Here it is - the big reveal. After 12 weeks, 64 gym sessions, 3,840 minutes of exercise and not a drop of alcohol I'm finally done. I have a bigger chest, smaller waist and only a few scraps of fat left on me. And it feels incredible.
Yet, this experience was the most abysmally, throbbingly, towel-bitingly appalling thing I've ever done. If I'd walked past a man with a cold I'd get it (this amount of exercise makes your immune system run on fumes), the amount of supplementary pills I ate would embarrass Bez, I ached constantly, and balancing my diet required weapons-grade precision: carbs within 20 minutes of heavy weight sessions; protein and greens before 7:30pm in the evening; up to but not beyond three litres of water; steak for breakfast but not for dinner; no caffeine after 11am. If I wasn't in the gym I was, to borrow from White Goodman, breaking a mental sweat.
But the upside. It’s biblical. I could run a 10k any time, anywhere - and often did. I could take a 14-mile walk in my stride (quite literally); the synapses in my brain felt like they were firing at a higher voltage; the constant hydration improved everything from my metabolism to my skin; I dropped down to a medium. And, best of all, I had the strength and endurance to f*** like Eros. If you’ve ever wondered why all those shiny #fitfam personal trainers look so stupidly happy all the time, it’s because getting super-fit feels incredible.
Also, I learned a lot about maintaining what I've built. Since the picture was taken my alcohol consumption's shot back up - about 16 sturdy drinks a week - I've eaten things like pasta and bread, and, unsurprisingly, I've found half a stone of the weight I lost. But my trainer at Embody Fitness, Tom, told me to expect some weight gain after I throttled back the training and started including more carbs and dairy in my diet.
In terms of sustainability, he gave me some useful advice. Keep carbs brown and to a minimum, fill up with protein and try and get the three litres of water in to keep your metabolism firing. Also, try and spread out the bad things so you only do them once a week and on different days. So, say, drink on Friday, eat Haribo on Saturday and go for a pub lunch on Sunday.
Read more: Get rid of man boobs with our workout
Structuring fatty, sugary or boozy food days is straightforward enough, but there’s still the matter of my muscles. To stop them deflating I do still have to go to the gym. At my most steroidal I could – just – lift 80kg on the bench, which is the combined weight of my wife and daughter after a big lunch. I don’t want to drop below wife level, so I’ve been applying the protocol of our man Ross Edgley’s guide that tells you how to get rid of man boobs, and looks a little like this:
• Bench press (5 sets of 5 reps at 60kg) • Dumbell flies (3 sets of 20 reps) • Close grip press ups (3 sets of 20 reps)
Epilogue
Should you do a 12-week program? If, like me, you’re impatient, have a modicum of self-discipline and a superb collection of angry repetitive electronic music to train to, I say go for it. But nothing about this is easy. In fact, it’s hard. At times nearly impossible. But you’ll never, ever feel better in your own skin. To the extent that I might just do another. My arms could do with a bit of a tune-up...
My final results from start to finish
Body weight: 94.6kg to 89.3kg Body fat: 16.1 per cent to 11.5 per cent Muscle mass: 79.3kg to 79.0kg
Book Embody Fitness classes with Tom Ward, join Third Space and thanks to St. Tropez tanning
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• How to lose weight fast and gain muscle
At first, I considered having the words "no thanks" tattooed on my palm so I could simply raise my hand instead of saying it out loud. Quick drink after work? No thanks. Takeaway tonight? No thanks. Fancy seeing thingumy at that place? No thanks. It's now ranking in my top three likely responses to any given question because this fitness stuff is like kryptonite to old fashioned, full-fat fun. The only reason I didn't get inked is because engaging my voice box probably burns more calories.
Weirdly, though, I don't really care. My social life might be contracting at twice the speed of my waistline, but over the first six weeks my body fat percentage has tumbled, there's a chest emerging from the flab and the weights I'm lifting have nearly doubled. The fitness benefits (while very much secondary to vanity in my case) are remarkable, too. Fellow #GQGetsFit contender, Ryan (he's learning how to get a six-pack) decided to pass one of long, boozeless weekends by climbing Scar Fell Pike. We managed it in just over two hours, which isn't bad going considering that the Vogue House stairwell was the highest peak I'd scaled without using a télésiège for at least three years. This sounds disgustingly self-satisfied, but being fit feels incredible.
At least it did until Tom, my personal trainer at Embody Fitness, told me that he was adding two additional days of cardio training on top of my three weekly PT sessions.
The rationale's pretty straightforward - get sweaty, burn fat, increase the appearance of your muscle gains. Tom offered cardio at Embody Fitness, but I decided to have a go with Third Space in Soho. If you've not been before, it's a full-body torture chamber, incorporating everything from a hypoxic chamber, climbing wall, swimming pool, weights room, spin studio and climbing wall, right in the middle of Soho.
Along with the tantalisingly named "Broga" and "Bitch Boxing", there was a new class called "Sweat 1000" that looked like it would do the necessary. You underwhelm your trainer on two pieces of equipment - a treadmill and a sort of jungle gym for grown-ups, swapping between them three times per session. The running element mixes up sprints and inclines while the jungle gym is for various bodyweight exercises (pull-ups, tricep dips, that sort thing) as well as some light lifting (squats, lunges) that's never more than 10kg. It lasts around 45 minutes, is distressingly unpleasant, but even after a couple of weeks it turbocharged the fat loss.
