Bully for Scully

Check out the results/gains made by Noel Scullion, AKA Scully, who worked his backside off at Elite Fitness. Here's how Scully described his experience:

"I joined Elite Fitness about 3 months ago looking to shed a few lbs for the summer as I was verging on becoming a bit of a chunky monkey. With the help of David Rice and Jamie Rice we came up with a healthy diet tailored for weight loss and a training program to suit it that consisted of fasted HIT cardio i.e TNT classes (Davy's own style of circuit training that incorporates weightlifting and cardio) in the morning and a short and intense weights session in the evenings. I'd like to give them 2 a bit of recognition as they really did help me go the extra mile! Even though it may have seemed like torture at the time, lol, cheers guys much appreciated."

"During that period I went from just under 16 stone to 13. 5, which I am over the moon with!! As for supplements, I kept them fairly basic and stuck with protein powder, BCAA's and L- Arginine."

Good lad, Scully!

Still need a bit of convincing to change your own life? Here's a wee motivational statement from Davy Rice:

"People wait until it's too late; wait on weddings, wait on holidays, wait until a new relationship sparks or breaks up before they get into training the way they want to. Grab it, hold it and shake it. If your mind and body wants to, don't stop it. Get in, get it started, and rip it apart! One thing for sure is when you are fit strong healthy and look the way you want to, you won't regret it!! 

It's Monday what are you waiting on?!"

Falling off the Wagon

I'm pretty religious about my Monday workout session. Workout on Monday and I break the weekend laziness and atone for all the diet cheats (Cheats or treats? A topic for later in the week). And on the Mondays that I get this good start, I tend to be more enthusiastic for the rest of the week, and often squeeze in an extra workout or two.

Yesterday I missed my Monday workout and I'm feeling a bit of guilt.

I don't think that my guilt is a bad thing, it helps with motivation, and it's not like I'm whipping my own back or demanding decades and decades of the Rosary as penance. It's just a nagging feeling that insists that I've been a little bit weak. What I need to work on now, is making sure that nothing gets in the way of my workout today.

So I'm watching a motivational video on YouTube in preparation. Check it out and tell me that you don't want to do a shitload of jumping-jacks and press-ups:

NOW GET OUT THERE AND MAKE TODAY YOUR BITCH!!!

Healthy Blogging, an Intro

This was me at 32 before I realised how important diet and exercise really are:

By 2011, my wife and I were lucky enough to have three children. I often joked about my baby weight. Made excuses about getting older. Not having enough time (I was working full time in a job I pretty much hated and trying to figure out how to write for a living as well as trying to be a decent husband and father). Genetics. Blah-de-blah. The main problem, if I'm honest (and the photo sort of encapsulates it), is that I was a little too fond of drinking and sitting down in my limited spare time.

I like to think I've changed since then, but in truth, my weight/size has been up and down over the last three years. My fitness levels have steadily increased thanks to a local boxing club and a local gym that I attended over the last three years. Also, taking an interest in what I put into my body has made a big difference too. But I'm still learning. New attitude, new thoughts on diet, new lifestyle... the list goes on, and I'll be blogging about these things as Health Scene NI continues to grow.

The blog will serve two purposes. It'll give me an outlet for my thoughts and experiments in diet and exercise and it'll keep this interest separate from my thoughts and experiments on reading and writing. If you happen along this and want to ask questions, feel free to leave a comment.

Just so we're clear, this is about what has worked and continues to work for me. I don't intend to preach about the ONLY way to get fit or bash anything I haven't tried out, but I will probably say some stupid stuff as I go along. Feel free to challenge or question ANYTHING I say, but please, try not to be a pain in the backside, okay? I don't have time for keyboard warriors.

For now, this is my latest fitness achievement following a 10 week programme at Elite Fitness in Newcastle:

I'll share more progress pics when I write about my memories of that intense/crazy/fun time (which finished 6th June 2014, just a month and three weeks from my 35th birthday). Right now, I'm concentrating on maintaining these results while the kids are off school for the summer, but I may do another Elite Fitness programme in the near future and write about it as it happens. We'll see how things go.