Welcome back to the blog. This week I am going over my fitness journey so far. In my introductory post I mentioned I was incredibly unhappy with my body. I was overweight, not healthy, and because I was not impressed with how I looked, I became depressed. Today however I can at least say I am making good progress towards my “dream body”. I still have a ways to go but I am treating this post as an update. Hope you can gather some useful tips and insight from my experience thus far. Let’s hop in.
My starting Point
I started my weight loss journey on June 1st of 2023. At the time I weighed 230.3lbs and had a rough body fat percentage of 37.2%. It was the worst shape I have ever been in. Before I stepped on the scale in June I knew I wasn’t in a good place by my standards, just by looking in the mirror. When I did finally step on the scale to confront what I was putting off for so long, I found my motivation to change. Prior to that moment I had zero motivation to go to the gym, go on a walk, or even consider adding exercise to my weekly routine. But thanks to the high body weight and body fat percentage displayed, I had to do something, that day.
75 Hard
At the time I was desperate to do anything. So, naturally I chose one of the most difficult and strict challenges. 75 Hard. For those that do not know, 75 Hard is a 75 day plan that requires multiple things to be done each day to complete 1 day.
The rules are as follows –
- Follow a diet
- 2x 45 minute workouts – One of which must be completed outside
- Drink a gallon of water
- Read 10 pages of a non-fiction book
- Take daily progress pictures
Believe it or not I struggled most with reading 10 pages per day. By the time I finished my 2 workouts, finished off my gallon of water, and counted all my calories, I was way too tired to even pick up a book. Going into the challenge I knew it was incredibly difficult but I welcomed the challenge. I wanted to be more disciplined. However, on top of doing the challenge I failed to realize how much harder it is while being a father of four. I had no time to hangout with my family and my newborn daughter at the time.
I made it to week three before deciding enough was enough and I needed to change my strategy to make more time for my family. Although I failed, this challenge did give me some of the much needed discipline I was lacking. Today I appreciate 75 Hard as a plan just for the realization that I don’t need to do anything that drastic to get the results I want.
Trying something slightly easier
After failing 75 Hard, I decided to take a much more logical and “sustainable” approach. I cut out all eating out and junk food as a whole. Set my daily calorie goal to roughly 1,200 and set a goal to burn 800 calories per day. I was in a deep deficit here but my body was responding well to what I was doing so I decided I should try it for awhile. For reference, the calorie calculator I used said if I wanted to lose 2lbs of fat per week, I should have been eating 1,863 calories per day. To those wondering, this is why “sustainable” is in quotes, because it really wasn’t a good idea to cut calories quite that low. For reference, below is a table showing my plan at the time and what I was doing on a weekly basis.
| Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | |
| Calories | 1,200 | 1,200 | 1,200 | 1,200 | 1,200 | 1,200 | 1,200 |
| Workouts | Cardio | Lifting | Cardio | Lifting | Cardio | Lifting | Cardio |
I did achieve incredible results during this period (Mid June to end of July). Because of this, my motivation was at an all time high. I cruised through the rest of June and dominated July because of the progress I saw in the mirror and on the scale. Sadly, sustainability became an important factor that burned me out going into August.
Burn out
August, oh I look back at this time and wish I could’ve done something different. You see, we went on a vacation to Florida around the first week of August and it felt impossible to keep up with my diet. We were going out to restaurants and I was no longer working out. I indulged myself a bit too much. Initially I was going into the vacation thinking it would be a nice week long break from all the hard work I was putting in. Little did I know, this trip was the catalyst to taking a 6 month break. Not just one week as planned.
In hindsight I think I built up too much of my fitness goals to “getting my body ready for the beach”. So as soon as we were at the beach in Florida and I was able to show off a lot of the work I had put in, my motivation evaporated. It felt like I had nothing else to grind for or look forward to. Subconsciously I had reached my goal and was done. In reality I wanted to go much further but once again lacked the motivation.
