The Food

Ask any Personal Trainer, Dietician (but of course), Athlete or mother what the most important thing is to a healthier lifestyle, Food is your answer. But it's about the right food. Nonnas, look away now, because the right fuel for your body isn't copious amounts of cheese and pasta bake, followed up with a heaped serve of famous apple pie, with an accompanying cool, crisp cerveza or delightfully fruity Shiraz.

It's about having a balanced diet of carbohydrates, protein's and good essential fats.

Ok, ok, too complicated, just serve me another slice of decadent tiramisu.

But that's where the mind needs to overcome the cravings for the not so good stuff. Or so I've been told and I'd be guessing they'd be right. I mean I think we all know when our diet is off kilter. It can affect your mood, concentration and can lead to inflammation of the gut over time and just generally make you feel flat. You do that long enough, it becomes a habit that's hard to break and the food is too hard to give up as your body craves it. It's an addiction.

This is where I bring in a pretty switched on guy by the name of Stuart Dods from Primal Food here in sunny Melbourne. Stuart is also on board with this journey and he's going to ensure I'm eating right. Mind you, there is nothing super special that Stuart will be preparing for me, all the meals can be made at home easily by anyone. But his guidance on what to eat and when to eat it based on my training will be crucial and he knows his shit, which was evident by having my first dietary consultation. Down to the point of being able to pick on my ancestoral origin purely based on how my body reacts to the foods I take in now. I do tend to eat a lot of carbs and put weight mostly on my stomach for that fetching "beer gut" look.

Stu claims I will hate him as early as Day 4. But to be honest, I'm motivated to crush these 8 weeks, so I say bring it on. I'll probably still hate him though. I hope that I can learn to love him before the 8 weeks is through.

He wants to see my Body Fat % come down to at least 12% by the end of 8 weeks. In conjunction with building what is termed Lean Mass. I currently have 63kg of Lean Mass and am looking to increase this through diet and training. The rule being the more lean mass you have, the less Fat Mass you have. They both are intertwined and dance a delightful dance.

The below is a bit of a look at my menu to start off with. In conjunction with the following list of sumptuous delights, Stu's made it pretty clear the importance of:

Drinking at least 800ml of water as soon as I wake up, in fact, don't get out of bed till that's done. Yes, I'm going to bed with a very large glass of water (my wife is not jealous).
Must drink at least 3l of water daily and obviously more when I'm training.
I need to get my hands on and take in Coconut Oil (Organic Unrefined), Nut Butter (been told that the Almond Brazil Cashew flavour takes the win here) and any type of nuts (Macadamia, Brazil, Almond, Cashew, etc.). This is what I will use to get through the day between meals. Nom.

[mks_highlight color="#7f7f7f"] WEEK 1 MENU [/mks_highlight]

		Protein	Side DIsh	Fats
Day 1	Meal 1	Spinach Omelette		Tbs Coconut Oil
	Meal 2	Chicken Breast	Spinach Salad	Nuts
	Meal 3	NZ King Salmon	Steamed Broccoli	Nuts

Day 2	Meal 1	Spanish Omelette		Tbs Coconut Oil
	Meal 2		Asian Chicken Salad	Nuts
	Meal 3	Hopkins River Steak	Green Beans

Day 3	Meal 1	Omelette		Tbs Coconut Oil
	Meal 2	Roo Burgers	Garden Salad	Nuts
	Meal 3	Veal Schnitzel	Steamed Veg Combo	Nuts

Day 4	Meal 1	Boiled Eggs		Tbs Coconut Oil
	Meal 2	Portugese Chicken (not Nandos!)	Cauliflower Mash	Nuts
	Meal 3	Lamb Skewers	Smashed Peas	Nuts

Day 5	Meal 1	Omelette		Tbs Coconut Oil
	Meal 2	Mediterranean Tuna Patties	Green Beans	Nuts
	Meal 3	Roo Burgers	Pumpkin Mash	Nuts

Day 6	Meal 1	Omelette		Tbs Coconut Oil
	Meal 2	Chicken Breast	Carrot & Parsnip Mash	Nuts
	Meal 3	Boreworse Sausages	Ratatouille	Nuts

Day 7	Meal 1	Omelette		Tbs Coconut Oil
	Meal 2	Turkey Burgers	Smashed Peas	Nuts
	Meal 3	Portugese Chickhen	Roast Veggies	Nuts

The Training

Self preservation aside, the training is a pretty obvious component of the next 8 weeks. As the name of this site would suggest, the route to physical fitness lay in the Gentleman's Art of Boxing. I personally felt that there was a very technique and technical approach to boxing in general after having a couple of introductory classes. It's obviously high intensity and in the hands of skilled boxing trainer, there's no doubt you should end up on your back by the end of it and I felt that was going to give me the best chance of achieving my body fat goals by the end of the 8 weeks. And I also learn how to ~~kick ass~~ handle myself if I find myself in a hairy situation. Always good to know I've got my own back!

