From flab to fab
Friday night gym session replaces beers with buddies. 2 HOURS OF GYM DAILY
Gideon Riddy, 30, loves his new body. He is a father and husband who recently changed his lifestyle and went from bordering on obese to being a slim, well-defined jock.
Battling to keep his weight at a healthy level, he sought help from his boss, Jody Harrington, who later became his trainer, and together they worked to achieve Riddy’s new improved self.
Where do I start? I’ll backtrack to 2012, I’ve always played football at an amateur level, both indoor and outdoor formats.
I’d like to think I was above average and over the years I established myself in my area as a good player. But by 2012, at 26 years old, I had let myself go weight-wise. I was 105kg and seriously unfit. This caused me to get serious injuries as I was trying to push my body beyond its capabilities.
My wake-up call came when I was benched for a cup final. This upset me so I began to rethink my current condition and eating choices. Before pre-season for the upcoming season, I went through an intense training regime and adopted an eating plan to make myself competitive for the next season. I was running 5km a day and eating well. By pre-season I had dropped to 82kg and was extremely fit.
Fast forward to 2015, I had just moved to Johannesburg for work. The lifestyle change and the fact that my wife was pregnant, and I got to eat whatever she wanted to, was my excuse. Before I knew it, it was 2016 and I was back at 105kg and borderline obese for my age and height.
I hated shopping for clothes because I could never get my size in the brands I liked. I was unfit and unhappy. My ability on a football field had seriously declined because I was overweight again.
The two main reasons I decided to get fit and healthy again were that my daughter was a few months old and it made me think about my long-term health and how I needed to take care of myself to be there for her in the years to come. The other reason was that my boss and training partner, Jody Harrington, used to pass snide comments about my weight all the time, having seen pictures of a much slimmer me a few years ago. His constant teasing was exactly what I needed to make me join him at the gym and begin this journey again.
I started in June 2016 at 105kg and the difficult thing for me was getting up in the morning. I would get up at 4am to drive 45 minutes every morning to the gym close to my office.
I would get there at 5.30am and train till 7.20am, shower and then get to work at 8am. This was extremely difficult considering it was winter and the workouts were