Firstly, some of the apparent difference between the two challenges is optical illusion.  I lost the same amount of fat in each challenge BUT ended up at a lower bodyfat % in challenge two therefore the results appear more dramatic. I found that at around 20-22% bodyfat my body suddenly changed shape and I saw some gratifying definition after months of feeling that, yeah, I was getting smaller, but I still looked 'fat'. The lesson?  Persist. Even when it seems nothing is happening, it is.. in secret.

 

Secondly, in the last month of challenge two I upped my cardio quite drastically and also started counting calories, messing around with macronutrient ratio's and getting very excited about entering everything into a spreadsheet.  Using the Harris Benedict formula I figured out how many calories I burn in a day and tried to eat about 500 less than that.  This was all new to me but I found that I really got a buzz out of it and it gave me some numbers to obsess over that weren't luminous and red and blinking out of my gym scales. 

 

The amount of extra cardio that did the job was about 45 minutes five days a week first thing in the very early AM.  Sometimes I woke up and found myself already on the treadmill... 

I did the extra cardio for a month and then I fell victim to overtraining. Uh-oh.  I lost my enthusiasm for the gym, felt hungry all the time and was out of energy.  So, extra cardio can crank your fatloss into high gear BUT you don't want to do it for too long.

 

 

I get asked this a lot.  The kidney issue that I had, and to some degree still have, is congenital.  As my sister says, I was 'born kinky'.  The tube coming out of the kidney was curly and thus couldn't let the fluid out of the kidney as fast as it was going in and the kidney began filling up with, well, pee.  The problem (pain and a 'bloating' feeling when I drank certain things - coffee, alcohol, too much water) got slowly worse over three years and eventually I found that I had a huge balloon shape poking out of my front.  It was very noticeable.  If I lay on my back it would be above the level of my ribcage.  Finally I went to a (third) doctor who decided that actually it probably wasn't a stomach ulcer - two previous doctors had told me it was - and away I went into the scary world of medical diagnostics to see if that kidney was worth saving and then surgery to save it.  That involved sort of draining and reshaping the kidney, cutting out the kinky bit and reattaching the tube in a straight fashion.

 

As I woke up the surgeon was sitting beside me telling me that I'd just had instant weightloss of 1kg in 'water' (he's a bit of a fitness freak himself).  Then I asked him when I could get back to the gym and  he said 'lets work on sitting up by yourself first'.  ...

 

Now I have one perfect kidney that takes on 80% of the filtering and one odd one that does about 20% of the work and one really cool scar.  I found out later  (saw it on tv) that my surgeon also does 'gender reassignment' surgery so I was lucky to get someone who knows how to make things look nice.;)