Just over two months ago, scores of Whitsunday locals signed up for an ‘Eight Week Challenge’ to pit themselves against themselves at F45 Airlie Beach.
What exactly is an eight-week challenge? It’s in the name: A two-month fitness program combining F45’s signature 45-minute circuit workout classes with a detailed meal plan - and a lot of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic.
The group cut their daily calories in half or more, upped their gym-going, and tried to transform their bodies, and in turn, their mindsets over a little more than 60 days.
So, how did they go? Well, you can change your life in just two months – take it from Whitsunday Life journalist Declan Durrant.
I like to think that there is often - and this is not a one-size-fits-all (pardon the pun) – a correlation between weight gain and contentedness.
Over the last three or so years, I fell in love with two things: My partner and food.
And I don’t think those two things are unrelated, and they certainly have a strong relationship to my happiness. We eat delicious things together which are usually (and unfortunately) bad for us, but we do it together.
But I think the major problem for me was moderation, not necessarily the cookie itself, it was the volume of cookies – and that’s plural.
Over those three years, I put on roughly nine kilograms. And I’m lucky enough to be the kind of person who seemingly carries their weight well – you wouldn’t necessarily see it, although I did.
I signed up, alongside my partner, for the F45 Eight-Week Challenge expecting results if I stuck to it – no one is immune to the laws of biology; you can’t take out more calories than you put in without it coming from somewhere else.
At the start I weighed in at 89.5 kilograms, with 22.1 per cent body fat.
The eight weeks had their extremely difficult moments, undoubtedly as it did for all the challengers, I’m sure (Plenty of Christmas parties spent eating apples and cashews in the corner while we watched others dig into dishes of chocolate mousse), but we stayed strong.
At the end, on Saturday of last week, they unveiled the winners - people with the biggest drop in body fat percentage compared to their starting weight: In the Female, Angela Blake won, losing 11.5 per cent.
And me: I ended up losing 9.5 per cent of my body fat (8.5 kilograms), going down to 81 and taking my percent body fat to 16.6.
I didn’t expect to win anything, let alone a ‘Golden Kettlebell’. All I wanted was to achieve my personal goals – I think I’m in line with every challenger there. For me, this challenge shifted my perspective on myself, my body, and my mind. And I can’t recommend it highly enough.
F45’s motto is “Team Training, Life Changing”. And I believe it.
F45 Airlie Beach will run its first six-week challenge in 2023 starting January 30.
Whitsunday Life journalist Declan Durrant won the male ‘Engine’ division of F45 Airlie Beach’s eight week challenge, winning a Golden Kettlebell for losing close to 9 kilograms
Female F45 ‘MVP’ Rene Campisi and F45 ‘Engine’ Winner Angela Blake
