My 30kg Routine To Lose Weight - What I Ate In A Day, Workout Routine & Staying Motivated

Something feels a bit off. I know what it is. One sec. So much better. I feel so much more myself with a scalding cup of coffee in my hand. Anyway, on to today's video. So today I'm going to be talking all about how I lost 30 kilos at home. And I have made a video like this in the past, however, because it was the first video I ever made, there's been a lot of questions that came up that I didn't address in that video and I thought today would be a good opportunity to take you through essentially what my weight loss routine looked like, including what I would have eaten and also what exercise I would have done. So that's the plan for today. I'm going to be sharing some of my favourite recipes as well and if you know me, you'll know I'm all about comfort and tasty food. So keep an eye out for those and also we're going to try out one of my old exercise routines which I'm a little bit nervous about because I remember them being distinctly very, very difficult. What I really do want you to get from this video is just for you to feel a little bit more of a sense of comfort and confidence with what you're doing if your goal is to lose weight or to get fitter as well. I know that the fitness industry can be overwhelming and there is an overabundance of information, especially nowadays, and so I just want you to know that it can be simple. You can still do things and eat things that you enjoy and it's not as overwhelming as sometimes it seems. So I'm going to give you a brief background on my health and fitness and I think that's quite relevant to how I got to the point of losing weight and it also definitely had an effect throughout my journey as well, but I wanted to share with you that actually this video is in partnership with Gymshark. If you guys follow me on Instagram, you'll know that I've been branching out and trying some different things recently and several months ago, a lot of you recommended Gymshark clothes. So I started trying a few pieces and I fell in love. It's so, so good. The quality is good. You guys know that I'm very particular about what I wear because I have psoriasis and I also just like to be really comfortable with the style of training I do and I have been super, super impressed. So when they reached out to me, I thought, well, what better opportunity than to test some of these clothes than in this video? Because as you guys know, these workouts I used to do are absolutely no joke. Like I'm genuinely scared for my lung capacity because I do not train that way anymore. So these clothes are going to get a good test and I will let you know how they hold up, but I'm also going to try a few different pieces throughout the day as well. So you'll see them throughout the video, including what I'm wearing now, which just genuinely makes me feel like some sort of superhero, which is basically the reason why I'm wearing it. If you want to check anything out, they have an amazing Black Friday sale at the moment. So they have up to 70% off selected items on their website. I'll pop the website down below if you want to go and check it out, but it also links to a point that I think is really important that I want to just mention before we get into the video and that is living in the present and feeling good right now. Because when I work with clients and in my own experience, I was always kind of focused more on what was happening in the future to begin with. I was basically waiting for the future to happen to be able to live my life and that's something that I find a lot of people tend to do, but it holds them back a lot. If you want to treat yourself to something like an experience or an adventure, don't wait until you've lost weight. Do it now because you want to continue living your life throughout this process to then make it into a lifestyle and consistency and seeing it as a lifestyle is the most important factor. So go do things that you love, go to those social occasions, buy clothes that make you feel amazing, go and get your nails done, treat yourself because you genuinely deserve it. So with that being said, let's talk about how I got to the point of wanting to lose weight. Over my entire life, I was always slightly chubbier growing up, but when I got to my teenage years and I hit high school, I really started to gain more weight. I wasn't super, super aware of it, but I was very, very shy and introverted when I was in high school and if there was one subject that I hated the most or was so scared of, it was PE. I was petrified of PE. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy doing sports, it's just that I wasn't good at it and I was also really insecure about my body. So for me, PE was the subject that just scared me the most throughout the day. When I left high school and I hit 18, I moved to Australia and I continued to gain weight there. So I was living away from home, I was cooking for myself, I was just eating and honestly, in some ways I was blissfully unaware of how much weight I was gaining, but also I was insecure about the way I looked. So it's this weird juxtaposition of being aware of it, but also being in denial. Sometimes I would ask people what my body was like in comparison to other images I'd see or other people and I was genuinely surprised when they said that I was bigger. So it was this really bizarre mindset to be in, but that being said, I was really, really insecure about the way I looked and it really upset me a lot of the time. For a long time I thought, if I lose weight, I know I'll be happier. So over the years I definitely tried some of those sort of fad diets, you know, the shakes and all that sort of stuff, because I just didn't know what to do and that's kind of what all