Check out Krystle Vogler - one of the SUPERSTARS from the EFM LEANing Challenge - the pictures are only part of the story:

"Einstein once said “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” Under his theory I was considered insane!

 I had been training consistently in the gym for over a year and although I could see growth in my muscles, my flabby tummy and hips were not shrinking like I had hoped. I kept telling myself “If I just run a little further or a little faster, then I will see results soon.” Don’t get me wrong, exercise is important and improving personal bests is very rewarding, but I knew deep down that I had to address my diet in order to achieve my goal of a flatter stomach.
...
That’s when my good friend Matt from EFM Health Clubs Geelong told me about the 30 Day EFM LEANing Challenge. I knew straight away that this was the guidance I needed to kick-start a new and healthy relationship with food.

When I started the challenge I will admit I was sceptical! The recipes were so delicious, I wondered how such yummy food was going to help me on my journey to a slimmer me! Let’s face it... most “diets” consist of boring and bland food. But on the LEANing Challenge the variety of foods was amazing and I never felt deprived or bored with what I was eating. In fact, I have discovered a wide variety of new and healthy foods to incorporate into my daily life. I now base my diet around the ingredients I used in the LEANing Challenge, experimenting with my own recipes, and continuing to use the ones in the plan.
 

 I feel blessed that I have had the opportunity to learn so much in such a short amount of time in regards to food! I can now pass these principles onto my children so they can establish healthy eating habits early in life and avoid the pain of being overweight that so many people experience.

The best day of the LEANing Challenge was the last day when I took my final measurements. I had lost almost 12cm from my hips! Aside from the changes to my waist line, I felt energized, my skin became clearer, and I gained a heck load of confidence in myself!

To anyone that is wondering if the 30 Day LEANing Challenge is for them... let me ask you this… Is being unhealthy and unhappy with the way you look working for you so far? I knew I deserved better! And so do you!" 

Kat!

Geez! You have no idea how hard it was to get this story in print, and when you read it you'll be wondering why it wasn't screamed from the top of the mountain.

Kat is Linc's partner, and Linc was kind enough to share his story a little while ago on this blog, about how he rose up from the dark days and fought his way to good health. I count Linc as one of my best friends. He may not always be around, but you know he's around, and judging from Kat's story, you can see that he was always around for her whilst she battled her own demons!

I'm honoured that Kat would share her story with us, as she doesn't really know me (yet), and I ask so much of people to give their story. Thank you Kat!

It was the first day of Prep. The class was sitting cross legged on the carpet, fidgeting, waiting for the teacher. I noticed a little girl sitting off to my left and thought she looked nice so I smiled at her lots when the teacher wasn’t looking. Smiling was a good way to make friends. The little girl already had a friend she was sitting with and both of them whispered behind their hands and pointed at me, all the while I’m grinning like a Cheshire. When the teacher had finished we got up off the floor and I gave a little wave to the girl and her friend approached. “Stop smiling at her, she doesn’t want to be your friend.” “Why?” I replied. “Because you’re fat.”

Kapow. The first, and certainly not the only time in my life when I was made blatantly aware of my physical shortcomings. Sure , we were 5 and the girl probably didn’t even really mean what she said, but it’s one of those profound moments that come back to haunt you during those moments of wallowing and grant you the permission to finish off the last two tim tams in the packet. After you’ve already eaten the other seven.

So, years go by, and the kg’s followed. By the time I was in my early twenties I’d entered the realm of three digits on the scales and subsequently gave up on any hope of ever wearing a pair of bathers that didn’t make me look like a Greco-Roman wrestler.

I dabbled in various fad diets in my time but my first real attempt at making a change about my weight came when I was asked to be part of the bridal party for my brother’s wedding. The change was driven by vanity, but hey, any motivation is good motivation. I gave my bingo wings one last jiggle in the mirror and hired myself a personal trainer. Ben was a dedicated and passionate sort and each week after flogging me in the gym he’d look so hopeful when I jumped on the scales, only to be bewildered that they’d barely moved a notch. For all the hard work I was putting in, I wasn’t getting very far. It would seem that the “rewards” I was treating myself to on the weekends were not conducive to any sort of weight loss progress. The wedding came and went (I just managed to pour myself into the bridesmaids dress) and I could no longer justify the expense of the personal training so that ended and with that came back the wads of fat (and some!) depositing themselves on every square inch of my frame.

It was around this time I met my partner and future father of my children. Together we wallowed in our fatness. I can probably count on one hand the amount of home cooked dinners we had in the first year together. I recall one trip to KFC when Linc handed $70 over for payment of our dinner then he turns to me and says, “Do you think that will be enough?” He was serious. As a heart attack. 

