Get smaller and get active and you can start by opening your front door and stepping outside into the fresh air, First it’s the walk taking it easy on your feet and knee joints that feels the pressure of your weight pounding and shaking along the pavement, It’s this first part of your journey where your mind-set is weak and you hear that voice in your head in the cold wet weather saying that will do, that’s enough time to turn back, your body cannot take anymore. This is utter nonsense as you have just walked to the top of your road with a small rest and continued again, after a few days of repeating this you have the urge to want to try and jog, your mind becomes strong and do it because you feel you can do it and YOU CAN!.

Walking, swimming, Jogging, Running is I feel the most natural way to get fit and easy too, why, because all you did was open the door and stepped outside, yes you so well done, I have had many demands fighting me right from the start from my past experiences of life to a depression of anxiety I could not control which further on in my book you will be able to read, For once I was starting to feel free and felt I could potentially survive this Obesity state I was in, my ignorance of life was starting to dissolve and melt away, I was becoming strong in my mind-set.

 

 As we have said in earlier tips, you really need to ditch the excuses because if you have reached this far into my tips and have decided to follow my journey and have started your story board of events your mind-set has become clean of your ignorance and found you are free to improve on your health and fitness and determined to work harder.

 Recently I watched an informative, inspiring and often hilarious film documentary about Joe Cross. Joe (an Australian) was a big man at over 300lbs (21 stone +). He had contracted a rare medical condition which caused a rash across his body. Consequently he was consuming a vast array of pills and potions every day. After trying just about every medical and alternative treatments going including mud baths, acupuncture and mediation (all of which didn’t work) he decided that he would have to heal from the inside. He decided to travel across the USA on a 60 day ‘juice fast’. He put a generator in the back of his car with an electric juicer and for 60 days ate only juiced fruit and vegetables; he became a ‘juicing vegan’. The story called ‘Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead’ is incredible. By the end of the two months he had totally changed his lifestyle, the sickness had gone, he was off all medication and after a few more months was the right size for his age and swimming and running all over the place, a true picture of health. As Joe admitted before his transformation in lifestyle he was ‘concentrating too much on wealth and not on health’. Along the way by chance he came across a truck driver (the size of a small bus) who had the same condition and obviously in extreme discomfort due to his bulk. Some months after Joe had left the US to return to Australia the truck driver called Joe to ask for his help – he was in a very bad way and very sick. Joe hopped on a plane back the US and set up a diet and fitness plan to help him follow his own path. Again the results were quite dramatic in terms of weight loss, improved health and overall enjoyment of life. There were some key lessons from the documentary which struck a chord with my own journey from massively overweight to marathon runner. Firstly it was the need for these big chaps (like I once was) to dramatically change their diets. Everyone knows that if your diet is full of processed food, carbohydrates, saturated fats and refined sugar then you are heading for a bulging waistline and poor health and potentially an early grave before your time. What Joe and I did and now promote was to transform what we choose to consume and do with our lives with regards to keeping fit.

 

 

Joe is massive advocate of juicing and filling the body with the micro-nutrients you can only get from fruit and vegetables. I on the other hand wasn’t a juicer nor did I have any intensions to buy and try one I did what my doctor advised me to do, I went back to basics with a low carb, low fat, and low sugar diet and settled for my salads and chicken breast (skinless) and my jacket potatoes, ok a little carb but the sugar and fat is a very reduced ingredient and a big NO NO! and most of all I maintained my fitness to a little over the level my body was capable of and pushed that little extra every time, Puddings, sweets and all the processed snacks were removed from my daily diet. It was only later in the film that we saw Joe and the driver being active. Indeed when I first started back on the path to fitness I took it very steadily when I got onto the road and the gym.

 

 The reason is obvious, trying to move with excess weight can harm you but as I said before and also in my BBC filming all you are being asked to do is open that door and step outside and progress as you mean to go on. Remember the knee joints get a real pounding when you are running so wearing the right trainers are a massive help to support you along the way, After a month of running with my so called running trainers I realised cheap was not a good deal after all as, I could start to feel the joints take a hammering and so I had a few extra pounds to buy a good pair to support and take the impact away from my joints and as any doctor or professional trainer would advise that extra stress on these knees is not advised. For a low impact sport, swimming is probably one of the best but to me the best there is are the ones that are free, walking, Jogging and running, I suppose swimming too if you are in open waters or your own pool say.

 

One thing I hope is starting to educate your mind-set is that to lose your weight safely and maintain it, you need to do both, diet and exercise, I am a believer from what I have experienced over the journey I started out in is that you can’t do one without the other, you can have the best diet plan in the world or the best routine exercise but they must be respected and allowed to work together. The maintaining of the fitness and diet will re-educate your mind, sure you can pay someone to weigh you and tell you to buy their product that tastes lovely and makes you want to eat more rather than actually follow the guidelines set out, why pay when people hundreds of years ago didn’t, they just got on with it and that’s all we truly have to do.

 

 So in summary this tip is really simple; Ditch the excuses, Don’t think one will work well without the other, you need to combine the two to make it successful and stick to it, doing this will re-educate you and work to changing your lifestyle as you know it.

 

I have been spending many months convincing people who want to believe in themselves to take a challenge on and many are doing the Silverstone Half marathon, London Marathon, Also our local 5 mile runs held once a year, these guys now believe in their selves and are training for them, my other tip for you is take a challenge and believe in yourself, use that challenge to help you to target losing your weight in a set time so those excuses don’t start to creep in, I found this really helped me to focus and I knew if I completed the London marathon not only would I of shifted my Obese weight I incurred, it meant I survived.

 

 Later in Ady’s tips we will offer you the best research in diet, activity and mind-set. Note: If you are worried then check things out with your Doctor before you start, even your personal trainer at your local gym can offer support just like our team at trainers at Mwah gym in Sudbury or our top boot camp trainer adviser Andy who can put you on the right path should you have the need of support, our mentor session with me and I speak for myself when I say I can motivate and mentor you to want to keep going. These tips are from my own experience of training for the London Marathon with a massive weight loss, I can’t force you to shift the weight but I can share my life experience with you, a person who feels did it the way it was meant to be done. That’s all for now Do feel free to share these tips with your friends, family and work colleagues and ask them to log onto the website www.adysjourney.com

 

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