The key to real success is consistency.  Whether you are exercising, weight lifting or just eating, it is important to remember that maintaining a regular routine is the way to achieve your dream shape -- and keep it

Yvonne's journey to transform her body is continuing to go really well. Regular eating and exercise have become part of her routine and that has helped develop tremendous habits in her life. It is the ordinary things consistently done that produce extraordinary results.

Yvonne is continuing to get fitter and stronger, but change takes time. You can eat and exercise perfectly today and tomorrow but when you step on the scales, you will not have lost 25lbs. It needs consistency.

It's just like applying for a mortgage -- your bank wants to know if you have been saving consistently before they will give you a loan. In the same way, your body needs to know it will get fed regularly before it decides to give up fat.

Disciplined

Fat is a stored source of energy. Your body will hold on to it for as long as it can and use muscle as energy if it does not know when its next deposit is coming. Yvonne has been disciplined with her eating patterns and she has been very consistent with her training.


Yvonne's body fat and weight loss was slow at the start of the last month. She felt poorly one of the weeks but, in fairness, she still arrived at the gym. She stuck to her habits and her routines.
When you are not feeling 110pc, or if a person is recovering from an illness or bereavement you should modify your training sessions.

You can achieve this by reducing the volume of training -- for instance, adjusting the number of sets to one or two and reducing the repetitions to six or eight of the weight training exercises you are doing. You maintain a heavy weight on the bar, but take a longer rest between exercises.

Weight training is anabolic and so it helps rebuild the body. Cardio during this time period would create more stress and lead to catabolism where the body breaks down muscle, similar to the way it does with long-distance runners.

So after a week of reducing the volume of work, Yvonne started to feel better and she was ready to pick up on the hard work.

Fat loss or weight loss does not happen in a linear fashion.

Adapt

You do not lose 1-1.5lbs a week consistently. One week you may lose 3lbs and then, the following week, your body may stall and take time to adapt and you lose nothing. But you have still averaged 1.5lbs of fat loss over two weeks.

Yvonne has continued with her target progress rate which was 0.6pc body fat a week. Her initial weight was 81.3kg, of which 56.4kg was muscle and the remaining 24.9kg was fat. This gave her a body-fat percentage of 30.4pc, or 55lbs of fat.

Yvonne is now 69.8kg, of which 56.6kg is muscle. The remaining 13.2kg, or 29lbs, is fat and her body fat percentage is now 19pc.

She has now lost 26lbs of fat while maintaining the muscle she started with. The goal we set at the start is to go below 16pc body fat.

During our time in the gym, Yvonne has got a lot stronger in her weight training and faster during her sprints.

As you get stronger, the muscles that stabilise the hip, shoulder and knee joints must get stronger to bear the heavier weights you can now lift.

There is a saying that you cannot fire a cannon from a canoe, so we are working on strengthening the muscles that stabilise the joint in Yvonne's left shoulder so that we can improve her pressing and pulling strength.

As Yvonne continually drops her body fat, we will need to keep adapting her nutrition and training programmes to continue her progress. If you want to change your body shape, you need to eat for the body you want and not for the body you have.

And so as Yvonne is now 26lbs of fat lighter, she will not need to eat as much as she did for her former weight.

Patterns

She has been consistent in her eating patterns and this has kept her metabolism high and it also ensures her hormonal system will work efficiently.

Yvonne has recorded the breakdown of her foods in her protein, carbohydrate and fat intake in her weekly food diary. This involves a bit of weighing food, but since we eat a lot of the same food every week, once you have done it, you arethen armed with more info-rmation to make specific changes.

One gram of carbohydrates and one gram of weight of protein are equal to four calories each and one gram of fat is equal to nine calories.

This is not to say that fat is the enemy. Nor is it saying that it is all about calories, as 100 calories of ice cream will have a different effect on your hormonal system than a 100 calories of broccoli.

It is important we know the ratios of our food intake between the three to make informed decisions about how changes can be implemented. Yvonne and I have started working on dietary strategies to make fat disappear into thin air in the shortest amount of time possible, as she approaches her summer holidays next month.

There is no secret to Yvonne's success. She has consistently trained hard and has adhered to her nutrition plan.

The only difference between ordinary and extraordinary results is having the desire to give that little bit extra.

Yvonne has clearly demonstrated that desire, and this shows in her results to date.

Yvonne’s take

'It's like I've been brainwashed -- I just can't cheat'

For the first few weeks of this month, I really felt like I was going nowhere. Even though I was working as hard as always, the weight just didn't seem to move.

On top of that, towards the end of the first week, I really wasn't feeling great.

On the Saturday I felt tired and weak and when Aidan, one of the other coaches at the gym, stopped me before the end of my workout, I was really annoyed with myself. After all the weeks where I surpassed my own expectations, I felt like I was failing.

The next morning, I went to my local gym to do my sprint intervals and I couldn't finish them either. Monday came around and I still wasn't feeling great, but there was no way I was giving in. Mind over matter, I told myself. Once I got there, I would be fine.

I suppose I was worried that if I missed even one session, I would get out of the habit of going and I wouldn't be able to get back into the swing of it. So I went to the gym after work but the minute I got there, I felt a bit stupid.

There was no way I was going to be able to work out. It was all I could do not to faint as Damien was taking my body fat. So I told him and he sent me home. For the rest of that week, we took it a bit easier with the workouts and soon I was back on track. Since then, I am a little bit easier on myself. I will go to the gym at least five times a week, but if I am feeling tired, I will give myself two days off.

I think part of the reason I hit a wall was to do with the food. Even though my workouts had changed dramatically since the first or second month of training, I was still eating the same amounts.

This was probably why my body fat wasn't coming down as quickly as I felt it should -- I kept losing muscle.

So I increased the amount of protein I was eating, having chicken or turkey for breakfast instead of eggs, or having meat as a snack instead of nuts -- which I found a bit difficult at the start. My stomach always seemed to be still full when the time came around for eating.

Another thing I still have a huge problem with is having a cheat meal.

No matter how many times Damien tells me that I need to have one or my body won't drop the fat, I just can't seem to do it.

And I have tried. Each week I plan it. I decide that I am going to have some chocolate, or a slice of cake, or some sweet potato or whatever. But when the time comes, I just can't do it.

And it's not that I have forgotten how delicious food other than meat, fish and salads tastes like. In the last week or two I have found myself devouring the cooking pages of magazines, something I would never have done before.

But I just can't eat my cheat. It's like I have been brainwashed. Or that no occasion is important enough, or no food delicious enough, for me to 'break my diet'. Or maybe it's the word 'cheat'. I don't know. I am going to a wedding this weekend so I am going to give it another go.

I have been doing a lot of intervals at the gym this month -- sweat sessions, as Damien calls them -- which I find a lot more demanding in terms of fitness than the straight weight-training sessions, but they are over quicker. I have also been doing exercises to strengthen my shoulders as apparently one is much weaker than the other. My goal for myself this month exercise-wise is to master press ups.

Another goal is to locate a gym in Spain where I can work out. My husband and I are heading over for two weeks. I must admit I am dreading it as much as I am looking forward to it. Will I be able to stick to my new regime away from the structure of my everyday life? Watch this space.

If you are interested in achieving optimum results, then call 01-2176518 or email info@bfit4life.ie to get started on a program that ensures that fat lost stays lost.