the magazines were telling us at the time. Yeah, these were the days when Instagram wasn't really that popular. Now obviously I had no success with those because you can do them for the best part of a week before you end up just going back to the way it was before. And so I just continually, gradually gained weight along the way. Now me back then knew nothing. I didn't know what a calorie was, I didn't know how to diet. I didn't know about fat loss, fat gain, maintenance, nothing. I genuinely didn't have a clue about anything. But one day I was sitting watching TV and I was watching a TV show where they lose a lot of weight and they came back and I just had a light bulb moment. It was just like the light switch had flicked and that was it. I was going to change from that moment onwards. So I got out my laptop, I opened Google and I distinctly remember where I was sitting when I did this and I Googled how to lose weight and I kept seeing this move more, eat less. And so that's what I set about doing. It was a learning process along the way of trying things that fit into those principles of eating less and moving more and then finding out what worked for me in my lifestyle. Eventually I found a really good routine that worked for me and it was so sustainable within my lifestyle that I actually really didn't have to change a huge amount of things and obviously with my limited knowledge at the time, it just worked. And that's a question that I often get is how did you stay motivated or how did you stay consistent with what you were doing and know that it was working when you weren't seeing progress? And the key thing for me was the fact that it was a sustainable lifestyle and I didn't change that much and you'll see that hopefully through this video where I just adapted what I was already doing, kept it the same but just tightened the screws a little bit. And that all started with my morning routine and I'll let you in on a secret, it really did not change that much. So I'd still wake up around 6am, I would have my morning coffee in bed which was just an instant coffee and then I would go and do my measurements. I nearly always weighed myself at the time, I don't do that anymore but we'll go into that in another video and I would write my stats up on a piece of paper that was stuck to the bathroom door and then I would start getting ready for the day and then it was time for probably still my favourite part of the day, breakfast. So let's head to the kitchen. Alright so for me breakfast was all about being quick, easy and really tasty as well and something that I absolutely love is banana on toast but I would usually have like three maybe four slices so I simply switched it to bagel thins. I wasn't particularly hungry in the morning personally so I was happy with a slightly smaller breakfast that I could eat, enjoy and go and then really focus on having a more tasty and hearty lunch and dinner. I'm just going to add a little bit of cinnamon and a little bit of salt as well. So that was pretty much breakfast, it didn't really change that much other than like I said the portion size slightly but one huge thing that did change was my coffee consumption. When I would leave to go to work after I'd had my breakfast I would buy a takeaway coffee on the way and I would get a large latte with full cream milk and I'd have three sugars in that. That was obviously a very easy place for me to start to reduce my caloric intake and so I slowly and very slowly started to decrease what I was having in terms of calories. So I still had a latte but I switched to a medium then I started to reduce my sugars to two then to one and eventually I moved to most of the time having an Americano with a little bit of milk and sometimes a sweetener if I needed it. That ended up saving me around 200 calories a day minimum and sometimes I'd have more than one coffee. So it was things like that that were super pivotal in being able to make it a sustainable thing for me to do because I slowly and gradually just changed up what I was having not to something completely different or restricting it completely but just to something that had less calories and still hit the spot. So we're going to eat this and then we're going to get off to what would have been work at the time. Now one more thing that I did want to mention that I implemented into my day was non-exercise activity so generally just moving a little bit more. For me that was just about being a bit more proactive with my movement throughout the day. I already had a job where I was on my feet a lot but I chose to instead of going and sitting in the lunchroom at break times I would go for a little walk so I'll talk about that a little bit later but in terms of getting to work I also chose to either stand on the tram or just get off a couple of stops earlier and go for a little stroll through the city before I got to work. So those were ways that I just started to incorporate activity into the day and I still implement this so much in my life. I try to be as active as possible. It's as simple as things like if I'm taking laundry from my living room to my bedroom and it's going to be a massive load I will end up just going you know what I'll take two trips rather than trying to ram so much into my hands that I'm going to drop it. All those little extras they really really do add up even if it is as simple as just standing for 10 minutes of an hour. All right with that being said let's eat this and let's get going with our day. Okay let's talk about lunch. Oh my gosh it's killing me so much having this sitting in front of me and I can't eat it. I will be in a second but for me lunch was an on-the-go type thing. I'd really got into the habit of just picking up food in a food court and I would always opt for