UP shows you how with Chef Jenny
WHO said you can’t get an incredible new body while still enjoying amazing food?
This was the challenge Ultimate Performance professional chef and spare time Thai boxer Jenny set herself when she started her transformation programme twelve weeks ago. But by combining three hourly sessions a week at UP with nutritional meals she created herself from simple and healthy ingredients, she lost 5kg and saw her body fat go from 19% to 11.5%.
Jenny explains how she made such a jaw-dropping transformation...
What's changed between what you did before and what you’ve been doing recently?
Jenny: The biggest difference is having some kind of goal at the end and a personal trainer who cares about you enough to hold you accountable for your actions – when you train with UP and it’s not even next level, it’s next, next level! The training at UP is so personalised – almost like it’s custom-made for you. Every minute I felt watched, studied, and it was a case of: that’s not working for you, we’ll try something else.
Tell us about your transformation diet.
With my background as a chef, I’m completely obsessed with food, so I knew nutrition was probably going to be the hardest part. It’s been a real learning curve to take simple ingredients and make them taste good for 84 days – it’s been interesting to play around with that. The most challenging part was losing that freedom to be able to go to a restaurant or shop and eat what I fancy, but when you have a good enough reason to say no to stuff it’s really quite easy.
Do you feel different now with your relationship to food?
I feel a lot more in control of my diet now. In the past, because I love food, the decisions I made were often not the best for me – not that I made unhealthy choices, rather I ate too much or at the wrong time. So my education with those things is much better, and I’ve learned a lot at UP about what my body does and doesn’t tolerate well. Realising what my body wants and what it needs are two different things. Now I have that knowledge, it’s going to be really easy to make good choices.
Most of your training was lifting weights, right? Had you ever thought about weightlifting for fat loss? And what would you say to other women reticent to take on weights?
I knew weightlifting was good for fat loss, but women seem to think that you’re going to gain weight if you lift weights because you’re going to put on loads of muscle mass, but as my body fat was steadily reducing, I didn’t put on any weight at all.
When did you start seeing that what you were doing in the gym and the kitchen was working?
In the past when I’ve trained, or said that I’m going to eat really well, then a month later I look the same, maybe lost a pound, motivation dwindles and this is something a lot of people go through. Whereas with my transformation, we did body fat measurements every week and I could see I’d lost body fat percentage, then I started noticing small changes in my body, so it motivated me to keep going.
What is it like looking back to your “before” picture?
It’s quite a shock because, for one, when I started I didn’t really feel like I was in bad shape, but compared to what I look like now, the difference is just ridiculous!
What are the most powerful lessons you’ve learned over the 12 weeks?
The best thing I’ve learned is that you’re always capable of more than you think, so be confident. The confidence I’ve developed in the gym has carried on outside and I can see how much my confidence has grown. I feel good – an overall feeling of satisfaction. When you like what you see in the mirror, it just carries through your whole life. I feel super-strong right now. It’s really empowering. That feeling is worth so much, I can’t stress it enough.
