- 1 day ago
Sidemen Charity Match here we come....help
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TechTranscript
00:00Last week, I got the greatest message ever.
00:02Do you want to play in the Sidemen Charity Football Match?
00:04My favorite sport to play in the largest stadium in the country
00:07with the biggest online audience of any charity sports event ever
00:10and millions raised for great causes.
00:13Oh my God, yes.
00:14The only issue is I look like this.
00:16This is my current body.
00:18No alterations, no cleansing.
00:20And this is about how good I am at football.
00:22But you know the motto, say yes,
00:24then learn how to do it later.
00:26I would love to play.
00:29Right, now I just need to completely transform my weight,
00:32my health and my football skills before April 18th,
00:35the day of the match.
00:36So because we're trying to make such a massive change
00:38in not a massive amount of time,
00:39we need to address every single key health metric all at once.
00:43The first being...
00:47I'm overweight.
00:48I just got a full body DEXA scan done,
00:50which is pretty crazy because it shows you in crystal clear detail
00:52how much of you is lean muscle in red and then how much is fat.
00:56And I'm not in love with the reports that came with that
00:59because it confirms the obvious that I do have slightly too much fat.
01:03It's saying over here that I'm 64th out of an average 100 people.
01:06But it's also made me realize that I have way too much visceral fat.
01:10The hidden fat around your organs, which is particularly nasty.
01:12I'm 79th out of 100.
01:15I hate health checks.
01:16The good news though is losing extra weight is pretty much as simple as this equation.
01:20Calories taken in through food and drink.
01:22So for me right now, this is 2500 a day minus the calories I burn.
01:26So that's both what my body burns naturally just by being alive.
01:301800 and any extra that I'm able to shed by moving around and exercising.
01:35A meager 400 right now.
01:37So that leaves us with a 300 calorie surplus.
01:40I'm eating more than I'm using.
01:41So my body is storing that excess mostly as fat.
01:45So how can I actually change this in a way that isn't just spend half my life in the gym?
01:49I think I've realized I've made it an involuntary habit to consistently clench
01:53to try and hide the belly.
01:55So to up the number of calories burned, my desk chair is gone.
01:58It's replaced by two things.
02:00This wellness ball that I bought from Technogym,
02:03which is pretty great for me because I'm a born fiddler.
02:05And this lets me fiddle.
02:06But in a way that's keeping my body moving and my core active.
02:09Then the best under desk elliptical that I've ever used.
02:12The QB Go.
02:13Which I love because it basically feels like a foot rest.
02:16But one that I naturally end up pedaling anyway without even thinking about it.
02:20Now I gotta stress.
02:20This kind of stuff is far from a full solution to my problem.
02:24Even if I use both of these for a few hours every day,
02:27it's only going to burn an extra roughly 200 calories.
02:30So none of this is better than going to the gym.
02:33But the goal of this is just to burn enough calories while I work.
02:36So that by the time I finish work,
02:38the amount that I need to tackle in the gym is actually achievable.
02:41Essentially the plan is to burn an additional 400 calories from focused exercise per day.
02:46Compared to what I used to.
02:47And that extra will be a combination of football practice.
02:50Which as you've seen I'm going to need plenty of.
02:53Some strength training in between to make sure I don't waste away.
02:55But the most important tool in my entire arsenal is the incline walk.
02:59Walking at an incline on a treadmill honestly feels like a hack.
03:03It burns calories shockingly fast.
03:04While being low intensity enough that you can also just do something while it's happening.
03:09Like play a game on your phone or watch a bit of TV and it's actually relaxing.
03:12And you need that.
03:13You have to build in some things that you look forward to.
03:15And then finally, but most importantly,
03:17I also got to reduce how many calories I take in.
03:20From 2500 to 2100.
03:23Leaving us with a total calorie deficit of 700 every day.
03:27I want to do this so badly.
03:29Because if I can keep this up, my entire body composition will completely change
03:32by the time it comes to my follow-up, Dexter Appointment.
03:35Which I'll have done just before the big game itself.
03:37But I'll keep you updated on Instagram in the meantime with progress.
03:40And then to keep track of everything,
03:41I'm using the creatively named calorie counterer.
03:44I just love the fact that it lays out that exact equation I've been talking about.
03:48Factoring in how many calories you're consuming,
03:49what your body burns by itself, and then what you're burning with exercise and movement.
03:53Leaving you with the bottom figure, which is exactly how much of a deficit you're in.
03:56And that the app updates the calories burned as you're doing things using the tracking on the Apple Watch.
04:01I would say Apple slightly overestimates, but you can just factor that in.
04:05Time for sleep!
