Three Weeks In…
The Make Me Hot challengers are off and running – with some great results already, writes trainer, Andrew Greig.
With our Make Me Hot challenge completely online this year, entrants from around the world are seeing how far they can push themselves with our comprehensive guidance. Four men – Bill, Josh, Gareth and Craig – will feature in April with their final reveal. We also added four more online challengers who will appear in our online blogs, Facebook updates and the MMH newsletter.
The first month focuses on developing the fundamentals of transformation. Nutrition, supplementation and exercise form the core of physical change. To get the best results, we also hammer record-keeping, healthy habits and accountability. Our first week went deep into the nutrition plan: colour, variety, quality proteins, whole foods and essential fats – all the things I’ve plugged in these columns before, and more! In addition, our finalists had to start reading one of the books I’ve given them for the duration of the challenge, The Paleo Diet (revised 2010 edition). Will we be following Paleo completely? Wait to find out as the weeks roll on…
Of the eight finalists, a majority told us they were good to excellent in the kitchen. That has made things both easy (we’ve given them some great, nutritious recipes) and more difficult because now I have to test more recipes before sending them across! Talk about commitment.
WEEK THREE PROGRESS REPORT
It’s only three weeks to-date, which is usually not quite enough time to see changes. But the boys are working hard and have achieved a few milestones.
Josh, Craig and Bill (who quickly
changed their meals to our fourpart plan) felt greater energy and a noticeable increase in body heat – a sign that metabolism is starting to surge. Excellent news! We also had Kevin burn 4.5 kilos (10 pounds) of holiday weight he’d stacked on in Europe before the challenge started, just by getting his diet on track with our guidelines.
Zack and Bill were off travelling in the first few weeks. What makes a program like this so useful is that they can access it anywhere – with Bill attending our weekly webinar from Adelaide airport having only just stepped off the plane!
Tyrone got called up for jury duty, which threw a spanner in the works. What timing! Marc began in a bit of a bind, too, with uni exams and admittedly getting too excited about exercise and pushing himself too hard too early. Meanwhile, Gareth had to search far and wide in Nanjing, China, for reliable sources of suitable food and supplements. Despite these little hurdles (and honestly, whose life is ever devoid of events designed to derail our health goals?), these are early days and everyone’s still bright-eyed and bushytailed eager. It will be fun to see how they handle the big weights workouts that are just on the horizon…