My overall fitness journey was built on a house of cards. I hit my first goal, only to realize it was the only goal I actually set for myself. A mixture of dieting too hard and even working out too much led to a total collapse of the routines I had put in place to become healthier. This quite frankly is where I learned to set better goals and to actually do things that can be sustainable forever. After all, I want a healthy lifestyle. Not just to appear healthy once or twice a year on vacation.
Where I am Currently and What I do Differently Now
I got back on my fitness journey in March 2024 and have never felt better. I definitely regret my 6 month hiatus but luckily I was still conscious about what I was eating. Because of that, even though I didn’t work out at all in the 6 month break, I did manage to maintain my weight at 200lbs. I am now eating a much more sustainable 1,550 calories a day with a goal of losing 2lbs of fat per week. I still try and burn 800 calories per workout session and I do try to reach 8,000 steps on my rest days.
As shown below, instead of working out 7 days a week, I only workout 4 days a week now. This plan is far more sustainable for my schedule and I haven’t had issues with burnout as I did in the past. At this time I am still seeing good results, rivaling the results even from working out 7 days a week. I give a lot of credit to how I now set goals based on what I learned from burning myself out last year.
| Current Day | Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday |
| Calories | 1,550 | 1,550 | 1,550 | 1,550 | 1,550 | 1,550 | 1,550 |
| Workouts | Rest | Rest | Cardio | Lifting | Recovery | Cardio | Lifting |
Cardio Routine
Cardio is very simple for me. I wanted to do something that I could easily recover from but was hard enough to burn plenty of calories in a reasonable amount of time. With time and recovery in mind I decided my choice of cardio was incline walking with a little bit of running sprinkled in. I will usually have the treadmill at an incline between 9 and 18 with a speed between 3.2mph and 3.8mph. Generally I will pick a setting to start at. Lets say an incline of 10 and a speed of 3.7mph for this example. I will stay on that setting for 20 minutes then take a 2 minute cooldown. For the cooldown I drop the incline to 0 and set speed to 3.8.
Once that cooldown is done I will either go back to my first settings if it felt good, or I will make it slightly harder. To make it more difficult I will usually increase the incline before messing with the speed too much. I repeat my incline walking phase of the workout for another 20 minutes followed by another 2 minute cooldown.
At this point in the workout I would have been on the treadmill for 44 minutes total and my goal is 1 hour. This is where I will introduce some running. Continuing from the example above I would keep the incline of the treadmill at 0 from my cooldown, but I will increase the speed to a jogging pace, generally 6mph. My speed will stay the same up until the 55 minute mark. From there I bump speed to 7mph – 8mph and sprint out my final 3 minutes before ending my session with a 2 minute cooldown.
Cardio routine example
| Incline Walk | Cooldown | Incline Walk | Cooldown | Jogging | Sprint | Cooldown |
| 3.2mph – 3.8mph / Incline 9 – 18 | 3.8mph / Incline 0 | 3.2mph – 3.8mph / Incline 9 – 18 | 3.8mph / Incline 0 | 6mph / Incline 0 | 7mph – 8mph / Incline 0 | 3mph / Incline 0 |
| 20 minutes | 2 minutes | 20 minutes | 2 minutes | 11 minutes | 3 minutes | 2 minutes |
Weight Lifting Routine
Just like cardio, I keep my lifting workouts pretty short and sweet (more like short and sweaty). As someone that has a full time job, 4 kids, a wife, a blog, YouTube channel, and even a newsletter you could say I stay rather busy. The last thing I want is to force a 2 hour workout session on top of it. So with that being said I chose to do 2 full body workouts per week. I plan on switching to a 4 day workout split later but that’ll be after I hit my goal that we will go over later. For now, lets just look at my workout.
