Return to Slender Transformation: Week 1
Sam Turner doing back workout

Hello, my name is Sam Turner and for some reason I agreed and accepted a seven-week intensive body transformation.

I have recently let myself go. Since spending a glorious 10 days in America at the beginning of the year (always promising to work the flab off on my return) fast food became my lunchtime staple, and until last week, it had stayed that way.

My background is the polar opposite to the sedentary lifestyle I currently live. I have a black belt in progressive kickboxing, trained professionally with GB coaches in athletics (for the Javelin and Decathlon) and was also a Personal Trainer six years ago, those days I could comfortably showcase a medium size t-shirt…

So where did it all go wrong?

You may be in the same place I was, reading a blog off your laptop/desktop/ fancy mobile device and saying ‘Tomorrow is the day I get fit like him, tomorrow is the day I turn it around.’ Charming, huh. But it was the wake up call I needed and to accept HFM’s challenge to get as physically and aesthetically fit as possible, in seven weeks.

Having a background in personal training I thought I had a clear foundation in the mechanics and how to approach a gym, but I was wrong.

I step into UP Fitness’ gym, and am greeted by a gargantuan man,  Lucas Sheehan, not my trainer, but their in-house nutritionist and body composition expert. After having a calliper test on every part of your body and then the data getting run through wizardry algorithms, you know you’ve come to the right place for results, not excuses.

Fitness tests

I discover I am 20 per cent body fat – all stored in the very visible ‘stress zones’. Next it’s to the ‘lab’ to do some basic flexibility, strength and endurance tests to gauge my competence for the plan they will devise. It was worse than you can imagine and the high-intensity rowing left me on the floor, partially unconscious.

After the unconscious episode with Lucas, my first real sessions for the week and nutrition plan, is worked through with Matt Parsons. He seems like a great guy but at the end of the first week I feel like I might throw one of the dumbbells towards him when he’s least expecting it. He is a consummate professional – measuring and pushing me to my limits and beyond, in the gym and with my diet. I’m going from carb-loving crusader to zero carbs. Seriously, not even a carrot is allowed on my plan.

Green veg, white fish, white meat, medium eggs and the occasional trimmed sirloin. That is it, that’s not one meal, that’s breakfast lunch and dinner (I’m not even allowed to name these as such, so shh). I pair this one meat with a variety of dark green veggies.

So that’s what went down in week one. Conclusions? I just want some chips and a flipping burger. I can’t guzzle any fizzy drinks or alcohol for seven weeks either. The training is physically the hardest thing I have ever done and as I write this, I still taste the breakfast Salmon fillet I threw up on training session two of four.

The only way is up.

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