Hi all! So I know I have been away for quite a long time!  I just got too busy with work and training to keep up the blog.  Apologies!

Today was the end of my 12 week challenge!  During this time I lost 17.5 kg. I am now down to 90.5kg.    I am delighted with the reuslts.  This is just the beginning!  Hopefully I can make weekly updates here in this blog for you all to follow!

I will have the photos developed by tomorrow, and will post them on here as soon as I have made them the right size to fit on this blog. 

I hope everyone is well!

Cheers, Moorey!

Hi all.  With a  combination of too much work(6 days this last week), my internet not working properely and my camera being out of action, the blog has suffered.  You'll all be happy to know that my training has not, and I still managed to make it to the gym 5 dasy last week, and already once this week.  I'm aimin for 7 this week. 

Anyway, I'll have photos up on wednesday, as well as w weight.  I lost .5kg this last week, so i'm down to 102.5, 5.5 kg total loss thus far!

Hope you all are enjoying your summer or winter, I know I'm loving the fact that the Giants beat the Patriots today in the SuperBowl!

That's all I've got for just now, I'll have more tomorrow! 

Cheers, Moorey!!!

Hi all, so Aus day has been a good one so far! Just had a roast lamb, which was a ripper!  Been into a couple of beers so far.  Drinking Pure Blondes, which are a Low Carb beer by Carlton & United Breweries! Good drop!  I'll probably aim for a 7-8 km walk tomorrow, maybe longer. 

I trained this morning.  1.5 hrs cardio! It was pretty intense! I definatley earned the beers!  Hope everybody enjoyed their Aus Day, and an even better Aus night!  I'm sorry for my swiss bothers that Federer lost, but I won money off it, so I can't be too upset! He is still the greatest of all time!

That's all I've got for now!  "IF YOU'RE NOT GONNA GO HARD, WHY GO AT ALL?"

MOOREY!

Hi all, so I've started my big weekend off from work.  I left work last night at 7pm and do not have to be back there until Monday at 7pm.  Looking forward to the break, getting in some really good sleep and time at the gym!  Training is traveling along well! I've managed to make it to the gym every day this week! I had two really good weights sessions at the start of the week.  Last night I did delts/shoulders and Abs.  Both are sufficiently sore! 

Today is arms, and a cardio session. Then I'm headed to the driving range to hit a few balls.   

So my results for the week.  I lost an additional 1kg.  I'm a little disappointed with this figure, though it is hard to tell how much muscle mass I've gained.  I have been lifting heavily and intensely, so it is logical that I would gain muscle.  The photos are quite pleasing.  The signs of a narrower midsection are beginning to show.  Here they are:

Hope everybody has a good weekend.  Happy Australia Day!

Cheers, Moorey!

G'day all! So, I've had a couple of days off from work, and have spent that time resting up and training!  I've done chest and back so far this week, and I'm gradually returning to the strength I was before I left for the USA.  I guess the real challenge for myself is to return to similar strength, whilst weighing about 15kg less. 

Body Blitz is going well! I'm right on top of my diet, and training is also going well.  Tomorrow is the end of the second week of the blitz and the third week of this blog.  10 more weeks on the blitz, which will need to be pretty intense on the training side of things.  I may need to start doing morning and evening gym sessions for the last month.  I have done this before, it is one way of getting some fast results, but it really burns you out.  It is not an approach to training that you could realistically uphold.  I guess the only exception to that would be if that were all you did.  Sadly, the world I live in and the world I'm petty sure most of you readers live in has certain realities.  Those realities include work and school. 

 I would love to train and exercise as a full time job, but I think also that one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of training  and exercise is to fit it into an already hectic schedule! As I've said previously, going to the gym at 7:30am after a 12 hour shift gives me an amazing lift.  There are times in your training where you think that it  is all just too hard, and that sitting on the couch is a pretty appealing option.  And it is, don't get me wrong, I love watching a bit of T.V, but it is 100% more enjoyable when you've earned it. 

Speaking of enjoyment, it's Australia Day on Saturday!  For those of you not in Aus or from Aus(There are at least 5), it is our National Day.  Pretty much the same as US,A's Independence day, 4 th of July.  Not sure what the Swiss equivalent is.  Roli, Lukas? Nate?  Anyway, it would be un-Australian to not have at least a  couple of beers on this day.  My general rule when it comes to drinking, whilst on any program, is to walk 1 km, the next day, for every alcoholic beverage.  For example, if I had 6 beers, I would need to walk 6 km, 7 beers= 7km etc,etc.  I've borrowed this from the Weight Watchers recommendations for Male dieters.  I'm not really sure how far this scale goes, or how effective or ineffective it would become as the number of drinks increases. I'm assuming that the damage done by 20 or more drinks would not be erased by a 20km walk.  That is half of a marathon, maybe it would.  I'll tell you though, if I were to have followed that rule in the US, I'd still be walking!  I'll et you know how I go! 

