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February 2008 ... Tyler from the USA

Tyler lost 45lbs in 1 month of Training @ Rawai Muaythai Camp ]

Well Done Tyler !

Country: Thailand

Lookin good Tyler, well done Oh, like the new tat

Country: USA

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February 2008 ... Mike from England

Mike has lost 15kg in less than 6 weeks @ Rawai Muaythai Camp.

Mike has come to Rawai Muaythai Camp for 4 months of improved fitness & weight loss.
Mike was 120 kg (264lbs) when he arrived @ Rawai Muaythai Camp, after his first week of training Mikes weight was down to 116 kgs (152 lbs).In his 2nd week Mike has started to add RAW Living Foods to his diet to aid his recovery & give more fuel to his body for longer & harder work outs.
Mikes goal is to get his body weight down to 95kg before he departs Rawai in mid April
Well Done Mike ... Your effort's are an inspration to us all!

Country: Thailand

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This before & after side view of Mike after 6 weeks clearly shows his 15kg weight loss

Country: Thailand

Thanks Danny - A picture is worth a thousand words! And hats off to Mike and Tyler!

Kudos lads! Brave of you to do a before & after! Your hard work really shows!

Country: USA

Thanks for comments guys, and thanks alot to Danny for great advice and tips which have helped me loads in structuring what I eat and how I train. I'm really happy with losing 15 kilos, but will be even happier when I lose the next 15 kilos and see the before and after photos then! When I arrived at rawai my aim was to get to 95 kilos by the time I leave, now I'm aiming for 90 kilos or less (I'm currently 105 kilos). I now have 8 full weeks of training ahead of me. So keeping to the diet I'm on and continuing to increase the intensity of training week by week I know I'll get there.

Before I go into what I'm eating, what training I do etc, I'll say a bit about how I ended up at 120 kilos. It's said often that when people develop a bad habit (for me it was over-eating and lack of motivation) there is normally a root cause/past experience that has impacted negatively on yourself and caused your bad habits to develop. I'm no expert but for myself this was definitely the case.

At the age of 16 I was competing in biathlons, swimming at county level, rock climbing, running 20k witout problem, pretty much a "fitness freak". I was in great shape and got a buzz from every training activity I would do. Upon leaving school at 16 I decided to join the Royal Marines as I'd wanted to since I was 14. After first attending a selection course and passing all tests I then began 32 weeks of what's one of the most physically intensive infantry training courses in the world.

Up to week 15 every day was gruelling, but I was coping with it and by now at end of week 15 phase 1 was over and we were into phase 2 (phase 1 teaches basic infantry skills, then phase 2 moves into commando skills such as amphibious beach raids which RM specialise in). Needless to say the intensity moved up a few notches at week 16 and everyday became a real struggle both mentally and physically. At week 17 I began sustaining injuries such as shin splints and trench foot from the training and conditions we trained in. 3 weeks later at week 20 I discharged from training through injuries. At week 1 in beginning of training there were 60 men in my training troop, when I left at week 20 there were 17 of us left in the troop. I was hugely gutted not to finish training and join a fighting unit and this was a sore spot for many years for me.

Fast forward to 2007, it's 6.5 years on and I've gone from a muscular build of 87 kilos to 120 kilos of fat. No energy, angry with myself for being in such a state compared to before, I know something needs to be done. I've dabbled with gyms intermittently but never stuck to a routine long enough to lose weight. Then a good friend tells me about their experiences with nlp (neuro linguistic programming) and hypnotherapy. I do some research on it and find it really interesting so decide to take a few sessions in an effort to gain motivation. I must admit I was a bit sceptical regarding nlp and similar programmes effectivity. Through the sessions I discover that we are our own worst enemies or our own best friends. The fact that I hadn't finished training in the royal marines had sub-consciously left a chip on my shoulder, from 14 it had been all I wanted to do, I'd read every book available, followed their operations etc whilst waiting to join up. When I didn't complete training I lost that motivational 'spark'. Although my experiences with nlp were brief, the main lesson I learnt from it is that we are capable of anything we want if we focus our minds on it. I let go of the negative memories of not finishing RM training, now I think back on it, I was 16 attempting a highly intensive course where 23 year olds weren't making the grade every week.

