This mum of 3 lost 27kgs in her 40s

“This personal journey is for all the super mums out there, juggling family life, running the household and work, and dealing with the information overload age…” – Arwinder.

While Arwinder was gathering momentum with every stone she lost, she continuously spoke about three driving motivations behind the transformation she was undergoing:

1. To make herself a priority

2. To be the best possible role model to her three children and create generational health

3. To inspire as many women as possible stuck in the same position

Over 4 stones (61 pounds to be precise) and almost a year of hard work later, Arwinder’s goals have become a reality.

She feels at her best with sky high confidence.

She continues to inspire her children to live healthier and more positive lifestyles.

And with this piece here, she aims to show other women that they can do the same.

What you’ll notice in her three motivations is that it was never about getting lean, or about having a bikini body. The process behind getting into great physical shape was simply to use the physical as a vehicle to carry her on her journey to better herself and those closest around her.

The problem was that for years she’d struggled to achieve this. As a busy working mother of three children (all born 17 months apart!). In her 40s, she couldn’t find a ‘vehicle’ that suited her needs or lifestyle.

She’d tried everything out there. From ‘water diets’, to shake diets, to 5:2. You name it, she’d tried it. But all this led to was constant yo-yoing and no sustainable, long-term lifestyle solution.

In fact, after five years of this, her weight was only continuing to climb. Her energy was zapped. She felt awful. Nothing fitted her. She felt self-conscious, and didn’t like what she saw in the mirror. She even bought bigger clothes to hide her body.

She’d had enough.

It was at this point something clicked. She realised she needed to try something radically different to the ‘norm’ of crash dieting to achieve her goals. Which was the precise moment she saw her good friends, Gita and Anand Vadher, transform their bodies with RNT. Living very similar lives, Arwinder knew what she needed to do and jumped straight in, while also dragging her husband along with her!

It was time for her to transform. But this time, for life.

In this case study, we’re going to dive deep into the seven non-negotiables Arwinder laid down to lose over 60 pounds, finally achieve her goals and transform her life.

“I am a mother of three children who were all born 17 months apart, which meant only a few years ago I was running around 3 children all under the age of 3 ½ years old! It was hectic and busy but I loved it, and have always had a strong maternal character.

I had always been active, and I took pride in my appearance. But the demands of motherhood, juggling work commitments and supporting my husband as he ran his business resulted in my eating patterns deteriorating, and I no longer went to the gym. I was always running around doing things and I started eating on the go, not having set meals, snacking and not really thinking about what I was putting into my body.

Mentally I just did not have the energy to think about healthy eating nor was I considering how much food I was consuming. The extra pounds gradually piled on. As I approached 2018 aged 42, I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. I was overweight; most of my clothes didn’t fit anymore. I felt awful, I lacked energy, and I started buying clothes that hid my body. I had always been active and I always encouraged my children to be active. In my late 30s we joined a health club and started working out. But I was directionless, and didn’t modify my eating, so saw very little improvement in my physique. I felt self-conscious in the gym as I knew my body shape wasn’t where I wanted to be.

Something then clicked inside of me. I wanted to be a good role model to my daughters and my son. I have always believed you must look after your mind, body and soul. I started to really WANT to get fitter and WANT to eat healthier. I knew what I wanted but the HOW was the hard part. By total coincidence we saw our friends Anand and Gita post up pictures of their transformations with RNT, and they impressed and inspired both me and my husband to start our journeys.”

Starting Point

Before working with RNT, she was at 13 stones, with a typical day’s diet being:

Breakfast: Coffee/milk/sugar

Lunch: Sandwich and biscuits

Dinner: Roti, lentils, sweet desserts

Snacks: Picked on throughout the day

Arwinder follows a vegetarian diet, and an example of her initial diet set up was as follows (weights and amounts aren’t included as they were individual to her):

Breakfast: Eggs on toast

Mid-Morning: Whey, oatcakes, almond butter

Lunch: Tofu, green veggies

Mid-Afternoon: Fruit

Dinner: Veggie protein source, potato/rice, veggies

Focusing On Yourself

Physical change can have such a positive impact on other areas in your life because of its unique ability to draw your attention back onto yourself . In the hyper connected, super ‘busy’ world we live in, where millions of responsibilities and stressors are constantly bombarding us, it’s easy to forget to take care of the most important asset we all have, ourselves.

The journey that Arwinder has been on hasn’t only been a physical one. By making herself a priority again, and taking ‘me time’ to train hard and be conscious of food choices, she’s been able to reclaim what she stands for, and be in a better position to positively impact the people most important: her family.