This is where I introduce the guys & gals at Fight Fit Boxing Centre in South Melbourne, Victoria. I've been to a couple of "Boxing Centre's" and this one just felt right. Handy location, great people, experienced people and they're all on board for this journey and will pull out all the stops to make sure I achieve my goals. Fight Fit will also be posting updates from time to time on my journey.

My pain instructor for the next 8 weeks, Dave Trotter

So what will my typical training schedule look like? Generally, it'll consist of between 2 & 3 one-on-one training sessions with a qualified boxing trainer per week, in this case it will be Fight Fit's resident Commando, Dave Trotter , who has had both local and international MMA fights (gulp). When I can't train with a trainer, I will be substituting that with one of Fight Fit's full-on classes. All sessions will run for 1 hour and I've been unequivocally told that I will vomit and possibly want to run out of the establishment screaming like a little girl. So this is no doubt going to test my mental strength to hang in there when the going get's tough.

In addition to these wonderful sessions, there will be a fortnightly 90 minute session conducted on a Saturday as a part of Fight Fit's Training Camp run by Paul Fyfield, a well recognised Kickboxing trainer.

Fight Fit Training Camp Instructor Paul Fyfield

I really don't know which gentleman is scarier, but I've been guaranteed that if it's results I want, these are the guys to deliver. No Pain, No Gain has never been a phrase that's rung truer.

Is it too late to pull out now?

The journey starts here, oh gawd...

Welcome to my very first post in what I hope is going to be an informative and dare I say it, inspirational, blog aimed fair and squarely at the Dad Bod's out there.

Over the course of the next 8 weeks, I'll be aiming to take this soft and sensitive "Dad Bod" of mine through a rigorous, but theoretically achievable training and diet regime to see exactly what can be achieved by your average 40-something Dad & Husband.

I guess a bit about me, I'm 40 years of age, married to my wonderful and supportive wife Petra for 15 years and have two fantastic kids in Isabelle (10) and Kai (7). We live where the city meets the country in Victoria, Australia and my entire working life I've been into the IT sector, so a rather sedentary work life.

Despite being what I now realise is mildly-semi-committed to staying fit by way of Personal Trainers (hope you're enjoying your holiday in Europe for the next 2 months by the way Adam), I can see that I have never been truly committed to the cause of losing the extra weight and getting my level of fitness up to where I really want it.

I want to be able to run around the oval with the football with my son and not feel like I'm having an coronary event. I want to be able to walk up the stairs at work 2 levels without hoping there's oxygen and a paramedic on standby once I exit the stairwell.

I also want to either prove or disprove the idea that you can get supremely fit and get ripped in this 8 week tour of pain. I'm frustrated by watching the "Six Pack Shortcut Guy", or the "Athlean-X" guy, or our friends over at "Freeletics". So let us put the commitment required to achieve the results, and by us, I mean me, and see what can actually be achieved by an average every day kinda guy.

In general terms though, the goal is to reduce my Body Fat weight by at least 50%, of which I have a healthy 18kg worth, and really work hard to get myself very fit. The mixture of training and diet will get me to these goals.

It's tough carrying this Dad Bod around all the time, so for context and by definition, and I take extreme artistic license in where I choose my source for definition, "Dad Bod" is referred as...

"Dad bod" is a male body type that is best described as "softly round." It's built upon the theory that once a man has found a mate and fathered a child, he doesn't need to worry about maintaining a sculpted physique.

Personally, I let that description set in for a moment, and was then hit with a more apt analogy of this common affliction...

If human bodies were cuts of meat, the dad bod would skew more marbled rib eye than filet mignon; or, if human bodies were sea mammals, dad bod would be more like a grazing manatee than a speedy dolphin. The dad bod is more mudslide than mountain, more soft serve than sorbet, more sad trombone than clarinet, more mashed potato than skinny fry. The dad bod is built for comfort.

Yeah, ok, that's pretty much me, but clearly I'm not the only one with this "terrible" subscription. As if going through with this is not throwing myself under the bus enough, I'm certainly throwing myself under a bus that just so happens to be full of 120 kilo-a-piece construction workers by saying that there's plenty of "us" around. At work, at your kids soccer practice, whilst waiting in line at the grocery checkout.

But this is where I say, NO MORE.

Slowly watching my belt buckle disappear, running out of breath walking to Mustafa's Kebab Emporium and most importantly, not having the energy to get through the day and spend that quality time with my family.

There will be pain, there will be tears (real men cry) of both Agony and Ecstasy and their may be the odd vomiting scene that's for my trainers enjoyment is likely to not be edited or censored in anyway.

So away we go and I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I'm likely to cry through it...