Well, I've got work Tomorrow, then off to the gym for my cardio and weigh in.  I'm also posting the photos tomorrow night.  These will be the fourth set.  Next week, at the completion of 4 weeks on the program, I will post a comparison of the start of week1 to the end ofweek4.  I'll be interested to see how they look at the completion of a month. 

That is all for now, hope everybody is having a good week! Go New York Giants! I really hope they beat the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. 

Cheers, Moorey!

Hi all, so I'm a very busy boy atm!  Working and training and trying to get enough sleep in to do both.  I'm traveling pretty well, and feeling healthy! 

I've been on night shift this weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night from 7pm till 7am.  It's probably the worst weekend I have on my roster, in terms of fitting in with a training schedule, but the work this weekend has been pretty physical anyway, so that helps.  I definitely feel like I'm up for another weight loss come Wednesday. Sometimes you can just tell, and I think I may be looking at a big one this week!

So, last post I told you all about the Body Blitz 12 week challenge. Basically, and as the name suggests, it is a 12 week contest, with physical transformation being the overall goal.  There is a monthly winner for both Men and Women, and a National Champion selected from the monthly winners.  Below is the link to the page.  They have a whole archive of past monthly winners for about 5 years.  Previous winners have either been badly overweight and lost a great deal of weight over the 12 weeks to become far more lean.  Others have been a bit overweight, but become very lean, and gained considerable muscle definition over the 12 weeks.  I would see my self needing to be pretty shredded at the end of the 12 weeks to win. I feel I'm on track, I still have 10.5 weeks to go. 

Body Blitz 12 Week Challenge 

 I'm about to start stepping up my cardio to include sprints and short runs.  The reason I do not include longer runs and jogging into my cardio is because the action of jogging places a great deal of shock on the joints. When done for extended periods of time, it ultimately brings about a general soreness that reduces my recovery time from my resistance training.  Cycling and cross ramps are a far more efficient way of doing Cardio in conjunction with a heavy resistance program, because they do not involve the shock and impact of jogging.   

  I did not see too many winners in my age group, but I think that speaks to the point that many entrants have taken on the challenge because they have found themselves nearing middle-age and decided that their health is not what it should be.  I'm not sure if this will work for or against me, but I'd like to think that having the vision and motivation to take this on at 22 should count in my favor.  Time will only tell, and all I can do is get myself in as good a shape as I can.  From about week 4(week 5 on this blog) I will be implementing a no Carb after 3pm diet.  This basically means that you have all your carbs in the AM for breakfast and lunch, then mostly protein and green vegetables for dinner.  I've done this before and It works.  It's also good because your body begins to look forward to the oat meal with water in the morning.  I'm not sure how many of you have eaten oat meal and water consistently for breakfast, but I'll give you the tip, there are more enjoyable meals out there!

Anyway, I've gotta go get ready for work.  It's a tough slog, but come 7AM Monday morning I'll be feeling pretty good! 

Zhongy, bout the photos, do you want to email me about how to edit them properly.  I would really appreciate that! armoor@deakin.edu.au.  I'm very new to this, and am trying to learn as much as I can. 

That's about all I've got for now! 

Cheers, Moorey!  Go Lleyton!

Hi all, hope everyone is traveling along well!  Firstly I just want to send out a big Thank you to Tommy Hollinsworth for drumming u a bit of publicity from the nations capital.  I appreciate all of you who have dropped in to check out the blog, and left some feedback.  I appreciate it, so thank you!

Secondly, I'm not sure if you all noticed, but a mate of mine from school, Josh, has posted some details of his biggest loser competition.  I wanted to wish him luck, and hopefully he can keep us updated on his progress as the weeks go by! Good luck mate!

Speaking of competitions, I've got a couple of announcements on that front.  Firstly, I would like to announce the commencement of the "Best Quote of the Week", which will replace the " Quote of the Day", which can be found on the header of the blog. This has come about for a few reasons, partly because it is simply too difficult to update the quote of the day on daily basis, but mostly I want to try to increase the interaction amongst the readers of this blog.  If I have done my number correctly, there should be about 20 or so of you readers, and I would like to increase this readership.  I thought that a competition may be a good way of doing so. 

I'm open to suggestions, but I propose that the comp would run as follows. 

Those of you who would like to suggest a quote of the week can do so.  I will then select three or four nominees and put it to a vote.  The quote with the most votes will be the winner.  Each person can vote only once.  Losing quotes can be resubmitted the following week.  I'm open for any alternate suggestions, after all, this is the people's blog!  I can promise you one thing, there will be prizes! 

You may have noticed that Tommy has posted a few quotes already, there are some good ones in there, I was very impressed.  My favorite, and current quote of the week was;   

"Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement."  He has set the bar pretty high I think, you'd just about need a quote from Pharlap to better him!