Full body minimalist workout (one for each day)
I prefer to start my weightlifting workouts with the rowing machine. This is simply to warm up my full body in a short amount of time. Another good option if you do not like rowing, would be the stair stepper. Once the warmup is complete I go into the exercises I am least excited about, legs. Doing this early makes it easier to not come up with excuses to skip my legs later in the workout. I recommend you put your least favorite exercises first as well if you fear you’ll come up with any reason to skip them like I would! Exercises 4-10 are all ones that I enjoy doing. They target the muscles I want to develop the most. These include chest, back, triceps, biceps, and shoulders. I will also add an ab exercise or two depending on time.
Choosing sets x reps to maximize time
To make the most of my time I run 3 sets of 8-12 reps on my leg, chest, and back exercises since I have two lifts for each of those parts of my body. Leg extension + leg curl for example. On my triceps and biceps I use 4 sets of 8-12 reps since they only have one exercise for each. Finally for shoulders and abs if they are added in, I use a set method called myorep match sets.
Myorep explanation
The simple explanation is you pick a weight. It can be an external weight like a dumbbell or barbell, or your own body weight, and you do a set until absolute failure. Failure as in you quite literally cannot get the weight up again for another rep. You then rest for 5-10 seconds and perform the exercise again and match the amount of reps you got the first time. You can take 5 second breaks on your way to matching your first set’s reps, but the goal is to hit the same amount of reps again for each set. I do this 4 times for shoulders and abs. Because you have such short breaks this allows your muscles to stay closer to failure and in turn grow more. It also shortens up your workout time a considerable amount.
Tracking my workouts
I use an ap on iOS called “Fitsession” to track all my workouts. I create my own custom workouts and can see my progress on any lift I want. It is incredibly useful for tracking total volume and new PRs. It even has an estimated workout time feature that is handy when you first build your own workouts. I highly recommend you give this app a try! Speaking of apps though, lets get into the app that keeps all of this on track for me, Notion.
Using Notion (a productivity app) for fitness
Going into this year I had a desire to organize my life and become more productive. That is how I found my new all time favorite app, Notion. I plan to talk a LOT more about Notion and how I have used it to make my life better in the future. For today however we can talk about how I used Notion to improve my fitness goals and fitness plan.
Notion x Fitness
This is a simple Notion calendar to track my workouts. Governing these workouts is a fitness database that encompasses all of my fitness goals and tasks. Since I am big in gaming my goals are labelled as “Quests” and my tasks are “Bounties”. Just to have some fun with it.
Tracking my workouts is one very simple way to keep myself accountable with the power of Notion. I make sure I only workout 4x a week and even include a day of recovery at home. Sometimes it is as simple of having it laid out on a calendar with a checkbox to keep myself motivated. Now that I also have my goals in Notion I won’t run into the same issue I had last year where I reach my one and only goal and just give up because I have nothing to work towards.
Notion x Diet
On top of tracking my workouts and overall fitness goals I also have a system in Notion to plan the meals I am eating each week. This single system has taken away so much stress out of having a good diet. The ability to plan my meals a week in advance and have a shopping list prepared automatically, made eating healthier so simple. I go weeks on end not missing my calorie or macro goals because of this. As the old saying goes “failing to plan is planning to fail”.
I strongly suggest that whether you choose to use Notion or not, be sure to plan your meals in advance and of course count your calories as you go. For anyone wondering I use an app called “Calory” on my iPhone to track my calories and macros. Notion + Calory = Success for me.
Closing thoughts on Notion
As you can see from my couple of blurbs above I really like Notion. It genuinely is my favorite application overall. Using it for fitness has been a game changer compared to using a pen and paper or other apps that don’t allow full customization of workouts, goals, calorie counts, recipes, etc. I do want to go through a full Notion tour at a later date and more of this can be explored there. Check out the YouTube channel and depending on when you are reading this I may have my Ultimate Notion Guide up!
Really the point of showing you Notion is to send home the fact that your fitness journey can be much easier if you have a method of tracking. Whether it is tracking goals, meals, routines, habits, or calories. There are TONS of apps out there that accomplish these tracking goals and I recommend you just pick one you like. Talking about goals however, lets hop in to how I have set better fitness goals for myself, using Notion or not.