something like a burger and chips or a baguette and some crisps or something like that and while I could have just reduced those portions and sometimes I did I didn't really find those things were quite satisfying enough so by mid-afternoon I was kind of peckish and I will chat to you about snacks in a second. So I set about trying to find something that was hearty, fulfilling, cheap, easy to get hold of and I settled on soup. So I started getting that and I really really enjoyed it and I found that it satisfied all my cravings and I was super super full for the rest of the afternoon as well and then I started making my own and this one was one of my favorites. This is Moroccan chicken soup and it's got chickpeas in there, loads of veg, it's got potatoes and then I started adding dumplings to it as well. It is delicious and so so filling and what I love about soup is that you can just make a big batch of it and you can freeze it, refrigerate it and you can just take whatever you want so it's cheap, it's easy and it's tasty and there is so many varieties as well. So I'm going to show you the recipe for this while I eat this and I will catch you guys in a minute and we'll talk about snacks. Okay so for my soup I've browned off some chicken thighs and I've just put them aside and then I've added one mug of water and then my vegetables. Today I've got leek, carrots, sweet potato, white onion and some garlic and so I'm just going to stir that in and let that heat up a little bit and now that veg has softened I'm just going to add in some spices, I'll just write all the spices down below. And now that's heated up I'm going to add two tins of chopped tomatoes, one tin of chickpeas, one stock cube and 500ml of water and then finally I'm just going to add the chicken back in and bring it to boil. Okay so while that's cooking I'm going to make some dumplings to go in the soup, I love dumplings and they always make such a good addition to soup and just make it a little bit more filling. So you're going to need one cup of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder and I'm adding some sage because I love the taste and one teaspoon of sugar and then I'm just going to add half a cup of water and then mix it all together and then we can just leave that aside until later. So now our soup has thickened up, I've shredded the chicken, I'm going to add it straight back in and we're just going to bring that back up to the boil and then add our dumpling mixture. And I've just topped it off with some chilli flakes, some coriander and you have a delicious very hearty and filling soup. So there you have the Moroccan chicken soup recipe, I would definitely recommend that you try it but like I also mentioned previously I would take this out, instead of sitting in the staff room I would use it as an opportunity to get some walking in, get some movement into my day. So I'd throw on a warm jacket, I would take my little tupperware of soup and I would either go and sit in a park somewhere or if it was raining I would go to a nearby shopping mall or somewhere that I could sit inside. So the plan is I'm going to quickly finish this off and then we're going to go for a nice little stroll but while we were here I thought we would quickly talk about snacks. Now like I said in the mornings I wasn't too hungry but I definitely felt like I needed a snack in the afternoon especially because I would come home and I would do my exercise straight away so it gave me that little bit of a energy boost before I got home from work. Now previously I'd been trying to make the healthy choice but unknowingly I was making a pretty unhealthy choice, I would always opt for things like a muesli bar and some orange juice but I genuinely didn't realise just how full of calories they are, I probably would have been better off having a chocolate bar and a zero calorie soft drink. So for me I found that just having something that I wanted was really useful in terms of keeping me sane and keeping me able to maintain this for a longer period of time. Now this is something that I found really useful but it definitely breaks the mould of the normal diet rhetoric. So my snacks varied throughout the day, sometimes I went for low calorie high volume so things like popcorn or pop chips or rice cakes with yoghurt whatever it was but sometimes I would just have chocolate or I'd have what I was craving, by the way these are really good raspberry and white chocolate if you want to check them out. So I literally would just have what I want but again I would just be mindful of how much of it I was having and usually I felt really good so then I had the energy in the afternoon, I felt satisfied, I would go home, I would bust out an awesome exercise session and then I would be excited for my dinner. But also it was going to be less than what I was having before because that muesli bar and that orange juice together would be maybe like 500 calories whereas a couple of slices of this would be like 100. Okay so it's enough of me nattering away right now and although I'd love to do what Hugo here is doing I'm going to put my jacket on and we're going to go for a walk. Alright so when I got home I literally got straight into my exercise gear and that way it kind of removed that mental block for me of having to set myself up or get raring for exercise. Now I didn't know anything about exercise back then and I was far too scared to go to a gym, like the idea actually petrified me. So I just went to a store and picked up the first DVDs that I saw and they ended up being these DVDs. I'll put a picture up here. So I'm going to go and find one and I'm going to go and do that today. Now my training has changed a lot since back then but I still dabble in the occasional high intensity workout which is