When speaking to other mothers in similar positions, it’s very much the same. Carving out ‘me time’ and sticking to the appointment is what’s needed to progress forward in whatever you’re looking to improve. The time in the day doesn’t matter, it just needs to be one that works for your lifestyle. The key is to nail out the 3Ss (structure, strategy, systems) that are unique to every individual!

Challenging Female Perceptions

There’s definitely been a shift in the past few years towards more awareness of the benefits that strength training can offer women. That said, there’s still too many women caged into classes and cardio rooms, and not feeling comfortable enough in the weights room.

Whether it’s down to societal perceptions, or a lack of knowledge and confidence, ultimately it’s something that needs to be challenged, and improved on.

Arwinder embraced this. A previous class junkie, she found the benefits of the weight room, and learned to use it as a form of meditation to connect with the body and detach from the world. The ‘void’ that can be created when training is very real, and powerful. It has the ability to create a mind-body connection like no other, and create an outcome that puts you in a positive state, both physically and mentally.

Never Just the Physical

At the start of 2018, Arwinder wanted to take her results to the next level. In everything. Growing up, she’d always viewed her body as her temple, and that health is the true sign of wealth. To her this never really meant a six pack. While that’s still her long-term goal, that’s merely her vehicle to connect deeper with her inner self, be more energetic and productive, and nurture a more active family.

On the outside, the physical changes she’s experienced have created a huge surge in confidence that now allows her to dust off old clothes, buy new fitted outfits (no more oversized clothes!) , and enjoy the process of shopping and dressing up.

Creating Generational Health

Much of Arwinder’s drive for change came from her desire to be a better role model for her three children, this kept her highly accountable. Arwinder treated this not only as a lifestyle change, but an education. Everything she learnt from us, and her own experiences, she wanted to pass on to her children.

“Your children judge you by your actions more than the words you say”

This powerful tenet stayed with her throughout the RNT journey. She involved them in her journey and explained to them what she was trying to achieve. Her children formed her most effective layer of accountability - they pushed her, supported her, and perhaps the best bit, joined in too!

Arwinder’s dream of creating an active lifestyle for her entire family was manifesting. She took them for long walks (completing a walking marathon together!), sprints, and the best bit, even to the gym, where she wrote them all mini workouts to accomplish!

By getting the family involved like this, it made it seamless for her to achieve her goals. Many parents with young families often forget this ‘lifestyle hack’, but it’s one that has benefits that are immeasurable. A more active family means more energy, vitality and productivity for everyone. More specifically, young children who are more active may experience improved attention spans, do better at school and enjoy healthy development.

With the growing dependency on our devices the amount of quality time a family spends together outside playing a game or going for walks is fast declining. By encouraging her family she hopes to inspire more families to be active together.

Couples That Train Together…

Stay together…!

Arwinder didn’t start this alone. She signed her husband up at the same time, and told him they’ll be doing this journey together. Talk about taking the lead! She knew that having the right support and environment around her was critical. Couples that embark on transformation journeys together always do well. They can support each other through the difficult periods, be accountable to each other, and even get competitive!

In Arwinder’s journey, she was joined by Surinder, who’s also achieved an incredible transformation so far, completely changing his physique despite being an active father working crazy hours running his private dental practice.

Arwinder was so keen to spread the joy of using the physical as a vehicle that she set up a transformation challenge with a team of dental practitioners. The challenge was to see who can drop the most body fat in a 3 month period. As a participant herself, she’s added yet another layer of accountability into the mix!

Planning & Preparation

Being a working mother of three means you’re o always on the go, time poor, and with very little mental energy to think outside of looking after the children, and what you need to do at work.

If you’re in a similar situation, then becoming a master of your schedule is critical. You need to create non-negotiable appointments with yourself every week for your training, and to take time to prepare a certain amount of meals ahead of time.

Arwinder used various batch cooking methods outlined here to make sure she was never left caught out on the go, while at the same time making sure her children were fed with healthy meals at all times. Win-win!

By prepping her meals in advance in accordance with our guidelines, she was able to take the thinking out of her nutrition, and focus purely on execution. At the beginning, it can be a shift in routine, but once you learn the habit and find what works for your lifestyle, you can go on auto-pilot and focus on the rest of your day.

Long Term Focus

What’s great about Arwinder’s transformation is she wasn’t after a fad or crash diet. She was done with them. She’d spent years yo-yoing and she was done, now she wanted to play the long game, embrace the journey to make it a real sustainable true transformation for life.

As such, it’s meant alternating cycles of pushing hard with periods of backing off and maintaining during time away, or particularly busy periods. This approach has worked very well in consolidating her habits and results, and making sure there’s no rebound.

At all times, Arwinder’s kept a particular focus on strength, and has become obsessed with our mantra of progressive overload with perfect form in the gym. Now she’s leaner and stronger than ever, she’s set her sights on getting her first chin up!