Setting better fitness goals
To avoid the “house of cards” goal setting I did last year I really wanted to focus on how I set goals going into 2024. I use a system of goal setting called S.M.A.R.T goals. You may have heard of it but let’s go in depth for those that may not have. SMART is an acronym for…
- S – Specific
Goals should be clear, well-defined, and specific.
This answers the questions: What exactly do you want to achieve? Why is it important? What steps are necessary to accomplish it? - M – Measurable
Goals should be quantifiable and measurable, allowing you to track progress and determine when they have been achieved.
This answers the question: How will you measure progress and know when the goal is accomplished? - A – Achievable
Goals should be realistic and attainable within the constraints of resources, time, and circumstances. They should stretch your abilities but remain within reach.
This answers the question: Is the goal feasible given the available resources and constraints? - R – Relevant
Goals should be relevant and aligned with your broader objectives, values, and priorities. They should contribute to your overall vision and support your personal mission.
This answers the question: Does the goal align with your values and contribute to your long-term objectives? - T – Time-bound
Goals should have a defined timeframe or deadline for completion, providing a sense of urgency and accountability. They help you stay focused and motivated to achieve results within a specific period.
This answers the question: When will the goal be accomplished?
I have 3 S.M.A.R.T goals related directly to fitness. I have one that is time-bound and achievable in 12 weeks. A goal to be accomplished in 6 months. Finally I also have a goal set for the whole year. With this system in place I am able to always have a goal in mind when I am at the gym. It is much harder to “fall off” as I really took the time in curating these goals to fit my life and where I want to be. And no, not just planning for one vacation this time.
SMART Goal Example
An example goal for you could be as simple as losing that 10lbs of fat you have been wanting to. Put into this system your goal could look like this…
- S – Lose 10lbs by going to the gym and working out
- M – I weigh 210lbs right now, I need to reach 200lbs
- A – Am I willing to commit to this goal? Do I know how I can reach this goal? Do I have the capacity to reach this goal? If your answer can be yes to all three, then you are well on your way
- R – Is this goal tied to a bigger goal? It is up to you to decide if there is a larger goal to tie this to. Mine is simply, be healthier for my family, if you needed any ideas.
- T – I want to reach my goal weight two months from now, and include the date.
With goal setting in mind, this is my goal
- 15% Body Fat
- 180lbs
- By June 30th 2024
This is my goal progress so far
Starting Point
- 37.2% Body Fat
- 230.3lbs
- June 1st 2023
Today
- 27.3% Body Fat
- 193lbs
- April 8th 2024
Weight: 230.3lbs – Body Fat Percentage: 37.2%
Weight: 193lbs – Body Fat Percentage: 27.3%
Caveat to the images above, almost all of my results came from 3 months, June and July of 2023 and March of 2024. As you can see I still have a bit to go, but with the systems I have in place I believe I should be able to make it by my deadline. If you have any goals you are setting for yourself please let me know in the comments! I would love to see what others are working towards as we venture down this path together.
I want you to leave with this
It has been a rollercoaster this last year when it comes to fitness. I took a massive break that I deeply regret. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of where I could be if I was smart in setting my goals last year. Or I often think that if I was just smarter in coming up with a plan that was more sustainable, I could be at that 15% body fat by now. I implore you take note of what I had to learn the hard way. Find a plan that is sustainable for you and be consistent. I know I am not the only one that wonders “where would I be if I just did X”. Don’t let that happen to you on your fitness journey.
Set SMART goals, be consistent, use Notion or another app if it helps you like it helped me, and most importantly, be true to yourself. Not just in the cliché way either. Figure out what it really is that you want for yourself. Whether it is in fitness like we discussed today or in another aspect of life. There is no point in saying you want to be shredded with a 6 pack if that isn’t something you really care about or value. Take your time, decide what you want, and as Nike says, “Just do it”.
I’ll see you again next week. If you want even more content please consider checking out my About page and follow me on other platforms. Thank you! -Kenyan