what these were. So we'll see how we go today but the main thing I really found was you just need to do something that you're comfortable with. Again for weight loss the main focus is going to be having a calorie deficit and you're going to be doing that through nutrition so that gives you the freedom to do whatever you want with your exercise. If the idea of going to the gym scares you like it did for me then you can work out at home or if you just want to simply go for a walk then you can totally do that too. In fact I think that walking is very, very underrated. So if I was going to give you my top tips for exercise it would be just be comfortable. Be comfortable with what you're doing and what you're wearing and where you are. So set your environment right. You don't want to be constantly adjusting your clothes. You want to feel good. You don't want to be worried about what's going on around you. You want to just be able to be present and enjoying the moment. And my second tip would be to somehow track your progress so you could do this intuitively. You'll know how far your fitness has come or you could track your progress through doing small fitness tests or taking videos and photos. So if you can see that you're making progress in other areas it just feels so, so good. I remember being able to look back several months in and see that my fitness had come so far. Things like that are just so, so important to keeping you consistent and being able to enjoy the present. And voila! Welcome to my gym. This was basically what I did day in and day out. I just pushed a sofa back and I had a little bit of space in front of my TV and I would do my entire workout here. So Hugo's come to cheer me on. But for clothing I decided to wear a pair of leggings. So I'm wearing the Adapt Seamless Fleck Leggings in a size small. And then I've just got a sports bra on underneath here and then I've just put a pullover. I was more than comfortable to work out in my bra back then because I was at home. So that's one of the huge benefits to training at home is you can just wear whatever you want and feel good in it. So anyway, without further ado, I'm just procrastinating now. Let's get to the workout. Pulse is coming off already. I'm already remembering how hard these were. Oh my gosh. We're halfway there. We did it guys. Good job. I always feel so much better once I've done those workouts. I just feel so much more alive and if I've had a bad day, it just fixes everything. But I just thought I would really quickly answer a couple of really common questions that I get about exercise. One being, how often did I train or do exercise? I mostly did it about five times a week, say like Monday through to Friday. Again, that's not because that's the right thing to do. That's just because that's what I did and I didn't really know any different. And then the second question that I often get again is, what's the best exercise for fat loss? When you're starting out, there is no right exercise. I just want to reiterate again, you're going to get sick of me saying it, that it really doesn't matter. You're going to create a calorie deficit through your nutrition and the exercise may be an added bonus, but there are so many other benefits such as your mood, your fitness, your general health that come from exercise and that should be the priority. It should be a good part of your day and not a struggle. So if you're not enjoying it, mix it up. Try something new. Maybe you like ice skating or dancing or rock climbing or just a combination of all of them. Just do you. That's the most important thing. All right. So now that's over. It means another good part of the day, which is dinner time, which means my favourite, food. But first, I need to go and take a shower and get into some comfy clothes because comfy clothes are life. And that reminds me, the sports bra and the leggings performed super, super well. I was really stoked. Obviously, I don't have the biggest boobs. So for high intensity training, this sports bra was great. That's another question I get a lot is, did my boobs get smaller when I lost weight? And yes. Yes, they did. A lot smaller. So this bra was perfect for me and it gave me plenty of support. The leggings were really good. What I love about the leggings is that there's no front seam and that's something that I hadn't been used to until I started wearing Gymshark, but it's such a game changer, especially in my training nowadays. But for me, the number one thing when I'm picking active wear is that it's comfortable and it doesn't irritate my skin and I didn't find that at all. So I'm really, really stoked with that. Anyway, now it's time for a shower because I am hungry. Let's go. All right. All showered and ready for some food and I'm choosing fajitas for dinner. And the reason I'm choosing fajitas is because it's a really good example of how my portions were out of control and how I brought them back into control. So before, when I'd have fajitas for dinner, I would have four of these wraps. But not only would I have four of these, I would have four of the extra large wraps plus loads of filling plus a fizzy drink as well. So I was eating probably a decent portion, if not all, of my daily calorie needs in one meal without even realizing it because I'd just become accustomed to eating this. So obviously, this was a really easy way for me to reduce it. So what I did was I just reduced it to two wraps. I increased the filling so I still felt quite satisfied. I bulked up the salad so I made sure there was plenty of voluminous but low calorie foods in there as well, but still had everything else. And then I switched the soft drink to a sparkling water instead, which I ended up absolutely loving. So super easy switches. I was still eating the same