A new relationship should be a time for smiles and giddiness, which in most aspects it was, but I was carrying around some serious spare tyres. And it was making me deeply and wholly depressed and ashamed.  It was hard to smile when you spent the best part of your day pulling at your shirt to release it from between your fat rolls and expending energy thinking about how you can covertly sneak the one chair in the beer garden that your bum fits in.  I would even sometimes miss classes at Uni because I couldn’t find a park close enough to the room and it was too taxing to walk the long way and arrive late where I would almost pass out trying not to audibly huff and puff for the first ten minutes of the lecture.  It was so difficult to smile through the fat, but I did the best I could.

Then not too long after, a funny thing happened. My pants started getting looser.  Linc had begun riding his bike for exercise and was no longer as eager to eat out for every meal inadvertently causing a calorie deficit in my daily intake.  It was slow going, but I’d gone from a whopping, sweaty, 130kg to hovering around 110kgs all from small changes to my diet that I only really noticed in hindsight. 
It was November 2008 when I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter.  To say it was unexpected was an understatement.  I had been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome in my early twenties and my GP at the time had informed me that I would find it very difficult to fall pregnant without medical intervention.  And here I was, up the duff!  I was ecstatic.  That same GP had put it down to the weight loss that probably enabled me to conceive.  The pregnancy was text book, and just like the all the movie clichés, I ate for two.  Well, closer to five, but you get the picture.  The day I gave birth I weighed in back around 130kg. 


Having a baby was like being hit by a Mack truck, repeatedly.  Then giving birth to it.  The first few months of motherhood were much the same.  But apparently being run over is good exercise, because by the time the Monster was 5 months old I saw the needle of the scales fall just shy of 100kgs.  Then something just clicked.  I hadn’t been double digits since the previous millennium.  I got religious real fast. 
Dear God, 


Please don’t let me crack a tonne again in my lifetime.

Cheers, Kat.

But, you know, just in case God was too busy with plagues of locusts; I toyed with the idea of giving the exercise thing a whirl.


I had limited experience in the world of working out, so Linc, the brave man he is, offered to give me a hand.  I still had a young baby at this stage and could only find time for a work out after she was in bed at night.  So, when I’d rather be on the couch with the remote and a block of choccy, I was slogging it out in our shed doing a range of crazy exercises that Linc had poached from his own gym.   There were many, many colourful words that circled in my brain whilst Linc barked at me to give him another ten, and on more than one occasion I had to stop myself from punching him in the face during a boxing session.  After another month, I had developed a sense of how to push myself and it was probably safer for Linc (and his nuts) if I carried on myself.  As much as I did not want to suit up and hit the shed for deadlifts and sumo squats, the feeling when I finished and the scales steadily declining made me swell inside.  Everything was becoming....  Lighter.

By April 2010 I was 85kgs and a size 14-16.  The shed work was beginning to get tedious.  I was beginning to have more rest days than not.  I needed to shake things up a bit.  I used to have dreams about running, and sometimes just out of the blue during my day, I would have this inexplicable urge to pound the pavement.  I’d never seriously tried it before so I don’t know where this pull was coming from.  I gave it a crack.  It was hard.  Everything wobbled.  In fact I’m pretty sure my bum was still wobbling 45 minutes after I stopped.  But, I persevered.  The first ten times I was sure I could taste blood.  My knees hurt.  I swallowed a bajillion flies.  Still I kept going.  Then, by the eleventh (or so) time it just got, well, good.  My brain didn’t have to tell my feet not to trip over themselves, my breathing was calm and even, and by the 2km mark a strange tingle ran through me like a mild electric current and I felt awesome.  So awesome I spontaneously tried to high five a runner going the other way.  I scared the shit out of him, but I didn’t care.  Wow.  Better than the 2 for $5 Cadbury family block special, for sure.  I signed up for my first fun run, a 6km.  Linc and the Monster came to cheer me on with my Dad.  I ran like a total unco, all arms and legs over that finish line, but you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.    

I trained hard after that run trying to build up my base to work towards a half marathon and dropped a few more kg’s.  I was starting to look like the way I felt – a runner.  Then, blow me down, two little pink lines told me I was pregnant with our second daughter. 

I had all these grand plans of being diligent with my diet, running throughout and coming out the other side a freakin’ Olympian.  Yeah, didn’t quite turn out that way.  I did run for the first trimester, but before long the morning sickness coupled with a firm recommendation from my obgyn to ease up on the high impact activities had me sidelined.  So, naturally, I reached for the things that had always comforted me, food.  And lots of it.  I was able to silence that angel on my shoulder telling me to ease up on the cheesecake and justify the devil on the other shoulder that kept reminding me, “You’re pregnant.  It’s not forever.  Go on, enjoy it!  Have another slice!”  The day I gave birth to the Grublet I was somewhere north of 110kgs.  So much for never going back over 100kgs!