In her previous efforts to drop body fat, the extreme measures have always been a risk to her health and well-being, given the subsequent rebound.

This time, she’s also healthier than ever. A good example of this is her heart rate has dropped from resting in the mid 60s, to now being in the low 50s. Being in her 40s, the impact of this improvement on her quality of her life is so much more profound.

To hear more from Arwinder about her story, watch this video.

Key Lessons To Learn

If we had to condense the many lessons learnt from Arwinder’s case study into two, it’d be to harness the power of multi-layered accountability, and to build a truly holistic plan geared towards your goals that cover all segments of your lifestyle.

This means that whatever your situation, your specific needs, and your unique lifestyle, you’ll be able to achieve your goals.

Stats & Pictures

Starting Bodyweight: 182lbs / 82.7kg / 13 stone

Current Bodyweight: 121lbs / 55kg / 8 stone 9

These are the comparison pictures:

Next Plan?

Arwinder’s goal is very much aligned with the ideal client journey. After dropping so much body fat, the next goal is to consolidate, enter a ‘reverse dieting period’, and then shift the goals to building muscle and getting strong, starting with the aim of completing multiple reps of weighted chin ups!

Arwinder’s Testimonial

“I am a mother of three children who were all born 17 months apart, which meant only a few years ago I was running around 3 children all under the age of 3 ½ years old! It was hectic and busy but I loved it, and have always had a strong maternal character.

I was also someone who had always been active person, and I took pride in my appearance. But the demands of motherhood, juggling work commitments and supporting my husband as he ran his business resulted in my eating patterns deteriorating, and I no longer went to the gym. I was always running around doing things and I started eating on the go, not having set meals, snacking and not really thinking about what I was putting into my body.

Mentally I just did not have the energy to think about healthy eating nor was I considering how much food I was consuming. Junk food was convenient and easy, and picking on the children’s leftovers became a bad habit. We’ve been fortunate to holiday a lot with the children, and given they were young, all-inclusive holidays were an easy option. But it also meant I over indulged, especially as I have always been a foodie!! The extra pounds gradually piled on.

My children are a little bit older now and as I approached 2018 aged 42, I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. I was overweight; most of my clothes didn’t fit anymore. I felt awful, I lacked energy, and I started buying clothes that hid my body. I had always been active and I always encouraged my children to be active so we had joined a health club in my late 30s and started worked out. But I was directionless, and didn’t modify my eating, so saw very little improvement in my physique. I felt self-conscious in the gym as I knew my body shape wasn’t where I wanted to be.

Something then clicked inside of me. I wanted to be a good role model to my daughters and my son. And show them looking after your health was very important. I have always believed you must look after your mind body and soul, and finally the clarity of this was coming to me. I started to really WANT to get fitter and WANT to eat healthier I knew what I wanted but the HOW was the difficulty. By total coincidence we saw our friends Anand and Gita post up pictures of their transformations with RNT, and they impressed and inspired both me and my husband.

I wanted to get back to doing something for myself. The nutrition plans were quick and easy, and it took the thinking out, which was most important given I was still a busy mum! All it takes was pre-preparation, and learning to batch cook. It was difficult to begin with, but a habit that’s now instilled into me, and helps us all so much!

The best part of the plan was the training, and having previously been self-conscious/intimidated, I now love it. Even our kids come and train with us, come for walks with us, and have learnt so much about living a healthier lifestyle. They’re my biggest support, and keep pushing me! I know they’ll remember this family lifestyle change forever. Giving back to the next generation is one of the best things RNT have done for me so far.

The weekly accountability was KEY for me. To have to post your pictures (which don’t lie!) on a weekly basis made you want to make sure you did everything possible to achieve your goals. For me, RNT was not just about superficial objectives of having a better body, it was a lifestyle change. I now have an education and have learnt so much about nutrition, cardiovascular fitness and weight training.

Health brings happiness. It’s been about building my internal self, being mentally happier, which means I’m now more productive and energetic, and so have a more active family lifestyle. I’m a better role model to my kids, and I know that your children judge you by your actions more than with the words you say, so this was an important journey to go through.

None of this would be possible without RNT’s 7 start service. Their knowledge, ability to motivate during times of plateau, and fast responses are all amazing! They’re also truly holistic in their approach with motivating blogs, podcasts and email updates being created throughout.

I am now 43 and in the best shape of my life. I feel so much better and my wardrobe that was collecting dust from years ago now all fits!! I plan to continue with my journey and keep developing my physique, I still see that I have a further to go. But to get to this stage, I would like to say a huge thank you to RNT, you deserve all the success going forwards!