A contest recently appeared in Men’s Health, looking for a man to take on the challenge of changing their body shapes for good. Bodies don’t automatically become muscular, of course, and this challenge has involved a dedicated plan of fitness and weight reduction.
Ollie Best, the winner of the contest is 31 years old and a previous rugby player since the age of four. When an injury brought an end to his rugby career, he switched to a non-physical career but continued to eat like a rugby player. This resulted in his weight ballooning over a period of time.
Whilst his daily diet of sandwiches, takeaways and fry ups was compensated for by his extremely physical lifestyle (training three times a week for two hours per day) during his rugby days, thus burning off the calories, when he stopped training, the calories finally started to translate into fat, which saw him losing his shape. In addition to this, he drank full fat sugary drinks and consumed high levels of alcohol.
After many months of eating and drinking in this manner, Best paid the price for not looking after his wellness, and gained a great deal of weight. At 5ft 10in in height, he quickly became borderline obese.
After seeing himself in some unflattering stag night pictures, Ollie decided to finally do something to take control of his own wellbeing, and started a three year challenge to become a Men’s Health cover star.
At first, Ollie simply cut out carbs from his diet and simply ate protein, whilst going to the gym. Through this he lost 15kg, but some of this was muscle, so he later, decided to train to be a personal trainer, which gave him an important insight into nutrition.
Ben now weighs 80kg with just ten per cent of his body being fat.