Tales of a Kombat weight loss journey…
Background; So, about me: Intellectual, and a bit neurotic, ha ha. I’ve visited Thailand four times before, and I just love it there. Thailand = Freedom. For me anyway.
I am intensely private and therefore certain details about me are not going to be disclosed on a public website. But I was so grateful to Christian and the Team that I wanted to provide a testimonial, as I feel it has been well earned.
My Background
So excluded from this testimonial are my real name and full picture! Why? I suppose I don’t want friends or family seeing the pictures and seeing how brutally my aesthetics and spirit had declined. I don’t want to have to be reminded in future by someone who has by happenstance come across the site. Call me crazy – but it is what it is!
But trust me it is me in the second picture – same shoes, same sweaty grey singlet, and same height. Over the time, I got a super tan, a necklace, and clearly lost a lot of fat.
Kombat would have had to go to a lot of effort to find someone with such a similar body shape for there to be two different people here. Besides – right click on the before and after pictures, select ‘properties’, then the ‘details tab’– in the ‘origin’ section refer to ‘date taken’ data. The dates are exactly 58 days apart – if you still have doubts about if it is the same person in the before and after shot, then, you’ve got issues!!!
I’ve been thin before, I’ve been fat(ter) before. I’ve been super fit before and even run a half marathon.
I know how to play the weight loss game, and I know the headspace and circumstances I need to be in to achieve what I want.
Unfortunately, I really like food (like most of us), so obtaining balance with nutrition is always a challenge for me. My “fall from grace” was due to a number of circumstantial factors which led to a lot of comfort eating; …which seemed like a good idea at the time (actually, logically, I knew it was bad, but chose to ignore logic), regretted immediately and severely during my first two weeks of training.
This programme was commenced with about 5 months of very little gym time; so you could say I was ‘shit out of shape’.
Planning
Sitting in my mundane office job hour after hour for 6 months earlier this year (while getting a paler shade of pale with the passing of each day), allowed me to meticulously research an economically viable, specific environment where I could get down to my best “fighting weight” i.e. get my body back. After visiting probably every available website for weight loss facilities in Thailand/Asia in general, Kombat made it into the final contenders.
Christian Daghio and I exchanged SO many emails before I elected to reside in Kombat Camp for two months. Credit to him for his extreme patience at my firing squad of questions!! As promised, a quote was provided and agreed upon, then deposit paid via PayPal, and final balance paid via internet (PayPal) upon first day at the camp. Super easy and hassle free in terms of finances.
Being more of a lover and not a fighter (and prone to using corny phrases :-), my aim was NOT to become a pro fighter like most of the other people at Kombat. I was here to burn calories and eat right!! However this place caters to both the Muay Thai professional fighters, MMA professional fighters, and also to the weight loss amateurs. Not once did I not feel welcome, pretty much everyone I met was super nice, and I made so many lovely friends that I will keep in contact with on Facebook. The ratio of women to men is definitely in favour of the men, but this was never an issue.
58 Days…1st October 2012 to 27th November 2012
The first 14 days were the hardest.
But once you start to see results, and you get smaller and you can move more freely and easily, then improvements in happiness levels and enthusiasm increase in direct proportion to each gram of fat lost!!
So after about day 15or so, shit got real. I added in extra sprints, extra skipping, tyre flipping, and weights.
Huge shout out to the Muay Thai trainers Poo and Yoot for their time and patience with me !!! They knew just the right level to push me!
This is Barbara. She will be your Fitness Guru. She will yell at you, motivate you, make every workout count, make you sweat, track your results, and be there to listen to you.
Her endless enthusiasm and patience will astonish you, as it did me. She will ensure you get the most out of your time at the camp, in terms of results. Sometimes the brutal reality will not be nice, and sometimes, as with Mickey (see below), you will have a love/ hate relationship, in terms of training.
But Barbara is a true winner and will understand your journey, as she has been through it herself. She is a brutal fitness guru, but I also count her as a wonderful friend!