amazing’ transformation. We shall see.