Online training, a blogger experience

Hello dears!

For those who haven´t met Mliae yet, she´s an awesome blogger from North Europe, who writes about her experiment, so called “life”. Fashion, recipes, travel, book & product reviews with her personal style. Take my advice and follow her, thank me later ;)

When we met, she was on a weight loss journey and she was having some issues to reach her goals.

Maybe you remember we reached her goals before summer. I´m delighted to have her here today, talking about her experience and how she keeps the results.

I hope you enjoy the reading as much as I did :)

I really must say that David has been a lifesaver for me! I was so frustrated with my weight and physique that I just didn’t know what to do.

Starting out at 76 kilos (168 lbs), my goal was to get under 60 kilos (132 lbs). Now some of you might be saying to yourselves that 150-160 isn’t actually that much. And, you are right. For most women, carrying that weight isn’t so bad – especially if it’s spread proportionality throughout the body. My problem is this: I’m short. With this weight on a petit frame, I suddenly looked like a berry. You know, men’s underwear commercial type. (What’s the name of that company? Oh yeah – fruit of the loom)

I’ve always been petite and most of my life I have had a metabolism that was on fire. Until recently, that is. The past two years have been a roller coaster ride from the ‘What the hell is happening to me’ theme park.

So I tried stuff. I mean I tried everything: Diets, fasting, super exercising, not drinking too much water so as not to get the water weight, etc. You name it – I tried it! Part of my issue was that I have always been a healthy person. I’m a vegetarian who occasionally happily indulges herself in seafood. I don’t drink fizzy drinks and I don’t over indulge in sweets. Just like everyone else on the planet, I do have my junk food days. I never ate large amounts of pastas or breads either. So what was happening? Is age this evil??!

I worked like a maniac to shed the weight, and I did. Until that it is, the last 7 kgs (or 15 lbs). Then for some reason, I just got stuck. Like really stuck. My weight loss had plateaued completely and nothing I did made any positive difference. Although it was extremely easy to pack on more weight, much to my dismay…

I had been following Chape Personal Trainer for awhile at this point. Trying to pick up tidbits here and there and suggestions that might help. After listening to my whining for a bit too long, David decided I wasn’t a lost cause and agreed to help me.

At first I was really worried that ‘OK, personal training agreement – I’ve got one month to get this nailed down’. Panic followed. I discovered shortly after that this wonderful man had signed on to get me to my goal, not just a month by month contract. David, God Bless you for that!

David spent many hours chatting with me about my habits. And my lifestyle. I kept a food and drink log (very specific) and my measurement and was even told to write down how new exercises made me feel. These were reviewed by him regularly and then adjustments were made accordingly. Somehow he magically knew that if sent too much info my way, my diet brain would kick into overload and fry. Then absolutely nothing would happen. Instead, David sent me weekly and monthly updates to my exercise regime, as well as the occasional lecture in a very loud voice about what I should be doing differently. This worked really well for me because once I got into the habit of my regime, tweaking one or two things wasn’t really so difficult. Well, maybe. There were the weeks David suggested I drop cheese, tofu, and tempeh all together, which were my dietary staples and I found myself pacing around the refrigerator like an angry bird. These were some of my diet staples that week: Fresh veg, fresh fruit, vegetable sushi.

Some of the strange but surprisingly effective suggestions David made: • Drink more water. This almost seemed impossible to me because I was so accustomed to not drinking very much of anything at all. Today, I’m guzzling water like a horse. • Eat more?! When David suggested this, I thought he had completely lost his mind! I even told my boyfriend that ‘watch this, we’ll be out buying bigger pants next month’. I was shocked when it ACTUALLY WORKED! Apparently, I was eating like a little bird and he knew that if I just upped my food intake a little bit, that my metabolism would be thanking me. • Walk, don’t run. What?! Seriously? I can laze my way through a dog walk and BURN MORE CALORIES?! Too good to be true. Nope, worked great for all involved. (Well, maybe not the dogs…they love to run)

Some of my favourite exercises: • Forearm plank. I love it. It’s not crazy difficult, but you can feel it working. I still do varying planks regularly. • Glute bridge. I love to mix these in with the plank sets. Feels like a bit of a break and you know you’re doing something great. • Bird Dog. This is just…fun ;) • Reverse fly. Not fun, not comfortable, but it’s a great shoulder and ‘bat wing’ fixer upper. Feel the Buuuurrrrrn, Baby!

Some of the really effective exercises that I hated: • Alternating shoulder tap plank. A great exercise, I still do it. But something about the amount of actual coordination needed to pull this off is a bit out of my league. If you’re a betting person, this exercise is much more fun when you have a running pool of how many times a person will face plant on the floor prior to set completion. • Reverse crunch. David, seriously….ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! The goal was sets of 20. The reality was I could maybe manage about 3 before falling over to the side like a little bug all rolled up. Persistence pays though. If you want fast results, give this exercise a go.

I’ve always been shy about my body. When I found myself getting closer to my goal weight, I had many long chats with David regarding whether or not I was brave enough to post a body pic. It was my idea, after all, I wanted the people reading my blog to see that I was a real person achieving real results, not some random teenage blogger filling time with tall tales of dietary frustration. You see, my subscribers had never seen a photo of ME. Not on any platform. So this was a MASSIVE step for me. Fortunately, David had been working with me regularly on my self-esteem and body image. For that, I am eternally grateful! And this is what we saw on my blog the following week: Not perfection, not yet anyway… but confidence and a great deal of anxiety and relief.

Haha, you can even tell by my hands how nervous and uncomfortable I was. But I wanted to do it. I needed to step out of my comfort zone and I needed to celebrate my new body. You know what happened? Everyone was thrilled for me! All those trolls and horrible comments I was expecting never came! Freedom, finally! Operation Bikini almost complete!

I kept going and we kept celebrating. I had a few slip-ups. Just refer to the Nacho incident. That was a bad one… David forgave me and made sure I got back on track and STAYED THERE. Once again, in a quite loud voice. He told me that it was a new goal: to be able to have nacho night occasionally without having a meltdown over it. Guess what, David! I had nacho night last week and it was fabulous! ;)

The final push to my goal took longer than expected. I found myself apologizing to David for 2 weeks for being so close and not quite getting there for one reason or another.

And then, something magical happened. I woke up one morning on a weigh day and realized….I had reached my goal! I was so excited, I contacted David immediately with screeches of joy. Despite the fact that I had surely intruded on his morning, he was delighted for me and made me feel like a victorious princess the whole day long :)

After reaching my goal, I was satisfied with my weight. However, I felt so much healthier utilizing the skills that David had taught me, so I decided that I would take it easy, but still use my newly developed skills. As they say, it’s a life change, not a diet. I fit perfectly into my pants, and pretty great in my swimsuit so I didn’t feel the need to weigh myself on the regular. Imagine my utter delight one day when I stepped on the scale and saw this:

58.3 kilos or 128.5 lbs! YEAH, BABY, YEAH!!!

I feel great now! Operation Bikini has been completed and surpassed!

If I had to offer any advice to my fellow get-in-shapers, it would be this: • Keep at it! If you get frustrated and surrender, it isn’t going to happen. It takes TIME. Hang in there, you’ve got this! • Find someone that won’t only make suggestions for you, but that will be there for you to listen to you bitch, moan and complain , to keep you on track, and to celebrate every victory! This did more to keep me motivated than anything else!

I feel absolutely awesome now! Thanks David, you are an angel! I could not, in any case could have done this without your direction and support!

Hugs! -Mliae