So in october 2007 I decided enough of going to pub's/club's every week, partying too much, generally a bad lifestyle. I packed a rucsack and decided to go travelling for 6 months, I was determined to come back a different person than left. Starting in norway I went across sweden, estonia, russia, mongolia, china to hong kong all by train. I knew I wanted to lose all my weight before coming home and I first found the rawai website whilst in st.petersburg. So from hong kong I took flight to bangkok mid-december, after travelling around thailand briefly I arrived at rawai mid jan. Arrived about 7am, went straight to the gym, spoke with danny, asked what did I need for training etc. He fixed me up with all the gear then asked if I'd train the same afternoon. That's exactly what I'd come for so no point wasting time, I came back in the afternoon and let the sweat begin!

Now onto what I'm eating and how Im training.

First week began in beginner's class where you learn basics of muay thai, I remeber thinking everyday if I sweat anymore I'm gonna be bone dry! For first 2 weeks I was unable to run the 5k before training, I'd get 50m and be huffing and puffing, so I settled for walking it everyday. I mentally made a point of going on the 5k every morning even though I could only walk it. It would of been easy to let yourself think, well if I can't run it what's the point. The point is at least your up and out doing it, Rome wasn't built in a day, every day I went on the 5k route I'd try and run a little bit more each day. After afternoon training I'd get on the treadmill for 20 minutes, again struggling to run for more than 1 minute, but making sure I done it everyday regardless of how far I could run, even walking on the treadmill was burning more calories than if I was in my room relaxing.

When you've grasped the basics of muay thai, your moved up into the next group where the training gets more in line with the type of training fighter's do day in day out. The trainer's will push you as far as you want to push yourself, you'll never be attempting something out of your fitness ability, trainer's are good at asessing your fitness and will know if your being lazy! Everybody has days when you feel tired and lethargic, it's only natural. A few weeks ago I felt really tired and slow, danny pointed out I may have an infected rash under my armpit. So I went to drug store and they gave me some anti-biotics. The next day I was full of energy and it really showed in training. It's important to work out if when your not training as hard as you usually can, is it -
a - possibly your body fighting something, this has happened twice, once I'd had a viral and bacteria infection which was really sapping my energy. Mentally I knew I wasn't training to my capabilities and beat myself up about it, which was not valid as I was actually sick.
b - your being lazy. I can tell when I'm feeling lazy and not training to my potential. We all have lazy day's but when I feel like this I visualize returning home after losing 30 kilos, how much better I feel and look, being able to run 20k again. It's easy to think oh I'll have today off and train twice as hard tomorrow, why do tomorrow what can be done today?

Today is the end of my sixth week of training, this is my routine and diet at the moment -

8am - wake up, 20g peanut soaks and 1 banana

9am - 1 hour vip training - when I first started vip training in my third week, doing 5 rounds of pad work was very demanding. Now I'm doing 10 rounds and feel great afterwards. I like vip training as your 1 on 1 with a trainer for an hour. I want to fight before I leave rawai, but for now my aim is to keep shedding kilos. So I tell the trainer can we just do high intensity pad work until my weight is down. When I'm at 95 kilos we'll do more sparring and grappling prior to me fighting.

10am - 8k road run - my running is 300% better than when I arrived, I can comfortably run 5k on the treadmill, although when running at 10 in the heat and with inclines around rawai, somedays it can be a struggle. Again I just think to myself 'Rome wasn't built in a day'. Even if I have to walk short distances of it (I never need to walk more than 1k of the 8k) I'm still out there doing it, which is better than stopping after vip training without running.

