Preparing To Work With A Personal Fitness Trainer

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Morning all,

Table of Contents

My Personal Trainer Journey

I recently met with a personal trainer whom I’m about to embark upon a journey with when it comes to my fitness.

Francesco is his name – a half-German/half-Italian trainer whose a little bit of a man-mountain (i.e you can tell the man trains heavily).

To boot – he’s also ex-Italian special forces and went off to Afghanistan when he was younger (he’s 30 now).

It’s unusual (at least in the UK) to meet a personal trainer for a coffee first – but this is exactly what I did with Francesco. What a great guy!

I had the opportunity to sit and talk with him, get to know alot about his history and background – and him to understand a little bit more about mine.

He’s definitely going to (I feel) help me drive results.

As I just hit 35, and over the years I’ve seen my body fat creep up, my muscular mass drop, and my cardiovascular fitness drop – I’m no longer about to train ‘unintelligently’. Training hard and without smarts has seen me do ok over the last 15 years of my life….

But my knees creak more and more, and my body isnt’ what it was – so I’ve decided to call upon the support of a professional to help me get back to a good or hopefully in time even the ‘best’ place in my life.

With this in mind – Francesco asked me to plot out my average day so he can get a sense of what I do/eat/etc.

And yup, as you can imagine – I thought I’d turn the damn thing into a blog post.

So – with this in mind, I’m going to share my ‘body pictures’ because amongst other things this was one of the stipulations in terms of what he wanted to see from me –

So let’s get into it.

As best as I can I’m going to plot out my ‘Monday 13th September’ in a fashion that’s useful for Francesco – so here we go, buddy!

Wake up between 430am – 5am (Mon-Fri)

Drink maybe 100 ml of water not much more (I need to increase this I know)

I’ll have this with:

2 of these:

And 2 of these:

(Gotta get that Omega 3 and Vitamin D lol)

The daily recommended dose of Vitamin D is 1 tablet but an alternative doctor I spoke to said ‘it’s quite difficult to overdose on Vit D and you’re Indian anyway so you’ll need alot of it – so knock yourself out’ lol.

4.50am walk

By 4.50-5.15am I’m out the door and taking a (round-trip) of around a 40-60 minute walk to Mcdonald’s in Earls Court (only place open for a coffee in the mornings)

I’ll do some reading back and forth en route:

Here’s what I’m reading right now – and I’ll listen for around 20 minutes per day:

(on a weekday at least) which equates with around 46 minutes of actual audio as I listen at 2.3x.

I’ll also stop and take notes and/or something I read will generate ideas I ask the team to execute.

Here’s an example of some items I sent off this morning for example:

And again some other stuff I shot out over Whatsapp for my hiring manager (based in India so I know she’s up!):

The Morning caffeine hit

So I hit Mcdonald’s and grab a latte:

Although I’ve just discovered (via writing this blog) and ‘Googling’ the latte and seeing it’s a double shot – that I don’t want this amount of caffeine in the morning so I think I’ll immediately switch to an Espresso single from tomorrow morning:

Once I’m back home after my Mcdonald’s sojourn – then it’s time to start the rest of my day.

This will then consist of (well what I’m doing right now!) – writing a blog post – which can take anywhere from 20 minutes up to 35 minutes.

At that point, it’s time to start (ish) the working day.

It’ll be something along the lines of clearing out my emails and responding/sending Whatsapp messages.

Once I’ve cleared those messages out – I’ll then head out the door to get my ‘2nd cup of goodness’ for the morning – which in this instance is Prana Chai with Oat Milk:

Here are the full ingredients:

The work day begins

Then the day of work begins which I won’t dive hugely into the depths of.

Rather – let me share with you my daily calendar:

How I run my calendar is in this fashion effectively:

From a client-facing perspective, I’m available from midday to 4 pm now as I’m slowly beginning to close out my calendar further and further so that no one can book calls in with me.

However – from a food perspective – here are the other things that happen:

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10am Breakfast

This will be my breakfast more or less in the mornings.

I’ll (irregularly) throw in berries and walnuts and chia seeds to the mix.

I spend most of my day sedentary with the only walks I do going backward and forwards to the cafe which is around 0.6 miles (12-minute walk) from my flat – there and back.

I’ll do this 2x per day. I’m beginning to think maybe I should extend this – but I think the best approach now is that before heading out for my run – I should spend 15 minutes in the gym doing some weights….

Then heading out.

Nonetheless – this isn’t what I actually do….it’s just an idea atm!

Food Subscription (Vegetarian) Lunch

Looking at their nutritional value for one of their meals:

I don’t think this meal is that healthy to be honest with you so I’m probably going to be swapping it out :p

(Just pinged Allplants now)

Alongside this – I will generally have something from this list for lunch with microwave rice oftentimes

So on balance – I don’t think my lunchtime meals are that healthy….

The Daily Snack

I’ll often snack on grapes:

I can get through a box of grapes a day….probably way too much sugar.

I’ll also have 2 prana chai’s per day on average…

Finishing My Work Day

When my day is done – around 4 or 5 days per week I’ll go for a run, ranging from 5 to 10km not more typically.

I’ll generally go between 5-6.30 to wrap up my day and as a way to get rid of the stress of my day.

It definitely helps me feel more relaxed by the time the run has finished…and then I’ll wonder in – intellectually exhausted from the day and..

Dinner

This – by and large, is where things get disastrous – as if Strawberry isn’t cooking (my partner) then I’ll end up having takeaway via Deliveroo.

This will happen 4-5x per week basically – and this is my big let-down.

I’ll have sushi, or nando’s pretty often…and that’s just bad lol.

I AM trying to make a go of generally cutting down carbohydrates with dinner – but right now I’m ‘not there’.

Although I would say I’m beginning to reduce somewhat (overall) my carb portions in the evenings.

Getting To Bed

So the reason I need to cut my carb intake for dinner is that I generally end up going to bed quite soon after I’ve eaten. I aim to be in bed by 930-10 pm…

But if I’ve eaten late this is quickly scuppered and I’ll go to bed later..

So my sleep is generally from 930-10.15 to 430am…so I do often wake up tired…

But who doesn’t? 😛