As shattering as a wilful toddler and vampiric newborn were I was not comfortable in the fat suit that this pregnancy had left behind.  I was gagging to get out and run again.  At 8 weeks post partum I laced up the runners and headed out.  I shuffled about 500 metres before I realised just how much I had let myself go and was suddenly and violently aware of the road I was going to have to re-tread. 

New Years day 2012 and I weighed in at 100kgs and couldn’t run for more than 5 minutes at a time.  Today, after daily backyard circuit sessions whilst the kidlets sleep, I weigh in at 86 kgs (almost pre preggo weight!) and can run for 10 km with a smile on my face.  I still have a ways to go to reach my healthy weight range, but at this stage I am just enjoying being able to challenge my body in a way that I had never, in my whole fat life, thought possible.   

Would I change anything if I could go back 6 years and do it all again?  Probably not.  This whole, urgh, excuse me, “Journey” (thanks Biggest Loser for ruining that term for me!) has allowed me to make many mistakes and appreciate that anything worth doing is gonna take time, effort and language that would make my Grandmother blush.


Do I have advice for those of you who are looking to shake off the “obesity” statistic?  Plenty.  But nothing I say is going to lace up your kicks for you.  Somewhere under the XXL labels there’s a spark inside that will ignite your whole being if you’re brave enough to let it. 


Right now I’m training for a 15km event at the end of August.  That will be the longest distance I have attempted to date.  15km is a long way.  A long way from being sad and ashamed.  A long way from hiding in men’s clothes.  A long way from the big hair to weigh out the rest of my silhouette.  A long way from the anxiety of having to enter a room of strangers. 


A long way towards the future.

I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I do know that losing the 44 kilo monkey off my back makes it a helluva lot easier to take the steps toward it.  And that makes me smile.

What do you do when you hit rock bottom?

It's Friday, the day of the week that we've all been looking forward to to get through the week. Most of us will probably aim for a lazy day, and whilst you are doing that, this guy is out there having already smashed out his workout.

Today is not about how to exercise, or what to eat or trekking through a jungle. It's about another of my friends who hit rock bottom in their lives, but found a reason to push on through, taking one victory at a time, taking the smackdowns that life throws at us, but getting up time and time again, over and over, refusing to let the dark days win.

Enough said. Here it is, and thankyou to my great friend for sharing. Take from it what you will.

My story

Mum (Marg) and Father (Derek) divorced when I was 6 months old. Mum remarried when I was 2 years old to Ron, she died of cancer when I was 10. Ron took it hard; I have two half-sisters Rach and Sal. They were 6 and 4 respectively when mum died. Ron loved Mum; he nursed her till the end. He never got over her death. None of us have. I call Ron Dad.

I was mums Boy. She told me everything I need to know, she took me through every stage of her disease process. I even went to the crematorium and put my hand in the oven. I remember it was still warm and it still had ash left in it. She told me about the birds and the bees, she told me about her divorce.  She told me that she bought me a skateboard for my birthday because if she died, Ron may forget to give it to me because he will be busy with looking after us on his own, so she told me where it was so I wouldn’t feel sad.

Dad did well to raise his three kids, on his own. We all did well in school, had great jobs and were fit and healthy. I went to uni for 6 weeks, and then decided to work full time.

I partook in my first triathlon when I was 19, and by the time I was 20 I was assistant to the CEO of the large retail company I worked for. 

I saw a bong (pipe) at school when I was 15. It didn’t interest. I didn’t even smoke cigarettes. I binged on alcohol from the age of 16. My Dad didn’t know what a bong or weed was either.

I did eventually try weed when I was 18, the usual way. I was at a party and peer pressure was involved. I took a hit and loved it.  One toke and I hit the floor. It wasn’t long before I had a habit, built up a tolerance and became dependant. Within three years I was smoking 28+ grams a week. 

I loved weed at first. Weed meant I could control when I slept and it made me laugh, and the life of the party. It gave me a reason to get up in the morning. It made me no longer drink alcohol. What it also did was speed me up mentally, I mean real fast. Ideas galore, problem solve, clear thoughts and no depression. I was super human. I didn’t know I was meant to feel this good.  I’d smoke weed in the morning, at work, after work, before bed, in bed and on the toilet.

Than as soon as it took hold of my life it wrecked it. If weed made me feel so good, why not try other drugs like speed and trips, and pills. I never knew I could feel so low. I never did much of the other drugs. They were bad.

I became paranoid, and then confused then people around me were asking me weird questions like, “are you OK?” I wanted to give up weed and tried, but I relied on it physically and psychologically. I kept smoking, I lost my girl friend, all my friends other than “Pot heads,” I lost my family because I would avoid them like the plague, to avoid them seeing me like that and I lost hope. Then it happened. I lost my mind.