stuff. The fillings were all exactly the same. It was just the portions were a lot smaller. So let's make fajitas. Okay, so it's time to start assembling our dinner. So we're going to start with a tortilla and we're going to add our salad and now our filling. And then it's going to add some salsa. So one last thing that I really got into the habit of doing was having a cup of herbal tea after my dinner. And this was kind of to replace dessert, but it didn't mean that I didn't have dessert. It just gave me that break to really think about what I wanted and if I really wanted something. So as soon as I'd eaten my dinner, I'd put the dishes away, make myself a cup of herbal tea. And in the end, I really enjoyed having that habit of just being able to sip on my tea and enjoy the moment. And if I still wanted something afterwards, I would still have it. And again, I've just been mindful of portions, but I often found, especially as I got more used to it, that just having that cup of tea alone was enough. So basically we're at the end of the day now and I would pretty much just watch a bit of TV, maybe do some reading and then go to bed. But I wanted to quickly talk to you guys about a couple of common questions that I get. The first one being, do I have any loose skin or stretch marks or cellulite or did it worry me when I was losing weight? It was only when people started asking me questions after sharing my journey online that I started to realise that actually I do have those things. And in a lot of ways, I am really aware of it now, just because it's been brought to my attention, but there's no way I would trade the health and the lifestyle that I have now and how happy it makes me just to be able to move my body well, just for the sake of loose skin. I think a lot of people have this idea that loose skin is about having tons of loose skin and it's just completely out of control, but I look pretty much normal. Like, you wouldn't be able to tell, it's only if I was to lean over, it's just a little bit loose here. So it's not that bad, and in terms of stretch marks, I have a couple of stretch marks here, but they were always there. And so the second question I get a lot is, how long did it take me to lose weight? And it's kind of a tricky question to answer, because it's sort of, how long is a piece of string? But in essence, it took me around eight months to lose the majority of that weight, but then the last five kilos was a little bit longer, and then it's fluctuated ever since then. And I would say my weight has fluctuated anywhere up to 10 kilos, plus or minus that weight since. That's what maintenance is. You're not going to maintain exactly the same weight your entire life, because life happens. All those little obstacles and social occasions and motivation lapses that you have during weight loss, you have them in life too, no matter what weight you're at or what fitness level. And so you're always going to have fluctuation, and that is just a part of life. When I started doing calisthenics and doing a bit more resistance training and building some muscle, I noticed that my body changed quite a lot, so if you want any more information, I would definitely recommend checking out some of those videos, because it explains it a little bit better. But in terms of the majority of the weight loss, it took me around a year in total. That being said, I would say I didn't see much progress for at least the first six to eight weeks, and I remember now, if I look back at my progress photos, there really isn't a huge amount of change, but then when I got to that point, I started to notice weight dropping quite quickly in terms of I was having to reduce my clothing size nearly every week at one point. It was so quick after that, and this looks totally different for everyone. Some people lose weight really quickly straight away, and then it will flatline a little bit. Some people, it will take a little bit longer, and then it will start to decline, but overall, we want to be looking at a long-term progress rather than just focusing on week by week or day by day. All right, guys, so that was essentially my routine when I was losing weight, and again, I really hope that you get from this video is a sense of empowerment and confidence with your own journey. It's not about copying what I did, and I hope that seeing that I only made small changes that were sustainable for me will give you that belief that you can do the same as well. I know this world can be scary, lonely, and overwhelming, and there is so much information out there at the moment, but to begin with, you really just need to keep it simple and really enjoy the moment and the process because that is the way that you're going to be able to stay consistent and make this into a lifestyle. I have learned so much along the way, and obviously, I'm in a very privileged position now of being a personal trainer, so I can see other people's journeys as well, and I see the same things happening over and over again, so enjoy the moment. Enjoy what you're doing, and just believe in yourself because it will happen if you just have a little bit of patience, a bit of consistency, and a little bit of fun along the way. A huge thank you to Gymshark. If you want to check out any of their pieces, again, it's linked below, and they have this huge Black Friday sale on where they have up to 70% off their selected items, so definitely go and check it out. Honestly, I'm so stoked with the stuff that I have, and I have been loving it now for a while, so definitely go and check it out. Otherwise, I hope you have an amazing day, and I will see you guys in the next video. Take care. Oh, wait. There's two things I forgot to mention. Make sure you get your sleep, and make sure you drink your water. Okay. Bye.