Men’s Health
Anthony Makins, 31, from London, shares with Men’s health how being trapped indoors during the pandemic started a healthier lifestyle.
I have always been in good shape and have been going to the gym since I was 16. But after leaving university, I have been struggling to maintain the level of conditioning I had at that time, when I trained a lot of boxing. In the past few years, I had established – and then failed – resolutions to return to a certain weight and reduce my body fat to a level where I could actually see my abdomen again.
I was not paying enough attention to my diet. I used to overeat on weekends, usually junk food. And despite being very active, looking back, I wasn’t training at the gym as hard as I thought.
The turning point came in early 2020, which looked like it would be the third year in a row that I would not reach my New Year’s resolution. I was feeling frustrated and started looking at what I was doing at the GM and considering if I had been training wrong all this time. I thought that really, given the time and money I spent over 15 years in gyms, I should be in brilliant shape, otherwise, what was I doing there?
I did some research, buying the two books from UP Fitness on meal plan and training plan design, and made some adjustments to my gym and diet routine. But it wasn’t until the closing in March, when the gyms closed, that I was really forced to make changes and focus on how I was exercising and what I was eating, to make sure I could still make progress while training at home. I decided to use the money I was saving at a gym to try the UP Fitness LiveUP training program.
I used to lift weights 4 days a week, following my chest, back, shoulders and legs days. I continued with the same workout for months and didn’t see any changes, so I felt like I had to do this just to keep the body I had, which means that sometimes I lost motivation and saw it as a chore . I hated cardio and never did it unless I was training for something specific, like a triathlon, and as I started cycling to work, I couldn’t do it every day.
The main changes in my training involved training less often and more intensively, giving myself sufficient recovery time. I also changed my workout division to full body exercises and started to over-define all my exercises. And I am generally more active on a daily basis, reaching 12,500 steps a day without any need for dedicated cardio. My program changes every month, which keeps it interesting, and I try to improve my performance with each session and leave the gym knowing that I couldn’t have worked more.
I thought I was a healthy eater, but, in retrospect, I was consuming too much protein (2 shakes a day) and I constantly felt bloated. I have been preparing meals during the week for a few years, but I would snack regularly between meals on protein bars and nuts, and then go off the rails on the weekends with pizzas and curry. Now I eat four well-spaced meals throughout the day and don’t snack because they keep me fed up. I measured my food based on the portion sizes of the food groups, which made it easier to track my macronutrients and also allowed me to be flexible when I’m at a restaurant. I learned a lot about how to build a sustainable and balanced diet that does not depend on calorie counting and how to combine nutrition with training to get maximum results.
I lost 15 pounds in 11 weeks during the block, dropping from 173 to 158 pounds. After that, I started to gain muscle mass. I feel much more fit and stronger. I am also looking forward to each training session much more, and I am really enjoying each training and the progress I am making. And I’m not done yet: My next goal is to try to build more muscle, although I am finding that gaining weight after it is removed is actually a much slower and more difficult process than losing it in the first place!
My biggest tip is to make sure that you are improving your performance every week: you should leave each session knowing that you couldn’t have done more. Without betrayal in form and without being distracted. You also need to structure your diet to maintain it. It must be sustainable enough that you don’t feel the need to cheat on weekends. And finally, consider investing in a good trainer, even if it is only in the first few months to put you on the right track. It’s a drop in the ocean compared to all the money you can spend at a gym.
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