Mercifully, Tom advised that the calorie intake would increase alongside the exertion. On the sweaty cardio days I'd eat the usual greens-and-protein combo, but when I was training with Tom I'd add a small cupped handful of oats, brown rice or quinoa into the mix immediately after training.
I'd always thought carbs were the enemy, but it turns out you absolutely need them to build muscle. When you workout, you deplete muscle glycogen, which is sciencespeak for the stored form of carbohydrates. And glycogen is the main fuel your muscles use to produce energy, so you have to make sure you have the resources to both lift the heavy thing up then recover from lifting the heavy thing up.
It felt odd at first because I'd spent so long without carbs, but Tom's "feed" days must be working because there have been some big changes as I enter week eight. And the more the numbers change the more I'm inclined to say "no thanks" to my delicious, albeit wobbly old life.
Body weight: 92.7kg to 90.2kg Body fat: 13.8 per cent to 12.1 per cent Muscle mass: 79.9kg to 80kg
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Smoking. Drinking. Carbohydrates. All the stuff that makes life worth living. Trouble is, as I find myself freefalling through my Thirties my lifestyle's not been conducive to building a big chest, which is something I’ve been trying to achieve for the best part of two years.
The thing with pecs is that they need special attention to get bigger. Big biceps, shoulders and legs are relatively easy to achieve because you’re already using them in your day-to-day so they’re primed for growth. A big chest eventually appears as the by-product of general strength, but only sometimes and rarely by accident. If you want pecs you’ve got to work for them.
It’s no mean feat, either. You can’t just go on a press-up binge because you’ll end up hunched forward – you need to train the muscles on your back and the bottom of your neck to build a sort of fleshy scaffolding so that your monster chest is properly framed and supported.
Where I'm training
Naturally, I knew none of this until I embarked on this 12-week challenge with London’s top body transformation gym, Embody Fitness. Soft, weak humans enter, sculpted Apollos leave, but how? After a consultation with a physio (who told me I have a weak arse and weird knees) and nutritionist (we noted with interest that I’m the same fat percentage as a Peperami - 16.1, fact fans) a bespoke protocol was designed.
No delicious carbs, no delicious sugars, no delicious dairy, not a drop of delicious booze – basically, if it’s delicious I’m not allowed it. Food was whittled down to green veg, lean protein (steamed chicken, oily fish, that sort of thing), three litres of water of day, black coffee and a fistful of supplements (literally - my daily tablet intake is 1x vitamin D, 4x omega fish oil, 4x zinc, 2x blood sugar control, 3x magnesium and 1x multivit). Then there was the training, three times a week at Embody.
The training
“The diet strips the fat, I build the muscle. You’ll never find a session easy” said Tom Ward, my fitness bastard (not his official title). “As soon as you look like you’re comfortable the weights go up. It’s the only way to get your chest big and your body lean in the timeframe. You’ll probably hate me after a while.”
Actually, it took no time at all to hate Tom* because the shock of his training resulted in everything from pain beyond description to muscular paralysis (I may be being a bit dramatic). For the first week it was bloody hell. I ached, my body clucked for Haribo, I was lightheaded when I stood up; to be honest, once I’d finished Tom’s warm-up I was ruined; by the time I'd made it to the end of a session I had to have a quiet sit down in the changing room with my head in my hands. One time, I nearly cried.
But after about seven days there was a shift. Most of the evil had been purged from my body and I could do things like walk up curbs without making an involuntary noise. I felt lighter on my feet, my recovery time dropped from days to hours to minutes. I even hated Tom fractionally less.
The results
After these four weeks there’s still not much in the way of pecs, but Tom tells me that I’ve chosen the most difficult muscle to build. “If you stick to the diet you’ll get there, but there aren't any cheat days - that's cheating.” Thus far I've been militant, helped in no small part by Embody's diet system. Instead of measurements like grams and ounces, they use hands. I'm allowed a palm-sized puck of lean protein, finger size of "good" fat like coconut butter to cook it in and as many green vegetables as I like (apart from the ones with flavour, like peas, obviously). For a snack I get a finger's worth of almonds, and after my first four weeks I eat a cupped handful's worth of good carbs, like quinoa or brown rice, to re-feed my muscles with glycogen.
It's not delicious, but it is effectual. My body fat's dropped from 16.1 per cent to 13.8, my skin looks better, and my ability to carry the big shop from the car down my little mews to the front door has increased dramatically. Now the shock's over, Tom tells me I'll be adding a cardio session to fill my lunch hour on Tuesday and Thursday, which I'm not particularly thrilled about, but I'll report back in due course. That’s assuming I can avoid smoking, drinking and carbohydrates for another eight weeks. Wish me luck.
Body weight: 94.6kg to 92.7kg Body fat: 16.1 per cent to 13.8 per cent Muscle mass: 79.3kg to 79.9kg
*Tom's great really. Ask for him when you're booking your Embody Fitness classes.
