Hey, how's it going? My name is Lucy and in this video today I'm going to be discussing my fitness and weight loss journey. In total, I've lost 30 kilos, and I managed to get stronger, healthier and fitter without ever having to leave my home. So if you're looking to lose weight, or to get fitter and stronger, but you're not really keen on the idea of the gym, then hopefully this video will be able to give you some motivation or some ideas and how you can do that. So to give you a little history, when I was in school, I read PE lessons, I was so self conscious I had been there. So I definitely wasn't super sporty or athletic.
But I was active still. And I would take part in different sports and activities. But then as I got older, and I had to look after myself more, I tended to eat more and become less active. And I found the weight was starting to creep on and on. And then when I hit 18, I decided to move to Australia. And I was suddenly living on my own working full time. And I had to start cooking for myself and looking after myself. And it was at that point where the weight really started to pile on. And I feel looking back now that I was kind of oblivious to how much weight I was putting on. And I look back and I see pictures of myself and I was bigger than I remember myself being at the time. But that being said, I knew I was overweight. And I knew I was also unhealthy. And I had tried a couple of the fad diets things like shake diets and smoothie diet with no results over the years, but I just really didn't know what else I could do. So I gradually continued to gain more and more weight. Until one day I was watching TV show The Biggest Loser.
And it was the last episode where all the contestants, they come back and they've been gone for three months. And they've completely transformed themselves. And I looked at them and I thought, Wow, they look amazing. And if they can do that, then I can do this. So it was from that moment onwards that everything changed. So nutrition had always been something that was really confusing for me, I really didn't know where to start, I thought I was eating a relatively healthy diet because I was cooking all my meals at home.
And when I went to the supermarket for snacks, I thought I was buying the healthier snack options, things like muesli bars or orange juices instead of having fizzy drinks and chocolate. So I just didn't know what to do. But when I really started to look at the science of it, it was all coming down to one thing and it's actually very, very simple. All it is is how many calories you're eating versus how many calories your body is burning, so calories in versus calories out. And when I calculated it, the amount of food that I was eating was far outweighing the amount of calories that my body was burning in a day. So all I had to do was flip it and consistently eat less calories in a day than my body was burning.
But the key word there is consistency. I consistently ate less calories in a day, then my body was burning. I set myself a target of calories to eat per day that I knew was below how many my body was burning. And I stuck to it, I found healthier versions of recipes that I already loved. I stopped snacking as much and I educated myself on how many calories are in certain foods. So I suppose I did calorie count. But I only did it for a certain amount of time.
And I then had the knowledge that I could just do it intuitively. And I sort of had a gauge about how many calories were in certain foods and what I could eat and what I couldn't eat. The one thing I didn't do is I didn't restrict myself, I didn't cut out any particular food groups. I didn't stop eating chocolate or drinking coffee, the things I really like. I just reduced how much I was having. And I think that's really important because you kind of go mad if you restrict yourself too much. And then came the exercise. I was not fit at all I couldn't even run 500 meters I couldn't lift my own bodyweight. So I grabbed some fitness DVDs which were a mixture of bodyweight training with high intensity interval training and Tabata style weapons. And I just did those every single day. They were about hour long videos, and I just repeated the same ones over and over and over again for three months duration. And eventually the week started falling off after about six to seven weeks I started to see bigger and bigger increases in how much weight I was losing until I reached a healthy weight.
And not only had I lost weight, but my fitness had improved as well. I remember when I started doing those workouts, I couldn't even get halfway through one of them. I couldn't do one push up. I was covered in sweat and absolutely exhausted by the end of the warmup. And then after three months, I was breezing through them and had to go and find DVDs which are harder to keep challenging myself. One day I decided to go for a run once something I've never really done before. And I went out expecting to be able to run maybe a kilometer and I did an entire lap of the lake that was In my house, which was five kilometers, it was the furthest I'd ever run in my life. So I started to incorporate a little bit more running into my routine. I started running three days a week, and the rest of the days, I was continuing to do my workout DVDs at home. And I just continued to do that, for at least two years, I was at a pretty standard fitness level, I weighed a healthy weight now, and everything was pretty good. But it started to become a little bit boring and a little bit routine.
A couple of things changed in my life, I went to study at university as a mature age student. And due to the constraints on my work, I got a new job, which was working at night. So I would often be working until four or six in the morning, and then going to university in the day. So I started to gain a little bit of way, and my fitness levels dropped a little bit, my eating got a little bit worse, and things just started to go, I could see them going a little bit out of control again.