11am - Noodles from muaythai bar

11am - 15.30 - well earned rest period, I know if I get back to my room and I'm not drifting off to sleep within 10 minutes of laying down I haven't worked hard enough! During this period I'll also snack on peanut soaks to keep metabloism going (I don't go more than 2-3 hours without eating something, even just a few peanut soaks) and to give me energy for afternoon training.

16.00 - Afternoon training.

18.00 - 45 minutes cardio. After finishing training I'll do some cardio on the gym equipment, 15 minutes treadmill, 15 minutes cycling machine, 15 minutes cross-trainer. When finished I'll relax and stretch in the steam room for a bit. This is my favourite part of the day, after good day's training going in the steam room then pouring bucket of cold water over yourself to cool down.

19.00 - Dinner. Grilled skinless chicken, I have quite a genrous amount of chicken at night. Again I'm no expert but I've read on fitness forums that lean meat at night is great because firstly protein cannot turn to fat and secondly because it's harder for the body to break down, so your metabolism is hyped up for longer at night than if you'd eaten something more easily digestable. So the last intake of carbs I have is around 15.30, then after evening training I purely eat chicken. It seems to be working for me, so if it's not broke I'm not gonna fix it!

20.00 - 23.00 - Have a few bottles of water in a bar and play some pool, most evening's there's a few people in the muay thai bar next to the gym, so it's cool to chill out there. I'm normally in bed no later than 23.00 so I get a good night's sleep before morning training.

That's my routine so far and to be honest I'm quite used to it now, the quality of food I am eating is so different from when I was at home, I love being able to eat a small amount of high quality food and have loads of energy as opposed to eat a large fried meal or something and feel sluggish. Every Sunday I relax what I eat a little and may have little bit of pizza, mexican etc just to break the food routine up. The first sunday after 6 days of nuts, bananas and chicken I was in a real culture shock. So on sunday morning I went to the breakfast hut and ordered the largest full English breakfast. After managing to only eat a quarter of it I went to naiharn beach for a swim, I thought I was gonna sink. I found I had no energy and felt sluggish. When I return home I'm going to stick with eating small volume high quality food. It's amazing how much energy I can get from eating the food I am now. I've come to realise it's not how much we eat but what we eat that gives us energy and structuring when we eat them through the day. Sunday's is 'cheat day' but now after 6 weeks I don't feel the need for an English breakfast, the local thai foods great so I stick with that.

In my opinion muaythai training in thailand is probably one of THE best thing's a person could do to lose weight. Firstly the temperature raises our core temperature up so we are burning more calories than being in colder country. Secondly and I think this is important is the community feel at the camp. I was a little apprehensive about coming to Rawai muaythai, as I had an image in my head of how a muaythai camp would be (which was completely wrong). I looked on the website, saw there was a few very overweight people there before. Still I imagined everyone with six packs, super-fit and me being the odd one out. It isn't the case at all, everybody really encourages each other, people would say how much I'd lost from when I arrived (it's hard to guage yourself how much you lose, that's why before and after photos are good). I'd say at least 50% of people at the gym are trying to lose weight here at rawai, then the others are in good shape, may train in muay thai back home. The evening's and weekends everybody goes out together, some people go on boat tours to nearby islands etc. Obviously there's opportunity to party as well, don't get me wrong if I wasn't so focused on losing weight and was at a good weight, I may indulge in drinking too. But I'm not, so it's not going to do me any favours to drink whilst trying to lose weight, so I'm not. I've gone out few times with everyone else to local bar's/club's and drank water all night.

Well I hope whoever reads this found it interesting, it's taken me quite a while to type:) For people that are serious about losing weight, the fact is you can easily do it wherever you are. Find a flight of stairs and walk/run up and down for 2 hours a day! That's an extreme example but seriously if you really want to lose weight, first focus on what you want. There's nothing stopping us losing weight than ourselves. When we go on holiday we don't look forward to the flight, but to the destination we are going. The same with weight loss, the journey may be difficult and demanding but the end result is what you always need to keep in your mind. Like myself, you'll find as your fitness increases you'll enjoy each session, pushing yourself from the last week. So when you really get into the training you'll find yourself getting excited about training, then the journey to your ideal weight/physique becomes enjoyable too!