I can’t describe the feeling you get when you have enough insight into knowing you are losing your mind except to say – I was tormented to a point where I had no insight.

I had my first psychotic episode soon after I turned twenty one. The details of what I got up to are a story for another day.

My Dad and my Uncle Lou came to my rescue. I had frightened the shit out of Sally, due to my behaviour so she called them. I was arrested the night before, during my episode but got released in the care of my family.  Dad and Lou literally dragged me into the psychiatric facility for help the next day.  I was admitted, and stayed 10 days. In that time I was secluded, medicated, diagnosed and I commenced antipsychotic therapy. I was discharged as fast as I was treated and next thing I knew I was on to the street. I caught the bus home, to a locked house without keys, alone, medicated glad to be released but ashamed of what had happened and what I had become. I smashed a window to get inside my house to find the bong where I had left it.

The only “friends” I had were smokers (Drug uses), and I knew if I started smoking I wouldn’t stop. I didn’t want to smoke weed, I was made aware of the risks by the lovely nurse in hospital. I didn’t even want to smoke cigarettes.  I wanted to go back to the old me. So I got drunk, Jim Beam bottle after bottle, now I had friends and stories to tell. I took my meds, after a couple of weeks I got sober enough to go back to work. I was relieved of my assistant CEO role to work in the warehouse as my boss thought the stress was too much for me, he was right. I was ashamed of myself already; losing my job was a further kick in the butt.

I ended up doing well with my recovery; I did try weed again and relapsed 3 times over a period of 5 years before I got the notion I was not going to live if I kept smoking. I kept touching the flame and getting burnt. Similar psychotic symptoms soon arose each time I smoked. I never needed to be admitted, but I did require intervention regularly by the community mental health team for my drug use and depression.

I decided to become a nurse. A Div 2. I did. I did well with study.  I had been taking Lithium (Mood stabilizer) for five years. I had gained 45 kilos, most of which I gained in the first 3 months of my initial treatment. Alcohol, smoking and bad food choices were also to blame as well as my meds.

I never nursed when I finished the course. I felt I couldn’t look after anyone until I could look after myself, which I wasn’t doing. I thought I would get to know my natural father (Derek), I worked for him for a couple of years, I thought this may help repair my life, but that didn’t work. Dad (Ron) thought I was just wasting my time and my failed relationships on top of everything only left me wanting one thing. Weed, to stop the depression.

Something had to change. I got a job as a nurse, I was way out of my comfort zone, I worked for a few years, I struggled to sleep, I was fat, I would drink, eat and smoke cigarettes but I refrained from smoking weed. I started to meet new people and develop new friendships. I never told anyone about my past. I did tell my new employer about my current medication.

A few years past and I met Katherine. We were just mates. Kat has a story of her own. I told her mine. She was the first to hear it from my point of view. Our relationship grew into love and we moved in together. I decided to stop taking my meds. It wasn’t long before someone mentioned weed and you guessed it, I was hooked again - almost.

I was going to lose the girl that had supported me through some real crap and I was scared of losing my mind again. I took myself back to the Doctor and got help, again and started back on Lithium again.

So Lithium, no weed and I just had to put up with no sleep and the anxieties, depression and stigmas of mental illness along with poor physical health, smoke ciggies and try not to drink too much. My life was awesome- NOT!

I bought a bike, I used to ride. I’d ride to work, to Torquay from Geelong have a ciggie or three and a pie two cokes and ride home. I bought a bench press. I’d ride to Torquay and then do weights in the lounge.

People noticed. I started to feel better. Weird, I know. I was kicking my own ass. Kat joined in. I had the weight to lose; we started a contest with mates.  We both quit smoking ciggies, rarely drank alcohol and things were changing. I lost more weight and started to remember how I was when I first did that triathlon back in the day. Work was going well; I was super nurse and loved my role as a carer. I changed jobs a few times to suit myself and my nursing skills grew.

I decided to walk into a gym. I was just glad to get the weights out of the lounge and learn some new exercises. My physical health and my mental health were definitely on the mend. In 2007 Kat and I got engaged, I was 117.5 kilos and I had lost weight. I never cared before, so I never knew my heaviest, by 2009 I was 76 kilos and fit. We also had our first baby. Then I met Mat. Over the last three years Mat and I have talked about the past, the present and the future. In 2010 I went back to uni and I finish my course this year. In 2011 we had our second baby. I now have goals; one is to work within community health, another is to take my shirt off down at the beach. I carry scars not only physically, but mentally as well.

I’m 78 kilos, 10% body fat, I eat a strict bodybuilding diet, train 7 days, have been med free for 6 years, I don’t smoke anything and still need to pay for a Wedding.

I attribute my recovery to talking, getting help but most of all - Taking the first step.

BANG!! - NOW MY LIFE IS HUGELY AWESOME

Cheers Linc.