As promised in my last posting, I will share with all of you, the meal plan and exercise plan for the Biggest Loser Allianz. This posting is called the Virtual Trainer, because all of you can read and follow the exercise routine and meal plan and lose weight easily. When it is time to change the exercise or increase the intensity, I will post it up here, so you will know when its time to make those changes. Also, if you have any questions, leave a comment and I will get back to you. So in short, its like having a Personal Trainer, but in a virtual setting and its absolutely free of charge. I hope everyone who reads this blog on a regulare basis will take the opprtunity to try this out.
So here is the plan.
Meal Plan
Once I received all the food diaries from the participants, I noticed a few common traits. Perhaps some of you may be doing the same, if you are, its time to break those habits.
Bad Habits
1) Sweet Drinks – On Average, these participants were consuming between 5 to 7 sweet drinks a day. I am not saying no sweet drinks at all, but sweet drinks are what I like to call empty calories. Does not fill you up, but high in calories and these are calories you can do without
2) Snacking – all the participants have similar traits. They constantly snack on unhealthy things between their meals. From Goreng pisang, to keropok to karipap. Again, these are unnecessary calories.
3) Unhealthy Choice of Food – One of the biggest problems I noticed is, that all the participants had poor choice of food. The normal breakfast is either nasi lemak, mee goreng or some kind of cheese bun.
Not wanting to make it too drastic, I decided to make 3 simple changes to their diet plan. So here is what they are doing now.
1) Breakfast has to be healthy. The choices they have are:-
a) cereal with low fat milk and a green apple. Cereal here refers to oat bran kind of cereal like Nestle Fitness. No Koko Crunch, Honey Stars and Fruit Loops as these are mainly sugar based.
b) 2 half boiled eggs and 2 slices of wholemeal toast
c) Wholemeal Sandwich – egg sandwich, chilli tuna sandwich (no Mayo) or ham sandwich
d) Thosai or Iddly
2) No Snacking in between. Keep your meals to Brakfast, Lunch and Dinner only. No Snacking in between be it a drink or food. This way, they truly appreciate their food now
3) Keeping sweet drinks to just 4 glasses a day. So now that these partcipants have a quota each day, they really got to consciously think about every drink that they have. May target is to reduce this to 2 drinks per day.
Exercise Routine
When coming up with the exercise routine, I had 2 main challenges. 1) the lack of equipment –so I had to get creative with what I had. 2) that these participants have never worked out before and you can’t push them too much or they will get injured.
With those 2 things in mind, here is the exercise routine I designed for them.
Chair Squats
10 reps, 3 sets with 1 minute rest between sets. The reason for going with chair squats instead of normal squats, because I am not sure if these participants can handle it. Its basically sitting down and getting up from the chair, but you are not allowed to use your hands to assist.
Wall Push Ups
10 reps, 3 sets with 1 minute rest between sets. Wall push ups are a great way to build up your push up strength. If you are not able to do push ups, you can start of with wall push ups first until you become stronger. To do this, stand about 2 feet away from the wall, put your arms straight and rest against the wall. As you get stronger, you will move your feet further and further away from the wall.
Box lift
10 reps, 3 sets with 1 minute rest between sets. I filled up a box with about 1kg of paper. Then I had them bendover, and lift it up above their heads. As they improve, I will keep increasing the weight.
Knee ups
10 reps each leg, 3 sets with 1 minute rest between sets. To finish up, I made them do a march on the spot. They needed to raise their knees as high as they could, put it down, and then raise the other knee.
This routine needs to be performed 4 times a week and for best results, they should finish up with a 20 minute walk. So do the routine above first, and then finish up with a 20 minute walk. But since this is their first time, I just got them to do this and skipped the walking bit. But this week, I am planning on doing this and adding in the walking bit. I hope all of you will give this workout routine and meal plan and a try and enjoy the results.
Before I sign off, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone and look forward to reading your comments.
So here is the plan.
Meal Plan
Once I received all the food diaries from the participants, I noticed a few common traits. Perhaps some of you may be doing the same, if you are, its time to break those habits.
Bad Habits
1) Sweet Drinks – On Average, these participants were consuming between 5 to 7 sweet drinks a day. I am not saying no sweet drinks at all, but sweet drinks are what I like to call empty calories. Does not fill you up, but high in calories and these are calories you can do without
2) Snacking – all the participants have similar traits. They constantly snack on unhealthy things between their meals. From Goreng pisang, to keropok to karipap. Again, these are unnecessary calories.