Country: UK

Good job Mike! When you showed up in January, I got a strong feeling that you could do it, and now you are almost there, keep us updated!

Tyler- Good job man! Have fun back home when everyone fusses over you!

Country: us

lookin good lads

great write up mike and fair play

Thanks for the interesting story Mike and congratulations on your weight loss. Keep up the hard work!!

Country: United States (Detroit)

Mike and Tyler you guys have faced your challenges head on and for that you deserve a big pat on the back.

Mike i am arriving on the 5th April 2008 so i hope you will still be there and you can give me a few pointers. Having read your story i am more determined to lose more than the 10Kg that i had set myself so now the bar has been raised to 15kg.

Tyler good luck on maintaining the improvements when you get home.

Country: England

Good work guys.You have all my respect!

Mike,thanks for the story,very inpiring

Thanks for all your comments guys!

'Mike i am arriving on the 5th April 2008 so i hope you will still be there and you can give me a few pointers.'

No problem mate, I'll still be here then. Losing weight and getting into shape really gives you a buzz. It's great to see people here getting closer to their goals and the 'feel-good' factor it gives people.

Country: UK

Brilliant! I enjoyed reading this, and great work both of you.

Both of you guys--I'm very impressed. I only saw you for the 3 weeks I was there, but everyone was like "these guys are crazy with their training!" Mike--I honestly feel like fight training was a little lazy compared to how hard you've been pushing yourself. Keep it up!

Country: USA

Wow again. Mike, I just read your full report. I would love for Tyler to follow suit. Your account was so thorough, and so very honest. A lot of the things you said speak for so many, and I have so much respect for you. Thank you for sharing, again.

looking at mikes last comment it seems our slang has rubbed off a bit:|

Country: Australia

Hey Mike ,

Great work dude!!!!

Remember our first chat and your determination great to hear that its still there - same to you tyler !

Hey mike -you forget to mention that yoou started off running in that sweat suit - you machine !!! and guys you need to remember how hot it already is in Phuket.

Miss you and wish i was there training with you still ! Say hi to all the tariners for me :)

Country: Australia

Hi Mike,

How are you getting on mate?

I trained at Rawai last year so was just browsing the forum and saw your story, really good work mate and I'm dead interested in how you're getting on! Keep us posted :)

Gaz (Sheffield, England)

Country: England

Hey gaz, hey felicia and everyone else! (forgot about the sweat suit, oh what fun that was! I've substituted sweat suit for longer early morning runs now)

Going good thanks, at 98 kilos now so 3 kilos off my original target of 95. I've still got 5 weeks of full training left so I'm confident I'll be at 90 kilos by the time I leave. It's true that your weight loss will slow if your training intensity doesn't increase as your weight drops. So I've adjusted my routine each day and maintained over 2 kilos loss per week. Here's my daily routine at the moment: -

05.45 - 13km promphep cape run. It's much better running very early as it's still relatively cool and really motivating watching sun come up over the sea.

07.15 - After run eat some banana's/nuts, then back to bed for 2 hours.

10.00 - vip training for 1 hour.

12.00 - Lunch, noodles.

14.00 - weights for 1 hour.

15.15 - Eat some boiled eggs with pork/beef. It's good to get in some protein directly after weights to help build the muscle's.

16.00 - Afternoon training, do some light cardio at the end to finish up.

19.00 - Dinner, skinless chicken.

21.00 - Sleep, like a baby!

To be honest hardest part for me after 9 weeks training is to maintain focus. But seeing weight dropping on scales each week is so motivating I'd be angry to not lose over 2kg that I make sure I keep training hard.

I can't recommned enough building up to bigger runs, the benefits on weight loss are great. It take's me 10 mins of repeat alarms to finally get up in morning, but once out and running it's ok. It's great feeling getting back and knowing whatever you do rest of the day, already you've got a big run under your belt. Just to add the last carbohydrate's I eat are before afternoon training, so when I run in the morning's on empty stomach, there's no carbs in my system that have to be burnt off before burning fat. Some day's the run can be a slog because of this but I'm getting good results with this eating pattern so I'll stick with it.

