Before vs After, By the end of his 8-week challenge, Maurice had lost 4kg and 12cm.

You may vaguely remember Maurice from Mainfreight. In March, Maurice was about to embark on an 8-week health and fitness challenge run by yours truly. However, due to the sly dog Covid-19 and seven weeks enforced lockdown, it has now taken four months to complete an 8-week challenge. But you know what they say, good things take time. This is overwhelmingly true in Maurice‘s case; he hasn‘t been this fit, light, healthy, and strong in years, and has finally cracked the double digits. He shed an impressive 4kg and 12cm throughout the challenge. Like a lot of you, Maurice works extremely long hours and also has to balance family life with the demands of the job. “It‘s just a matter of making time, not excuses. Even if you do an hour or even half an hour three days a week, it will still make a huge difference.” Leading a healthy lifestyle doesn‘t have to mean never eating the foods you enjoy and strapping yourself to a treadmill, it‘s about making small changes and tweaks to your current lifestyle to improve your overall health. “The hardest part for me was sticking to the diet and keeping my portions under control, as a kiwi brought up on the ‘finish your whole plate, don‘t waste it‘ mentality.” Maurice trained extremely hard over the eight weeks and would often be sweating it out at 3am at TCA Fitness Club along with other shift workers. The dedication he showed throughout the challenge shone through in his fitness test, where he achieved a 100% improvement from week one to week eight.

The fitness test included burpees, press-ups, situps, squats and lunges to test overall fitness, strength and endurance. Fitness doesn‘t lie – you‘re either fitter or you‘re not. Maurice also received the award for the most dedicated challenge participant throughout the eight weeks. The 8-week challenge was about a lot more than the scales. Stepping onto the scales is only one way to gauge health and progress. There is a truck load of other ways to monitor your progress along the way, including the way your clothes fit, how you look in photos, your skin/hair/nails, energy levels, how well you get through a workout – I could go on all day. “I feel healthy, have more energy and feel a lot less fatigued. It feels good to see the kilos going down and my fitness test results improving. I can notice a difference in my photos and I would definitely recommend a health and fitness challenge.” If you want to make improvements to your health and fitness, literally start with one thing. Write down one thing that you feel is holding you back the most and make a small tweak. For example, I have a sausage roll every day. Try having a sausage roll every second day. If you keep taking small, baby steps towards your overall goal of being healthier, then it will feel like a smooth and gentle progression rather than an abrupt and drastic change. Once again, massive congratulations to Maurice and a huge helping of good luck to all of you who are about to embark on your own personal challenges.