Bhaven Taylor, 41, from London, shares how she transformed her body – and her entire mindset – by changing her diet, giving up alcohol and exercising three times a week.
He was extremely fit when he was younger, playing all sports in the first team (rugby, football, cricket) while at school and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Negative change began to occur once he attended college, often consisting of late-night binge drinking, lack of sleep, and poor diet. My weight started to go up, and this continued in my working life in London from 2002 onwards. This lasted almost 20 years, and a combination of unhealthy eating and inactivity meant that I steadily gained weight throughout my 20s and 30s.
I probably reached my heaviest weight around the age of 35. It had a huge impact on my overall self-esteem and confidence, which were extremely low. I didn’t feel good about myself or how I looked, and I was a prime candidate for type 2 diabetes, which runs in families.
Having spent much of 2020 indoors in the UK, going into 2021 I decided I wanted to make a change. I decided this might be a good opportunity as there were still very few distractions available due to the lockdown. So in January 2021 I signed up for Maximum performance. I met them 15 years ago, but when I saw the before and after photos of their transformation program, I honestly thought that was not possible for someone like me. However, I talked to a friend who went through it and had incredible results, so I signed up right away. This was the first time in my life that I directly invested in myself and thought I would put my all into it and see what happens.
The UK was in a strict lockdown from the time I started until gyms reopened on April 13, 2021, so my trainer Jason and I had a weekly 30 minute call to focus primarily on nutrition and increasing my Energy production. His goal was to improve my nutrition education and how to make sure I was eating and managing the right amount of calories, broken down into proper protein, carbs, and fat. I thoroughly enjoyed cooking and jumped right in, weighing food and learning how to use spices to ensure food tasted good. I also removed the alcohol to get the best result from the whole process.
The first time I trained with Jason in person three months later, I was blown away. We kept the workouts simple, doing about 6 or 7 exercises per session, super setting each exercise and making sure to get a full body workout. Jason began educating me on weight training, proper form, and slow progressive overload. My experience at the UP gym was simply amazing – the environment is set up for motivation and peak performance and I enjoyed every minute of it.
From then on I trained with Jason 3 times a week and this really was enough to change my body overall. Also, Jason set me a daily step goal and I discovered a new appreciation for long walks (podcasts and audiobooks became my best friends during this time), but I was able to reach my weight loss goals without doing excessive amounts of cardio.
In three months I lost about 37 pounds (17 kg) and gained my body fat, which was about 30 percent when I started, down to 11 percent. When I saw my friends and family for the first time after the lockdown, many of them were shocked and some didn’t even recognize me. Now I’m back to the way I looked when I was 17, when I was 41. My experience has motivated others to get in shape and I have countless conversations about what I did. What impressed me was when a very close friend referred to me as an inspiration, he had never seen me so focused and how proud he was.
Maximum performance
The whole transformation journey was truly an incredible experience, but the most dramatic effect was not my weight or how I looked: it was actually more on the mental side and how I felt. My sleep transformed, I naturally became a morning person (something I couldn’t have said for 25 years), productivity increased, my energy increased, and my self-esteem and confidence dramatically improved. I began to wonder how far I can take this and what it might be capable of. I was actually contacted and started a new job during lockdown and started working in a new industry for a really amazing company. This for me was a life transformation instead of just a body one.
If you want to make a change, just do it – it’s all about taking one step at a time, and once you start to see progress, it’s immensely motivating. Consistency is key, but if you show up every day then it’s amazing what you can accomplish in just three months.
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