How I Lost 50 Pounds and Got Shredded in 6 Months

Adam Longshaw, 31, shares his weight loss journey with Men’s Health.

My weight has been increasing steadily and consistently for years, from 82 kgs (180 pounds) in 2014 to upwards of 95 kgs (209 pounds). I felt my health, motivation and fitness all declining. I needed to do something and find someone to help me to train. After some serious consideration, I signed up for a 12-week transformation programme at Ultimate Performance’s Manchester gym.

Part of my justification for joining U.P. was that I had never had any kind of training before, or any knowledge of how to work out correctly. So learning how to weight train was a huge learning curve for me.

My diet and nutrition were completely overhauled so that I was eating the correct amount of calories my body can use and burn, as well as consuming the right macronutrients and in the right ratios. I also cut out alcohol for the duration of the process. My trainer immediately gave me a diet plan of four meals a day mainly containing proteins (chicken, turkey and beef) and greens.

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For the first 12 weeks, I wholeheartedly committed myself to the training and, after discussing it with my trainer, we agreed three sessions a week would get me the best results. For the 12 weeks following that, I reduced this to two sessions with U.P., as well as two or three sessions on my own.

Over my 24 weeks training at U.P., I lost a quarter of my original body weight, dropping 24 kgs (53 pounds) from 96 kgs (212 pounds) to 72 kgs (158 pounds). Also, I started at 29.5% body fat and reduced this b7 19.4% to 10.1%. I went into this process with hypertension blood pressure: now, my blood pressure is in the perfectly normal category. My family were amazed by the transformation, and mentally I am feeling so much better about my own body.

After finishing with U.P., my new goal is to make this a permanent lifestyle choice: the way I eat, live, exercise and so on. Nothing is easy about this. But if you commit to yourself, your trainer and your bespoke program, then after the first few weeks when you see the results in the data, your weight dropping, your body fat reducing and your waist shrinking, this fuels your motivation. Once I started to see results, this made me even more determined.

There’s a popular Chinese proverb that says: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” There really is no reason to not do this for yourself.