Cheers everyone for your encouragement!

Country: UK

Way to go, Mike!! You are living proof that you can achieve anything if you put your mind to it. Thanks for all the inspiration! void(0);
void(0);

Awesome effort dude, update the photos and give it some wow factor

Keep This up mike and by the time i get to see you on 5th April you will be like a stick?

GI Jerry arrives soon and she loves her morning runs so u will have a a great running partner soon 2 keep u spurred on!!!!!

Country: Scotland

New Weight Loss Photos Coming Soon

Country: Thailand

Mike has reached his weight loss goal of 95Kg with 8 weeks still to go... Mike will try to lose another 5 kg in his last 8 weeks of training.

Country: Thailand

Big thumbs up for the hard work and determination.

Country: Scotland

Wow that is amazing! How long has it been since mike started training? Well done!!!

Country: UK

wow! nice one mate you look great,you will easly be 88kg b4 you go home at less you can relax abit n have the odd beer now n then hey well done mike

Awesome work, well done Mike

BRAVO

Thanks alot everyone for all your comments!

This week is end of 10th full week training. So on average I've been losing 2.5k per week. I've got 4 weeks left now, so I aim to be 87/88k. Anything under 90k I'll be happy with.

Cheers

Country: UK

great work mike....ur training is kick ass!

well done mike have seen photos now really proud of you

Country: united kingdom

Mike has made it down to 87 kgs & still has a few days of training left ...
mikes weight loss video ... coming soon

Country: Thailand

Gratz Mike thats a fantastic result. Looking at your 95kg photos its hard to work out where u lost a further 8kgs.

Mike @ 87 Kgs ..
Mike was 120kg when he arrived @ the gym ... 3 months later he walks out a new man

Country: Thailand

hey mike , man unreal photos awesome work, you've come miles since i saw you there in feb , keep it up bud. ya should be heaps proud of ya self.

Country: Australia

Wow the difference is insane, great work Mike you deserve it for all the hard work you put in as i know how easy it is to get distracted when you are in such a nice country.

Country: UK

Yahoo Mike!

KICK ASS!

Thank you for being so open and honest - it's totally inspirational!

Thanks again everyone for comments.

I'm back in UK now, wish I was back in thailand already . I've got a good training routine going back home so there's no way I'll be gaining any weight back.

Big hello and good luck to everyone at the camp!

gord blimey governor..you definately got ur moneys worth there mate ...i tip my hat to ya mike a big round of applause for you ...hope you still got my number mate if not e;mail me .....ccosta_4@hotmail.com hope to hear from you soon.

Country: england

chris - alright mate, I've sent you an email, you received it?

Hey Mike.. how is it being back home ???
you still training hard ?
What was the response from your family & friends after retuning home 20+kg lighter ???

Country: Phuket Thailand

Hey Dan

Yeh it's good to be home, still training hard, not quite as much as in thailand but don't have enough time .

I'm aiming to be back in asia around november, so I will definitely be stopping by rawai!

Big hello to eveyone!

more Weight Loss / before & after Photos coming soon

Country: Phuket Thailand

NRG MAX
..... Food for Fuel ....

Country: Phuket Thailand

Hey Mike

Are you still in the UK ?

November is coming round real FAST
See you soon @ Rawai Muaythai Camp

Country: Phuket Thailand

mike you heading back november then? how long for

Yeah still in UK, I'm halfway through diving course in wet and cold of scotland. Can't wait for some thai weather .

Booked my flight last week for beginning of october to singapore. I've got few bits to do in malaysia then I'll be in thailand for november/december....can't wait .

Look forward to seeing everyone! When you flying out gav?

Country: UK

im arriving 6th dec staying in rawai for a month see everyone, then moving on elsewhere,hows bout you wot your thailand plans?