Sunday, October 15, 2017

Protein World 30 Day Challenge








I decided to take up the 30 Day Challenge with Protein World during September, something you definitely would have picked up on if you watch my instagram stories religiously! And now I am here to tell you all about how I got on. 

So what is it? The 30 Day Challenge is a package that you can buy from Protein World. It includes a 4 week exercise plan, the Slender Blend with an accompanying protein shaker (shaker not pictured), protein porridge, fat metabolisers and hunger buster supplements. All of this usually costs £89 but it is currently selling for £72! 

The exercise plan is a little booklet which has all of your exercises in. There are two plans, one for week 1 and 2 and another for week 3 and 4. Both plans consist of 6 workouts; 3 of which are weight training, two HIITs and one general cardio day. 

I really enjoyed the weight training days and enjoyed the HIITs much less. I unfortunately wasn't able to do the general cardio day, as I don't have a gym membership and my knees don't allow me to go jogging. But I do walk for around an hour a day going to and back from work, so that was my excuse! 

The workouts in general took between 20 and 30 minutes, which definitely isn't a massive chunk out of your day! For the first three weeks I did my workouts after work. To be honest, I found this really hard. I don't finish at work until at least 5.30pm and by the time that I got home, I was tired and really couldn't be bothered to do exercise. I did persevere for the sake of this post though! Doing exercise in the evening messes with your social life as well as pretty much taking up your whole evening. I found that I would do the exercise, shower, cook and eat dinner and then it was pretty much bedtime! 

So I switched to getting up an hour earlier in the morning and doing the workouts then. I have enjoyed this so much more! Granted, the 6am alarm is kind of garbage, but once you're up it's fine! You get warm from doing the workout and you don't have to worry about it for the rest of the day AND you get the whole evening to do whatever you want! 

I found the workouts a little difficult in the first week and I was in a lot of pain! But as the weeks went by, I got better and better at them and now I'm really enjoying them. The routine comprises of 5 exercises and you do the routine 4 times. I wanted to cry when I first saw that, it seemed so excessive! But it does go really quickly. I definitely think that the workouts would suit anyone of any level, it just does take a fair amount of commitment. I should note that I did actually miss two workouts in the 4 weeks, as I just couldn't fit them into life.

The one thing I didn't realise before I started was that you do need weights. Luckily I was able to borrow my flatmate's 3kg dumbbells, which I think she said were about £9 from Aldi! There are some cheap ones on Amazon as well. I used my yoga mat for quite a few of the workouts as well.


To be honest, I was pants at taking the supplements. You're supposed to take one of them an hour before food, and another one with food. But not for every meal. I was into my second week of my new job and I just didn't ever remember to take them. So my weight loss results may have been a bit better if I was a bit more organised!

I did really love the porridge though! I will admit though that I only cooked it once. I am one of those people who likes to minimise washing up as much as possible, and the thought of a saucepan to wash after breakfast is a bit much for me! I ended up having around 4 scoops of the porridge with milk just cold every morning. It has 20 servings in it and it recommended 5 scoops. I somehow managed to make it last the full 4 weeks though. I had the chocolate flavour and it tasted amazeballs and it definitely staved hunger off until lunch time.

I was a little bit more useless with remembering to drink the protein shake, the slender blend. I was trying to take it around 4/5pm but I just kept getting distracted by work and just generally forgot - especially in the last week when I was doing my workouts in the morning. I was a lot better when I knew that I would be starving by the time it came to workout if I didn't take the shake. The slender blend has 30 shakes in it and it genuinely tastes really nice - much nicer than some of the other shakes I've had in the past. 

For lunch I pretty much had healthy bolognese with no carbs and for dinner I had fish and veg, sometimes with rice if I remembered! I've since added carbs to my meals because I found I was having bad sugar cravings after meals otherwise. Plus we definitely need carbs. I didn't struggle with the eating too much, I just craved and missed chocolate a lot. I gave up alcohol for the 4 weeks as well. 

So did I lose weight? Yes! I have lost around 4 pounds, according to my potentially dodgy scales. But it's actually on my body that I can see/feel the biggest difference. My body is definitely more toned than it was before and I have lost weight around my stomach/waist area. I'm hoping that my before and after photos show that! They're not the best photos and I'm fairly certain that that mirror makes me look fatter than I actually am. For your information, I was around 8 stone 4 when I started and I'm around the 8 stone mark now. Considering I missed two workouts, didn't do the cardio day and didn't take the supplements - it's not bad!

The best part about the 30 Day Challenge for me though is actually how happy it's made me. I've noticed that I'm genuinely much happier in myself every day and I have so much energy. It is definitely a really good way of giving you a kick up the backside and getting you back into the swing of exercise. I hadn't done any for a year! And now I feel fit again and doing exercise is enjoyable rather than being hard because you haven't done it in so long - if that makes sense? 

Have I managed to carry this on? Yes I have! Or at least I'm currently keeping up the exercise. I've been getting up at 6am every day to do a little workout and I'm weirdly enjoying it. Seeing results has made me really motivated to continue doing it. My little abs are coming through again yay!  I would definitely recommend taking Before and After photos to motivate you. Hopefully I will continue to tone up and lose a bit of fat and carry on feeling really happy and energised! 

For the record, I didn't think I needed to lose weight before doing this. I mean, after taking the after photo I definitely thought I needed to! But I only really wanted to do this to get myself back into exercise and challenge myself to something a little bit new and I'm really glad I did!

And that brings us to the end of this very long post. Let me know what your thoughts are! Have you ever done anything like this? Do you like Protein World's products?

Thank you for reading!

Love, Gweni xxx


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This post contains PR samples but all opinions are my own.
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