My second bit of news on the competition front is that I have entered the Body Blitz 12 week challenge! I have submitted my photos from the second week of this blog, and am one week into the challenge.  I will post the link to the site for the challenge so you can all check out the details.  I was a bit unsure wheather I should enter, but I've decided to dive in and give it a go!  I'll post more about it in the coming days. 

So, finally, my results for the week. Well, I'm pretty happy to be honest.  I've had an additional loss of 1.5Kg, now weighing in at 104, with a tally of 4kg lost so far.  I'm happy with the photos, and as you will notice I've followed JC's advice an included a side on shoot! Enjoy!

That's all for now, take it easy!

Cheers, Moorey!

Hi all, so I've been busy training and working.  I have just gotten home from work and training for the day.  I've got a couple of days off so I will spend a bit of time on the blog in the coming days. 

Tomorrow is the 3rd weigh in and photo shoot.  I'm hoping for another loss this week.  Another 2.5kg may be ambitious, but we'll see how I go.  I've decided that a weight loss of 20kg by week 13 along with the first stages of visible abdominals will be the first longer term goal.  I will post pictures of the type of midsection I would aim to have by week 13 as a guide. 

Tomorrow will be a pretty intense day of training, and sleep!  5am wake ups don't really agree with me, but I'll battle through! 

That's all I've got until tomorrow, look forward to hearing from you all. 

Cheers, Moorey

p.s, Zhongy, that is fine, go ahead, I look forward to checking yours out.  Thanks for the post!

Hi all, after some difficulty uploading the photos, here they are for the week. 

I weighed in on Wednesday, and am down to 105.5kg.  That's a first week loss of 2.5kg.  Very pleased with that result!  The photos are o.k, about what I would expect, can notice a marginal difference. 

So, it has been a pretty good week in all. I've started work and still managed to train everyday.  The hardest session was probably Thursday morning, after my night shift!  Training in the morning after a 12 hour shift is certainly a challenge, and the overall quality and intensity of the workout was probably below 100%, but I'm proud that I set the goal and achieved it! 

My cardio training is progressing very well, and my resistance training is also improving. I am yet to have a session of a full leg workout, this is because of my cardio training.  If I were doing less cardio, I would incorporate a heavier and longer legs session into my resistance training program. 

My recovery time from my resistance training has probably improved 100% since the beginning of the program, which is a sign from my body that I can start to handle heavier, longer weights sessions.   I will begin to push that theory in the coming weeks.   I've always found in my time training over the years that it is important to "listen" to your body, and react to the changes in your body's tolerance to different types of training.  Subsequently, for many years I have not followed a strict plan of pre-determined sets or reps, and weight, rather varied my workouts from session to session.  There is a trap in this approach that you may begin to under-train, and that is where a training partner or personal trainer can be very useful.  The greatest benefit of this approach, I find, is that is generally will not lead to over-training, and also by varying workouts, you never allow your body to become too accustomed to resistance training. 

 I know that this is a joke used in a few movies, but the saying, "You've gotta keep the body guessing", is actually pretty accurate.  I generally set myself the goal of never performing the exact same workout for a body part from week to week.  I have found that this has given me my best gains in both size and strength. 

Tomorrow is a rest day.  Probably with about an hour walk thrown in. 

That's about all I've got for the moment.  Hope you all have a good weekend! Feel free to leave some comments, or whatever you like!  If you have any questions, I'd be happy to have a go at answering them!

Cheers, Moorey

Hi all.  Well, the week has started well.  Training has been intense and challenging.  Trained my arms, and was pleased with the amount of weight I was able to lift.  I curled 55 lb dumbbells for 8 reps each arm, for 4 sets. This is below my best, but definitely a good starting point! I did dips for Triceps, doing 4 sets of 8 reps.  I will look to increase this over the coming weeks, to the point of adding additional weight using a dipping belt.  At my strongest, i was dipping sets of 10, with an additional 30kg.  I hope to return to a similar level of strength within 2 months.  We'll see how it goes. 

I received my new blender in the mail yesterday.  This will be very good for making healthy smoothies and protein shakes.  I'm also looking forward to making cocktails once I have achieved some results worthy of a celebration.  Until then, it's smoothies and protein shakes. 

So tomorrow is the big weigh in and second set of photos.  I feel like I have lost body fat, but that may be leveled out by a possible increase in muscle mass.  It would be nice to loose some weight in the first week, but it is not the end of the world if I don't. I'm getting a hair cut tomorrow, which will be nice for training in the hot summer.  My thick hair makes me pretty uncomfortable at times, so I'm looking forward to be a little lighter on top!

I also start work tomorrow night.  I work a shift job over the summer. PM till AM.  The job involves a reasonable level of activity, which will help with the program.  It takes a lot of commitment to go to the gym at 7:AM after a 12 hour shift, but that is the goal I am setting myself!  Not really looking forward to it, but then again it is in challenging situations that we reach our full potential! 

Wish me luck for the weigh in and photo shoot.  I'll post them tomorrow afternoon!

Cheers, Moorey