Ultimately, after a couple of months, I probably gained about seven kilos. And although it didn't look too much different, I could feel it. And I needed to change something to try and get me back into the healthy mindset and the healthy habits that I had before. So it just so happened that this period coincided with New Year's and I decided that this year, I was going to make a New Year's resolution. And that was to be able to do one chin up by the end of the year. At the time, I couldn't even hold my body weight on a bar. So I felt like being able to do just watching it by the end of the year was a pretty achievable target.
I had already seen the benefits of body weight training in regards to weight loss. But I hadn't really had much experience with body weight training for strength gain. And as I started to research more into it about how I could progress to do a chin up. I started to get hooked on calisthenics and all the benefits that come along with it. So I started following some people online who teach calisthenics and who also do it as a hobby. And they were doing some amazing things with their bodies. I would love to be able to be at that level one day, but at the time, I was definitely not strong enough. So I started working on the fundamentals of calisthenics. Alongside my chin up training, I was training my push ups, my depth, my core work as well. And trying to really gain that base strength that you need to be able to progress further in calisthenics, I noticed that my strength started to grow.
And every week, I could do a little bit more in the exercises, whether it was my push ups were just a little bit better. Whether I was closer to being able to do a chin up or whether I could just handstand a little bit longer. I was starting to see differences. And not only did I see differences in my strength, and not only did I see differences in my body, but I also saw differences in my mindset. I was no longer training for aesthetics, I was no longer training for weight loss. I was no longer thinking about what I was eating all the time. I was training because I loved it. Because I was seeing so many benefits from my training. My passion was just growing and growing. And quite frankly, I was driving my friends and family nuts with how much I was ranting and raving about calisthenics. So I created my Instagram account and connected with a few people who are doing the same thing as me in my local area. We started hanging out and I started working on new skills.
And from there, my strength and passion grew even further. Eventually, after about five months, I was able to do one full chin up. And I can't tell you the feeling was amazing. Something I'd worked so hard for for five months, finally paid off, and I was able to pull my bodyweight above the bar. I saw improvements in my handstands, my push ups were better. I could do bodyweight dips and pistol squats, which I could never do before. But the biggest change I saw was in my happiness. I was so happy when I was doing these exercises. And I was training because I loved it not because I had to or for the way it made my body look. But the added bonus was I was losing weight. My body was replacing any fat that it had left with muscle and I was starting to look leaner and stronger. And that's when all the pieces of the jigsaw just started to click together. I now understood that the nutrition and exercise were working together perfectly to give my body exactly what I needed. And the best thing about it was I was loving it. I have experienced
the benefits of bodyweight training in all regards. And I truly believe that it is one of the best exercises for weight loss and general fitness and to grow strong as well. And it's not just for men, women can do it to people who are overweight can do it. People who have never been able to do a push up or a dip or a chin up in their lives can do it. And I feel like I am testament to that because I've been through all those experiences and I've come out with the best hobby and the best passion and the ability to hopefully help others achieve the same things. Looking back over the last several years and the journey that I've been on. I really think that bodyweight training and calisthenics has been the one thing that's kept me moving forwards. I've always had something to work towards and strive for. And I believe that had that not been there. I may have have become quite complacent in where I was, and potentially put the weight back on again. The great thing about calisthenics and bodyweight training is you're always seeing improvement and you're getting stronger and fitter all the time. So when you're going through a weight loss transformation, or you're trying to get stronger, or get fitter, it's a really great motivator to see those little changes in your body and your abilities. So another great benefit of bodyweight training is that you can do it anywhere you want, you can do it in the comfort of your own home. So if going to the the idea of going to the gym scares you or intimidates you, like it doesn't make a lot of the time, it's it's perfect form of training, you can consistently train with very little time and very little space, and still achieve amazing results, if not better results than you could in the gym. When I initially lost the way, I was still quite restricted with my diet, and I was constantly assessing whether I've done enough exercise to allow me to eat that day. It's not a very healthy mindset that I had. Whereas now I have a much better outlook, I train because I love it. And I eat because it provides the fuel that my body needs to be able to exercise. And I think that's the shift that I really want to be able to help other people with. I would love to be able to motivate people now to lose weight. And to find what they love to do. I'm going to start using YouTube a lot more and providing content on how to lose weight, the nutrition side of things and different workouts and more information on calisthenics as well. But if you have any other ideas or suggestions that you'd like me to focus on, then either leave a comment down below or head over to my Instagram account and send me a message. I would love to get you to know you guys and to know what your stories are and what your goals are for 2019 and onwards as well. And create like a little community here so we can all work together to achieve some amazing things. I think it's definitely possible. And I hope that I'm testament to the fact that you can lose weight and get fitter and stronger and that you can do it all from the comfort of your own home, whether you have money, have experience, have knowledge. I had none of these things, and I managed to do it and I believe everyone else can do it too. So thank you so much for watching, and I hope you found it useful in some way.