3) Unhealthy Choice of Food – One of the biggest problems I noticed is, that all the participants had poor choice of food. The normal breakfast is either nasi lemak, mee goreng or some kind of cheese bun.
Not wanting to make it too drastic, I decided to make 3 simple changes to their diet plan. So here is what they are doing now.
1) Breakfast has to be healthy. The choices they have are:-
a) cereal with low fat milk and a green apple. Cereal here refers to oat bran kind of cereal like Nestle Fitness. No Koko Crunch, Honey Stars and Fruit Loops as these are mainly sugar based.
b) 2 half boiled eggs and 2 slices of wholemeal toast
c) Wholemeal Sandwich – egg sandwich, chilli tuna sandwich (no Mayo) or ham sandwich
d) Thosai or Iddly
2) No Snacking in between. Keep your meals to Brakfast, Lunch and Dinner only. No Snacking in between be it a drink or food. This way, they truly appreciate their food now
3) Keeping sweet drinks to just 4 glasses a day. So now that these partcipants have a quota each day, they really got to consciously think about every drink that they have. May target is to reduce this to 2 drinks per day.
Exercise Routine
When coming up with the exercise routine, I had 2 main challenges. 1) the lack of equipment –so I had to get creative with what I had. 2) that these participants have never worked out before and you can’t push them too much or they will get injured.
With those 2 things in mind, here is the exercise routine I designed for them.
Chair Squats
10 reps, 3 sets with 1 minute rest between sets. The reason for going with chair squats instead of normal squats, because I am not sure if these participants can handle it. Its basically sitting down and getting up from the chair, but you are not allowed to use your hands to assist.
Wall Push Ups
10 reps, 3 sets with 1 minute rest between sets. Wall push ups are a great way to build up your push up strength. If you are not able to do push ups, you can start of with wall push ups first until you become stronger. To do this, stand about 2 feet away from the wall, put your arms straight and rest against the wall. As you get stronger, you will move your feet further and further away from the wall.
Box lift
10 reps, 3 sets with 1 minute rest between sets. I filled up a box with about 1kg of paper. Then I had them bendover, and lift it up above their heads. As they improve, I will keep increasing the weight.
Knee ups
10 reps each leg, 3 sets with 1 minute rest between sets. To finish up, I made them do a march on the spot. They needed to raise their knees as high as they could, put it down, and then raise the other knee.
This routine needs to be performed 4 times a week and for best results, they should finish up with a 20 minute walk. So do the routine above first, and then finish up with a 20 minute walk. But since this is their first time, I just got them to do this and skipped the walking bit. But this week, I am planning on doing this and adding in the walking bit. I hope all of you will give this workout routine and meal plan and a try and enjoy the results.
Before I sign off, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone and look forward to reading your comments.
3 comments:
I shall skip the exercise plan.
But as for the meal plan, if its a good start i believe i have never consumed more than 4 glasses of sweet drinks a day. A full glass of freshly-blended fruit juice cannot kira la, right or not Rajan?
Equally, the snacks. Its not really an everyday affair for my family to have kuih during teatime. Only when guests dropby would we be enjoying tea, and that too over a very light meal.
Malam as usual sangkut la. Its either burger, fried kuey tiow, roti canai etc or i'll be starving throughout. Still not mentally strong enough to go with salad alone.
Thats it for now. Thanks bro. And Merry Xmas & Happy 2010 to you and family too.
The meal plan sounds good. I think I can incorporate that for my breakfast as well.
2 Half-boiled eggs, some fruit and green tea for breakfast.... do you think this would suffice for someone who's looking to gain weight?
Kerp: Fruit juices, it depends what fruits you are using. But yes, generally, its still way better than a Coffee or Milo.
For dinner, no worries, we do it phase by phase. So if you can follow what i have posted here 70% of the time, you are doing great.
Aizan: For gaining healthy muscle mass, i would actually recommend more complex carbs and protein in your diet. 2 half boiled eggs are great and you should take 2 slices of wholemeal toast with it. Basically, you need to start eating like a cave man... meat meat meat....and wash it down with milk. skip the salads and fruits , since your goals are different.
Most important...your workout needs to be tough (training to failure with heavier weights) and focused (focus on only 1 or 2 body parts per training session)and at least 3 to 4 days rest before you hit them again.
So if you are doing chest and back on Monday, you should only hit your chest and back again on Friday, and not earlier.
Hope this info helps.
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