04:06Not like that, it's like 11am.
04:09I feel like the most incredible, but also terrifying part of this health journey is that
04:13every single section of health that I'm trying to tackle, they're all linked.
04:17Which means if I can get them all right, they will compound each other for an even better result.
04:21But if one starts to go wrong, it will drag the others.
04:24Last year was the first time that I started consistently snoring in my sleep pretty badly.
04:29And weight gain is one of the most common explanations for that.
04:32It makes my sleep less restful, it wakes Drisha up, who then wakes me up.
04:36All leading to an average sleep score last month of 76 out of 100.
04:40Which is not good, especially considering that a lot of these apps
04:43inflate that figure to just make you feel better.
04:46So here's the game plan to get that number up.
04:48First, three gadgets.
04:50And to be honest, each one of these is a bit of a wild card.
04:52First is the Wooja mat, which you place onto your bed and it's meant to use vibration
04:57in a way that stimulates circulation and relaxation.
05:00They say this is absolutely transformational to how restful your sleep is.
05:04We'll see about that.
05:05The Elamind headband, which is the first to be clinically shown
05:08to fix the other side of the sleep equation.
05:10Helping people fall asleep faster using precise acoustic stimulation.
05:15People are raving about this thing online.
05:16The only thing I can say right now is just, it's very squishy.
05:19I can see it being very comfy in bed.
05:23And then the final one is a gadget that sounds really counterintuitive,
05:26but this is actually the thing that I am most intrigued by.
05:30So I found these glasses online by a company called Luminette.
05:34And they blast you with light.
05:36Like the literal opposite of sunglasses.
05:40Ooh.
05:41It's surprisingly out of your way.
05:43Like I very much feel like I can carry on doing what I'm doing while it's on.
05:46It's actually a pretty well-established thing that one way to fix your sleep cycle
05:49is to focus on exposing yourself to lots of light early in the morning.
05:53That way your body fully wakes up at the start of the day,
05:55so that when you're starting to wind down and getting ready to sleep,
05:59it's completely tired.
06:00Now most people, myself included, don't do this.
06:02We spend the first few hours of our day in fairly dim indoor conditions,
06:06which means we don't hit our peak level of alertness till later,
06:09and therefore we don't tire till later.
06:11So the whole idea of these glasses is really just to bring forward these timings,
06:15so that when it comes to bedtime, you are less alert and more ready for sleep.
06:18So that's the tech.
06:19But one thing I recommend...
06:22It's just a drop test.
06:23It's just a drop test.
06:25So one thing, if you're not getting completely optimal sleep,
06:27I would recommend you do is just see a doctor.
06:30I found one who's a specialist in everything I suffer with.
06:33He stuck his big long camera up my nose and immediately found inflammation
06:37because I have like 17 allergies.
06:39So he's given me a spray to take that down.
06:41And then also from a blood test,
06:42he found that I have a pretty significant iron deficiency,
06:44which he's saying is the most likely cause for all the restlessness that I get.
06:48It's just really good to fix these fundamentals
06:50before you start worrying about your fancy Tron-style monobrow glasses.
06:56Trono-brow?
06:59I got a wedge pillow.
07:00My dad, who's almost definitely at this point where I inherit my snoring genes from,
07:05he swears by this.
07:06He carries one of these everywhere he goes.
07:07Because it lifts the entire upper half of your body,
07:10which reduces the pressure on your airways.
07:12So it's likely to be a good short-term fix to stop the snoring until I've lost the weight.
07:17And then the last thing, which is by far the least fun,
07:19I need to stop snacking late from the cupboard of doom that we have in our cinema room.
07:24I can have the snack.
07:25It's just better to have the snack during the day and then just cold turkey,
07:28quit eating at 7pm.
07:30Because anything after that will mean my body is actively digesting while I sleep,
07:33instead of maximizing restfulness.
07:35So let's see how close to 100 out of 100 I can get on my sleep score if I stick
07:39to all this.
07:40So that's the weight, that's the sleep under control.
07:42But I do also need to get fit.
07:44In my entire life, I have never been able to sprint more than about 30 seconds.
07:48I am out of breath walking up the stairs.
07:50So to say that I am not prepared for Wembley Stadium would be about the understatement of the century.
07:56Now, the best way to measure fitness is something called a VO2 max test,
07:59which essentially quantifies how much oxygen that your body can use while exercising.
08:04That might sound niche.
08:05It's not.
08:06VO2 max is actually pretty widely considered to be one of the best
08:09indicators for how long you're going to live.
08:12So you can imagine I wasn't ecstatic to find myself firmly in the fair category.
08:16Just above poor.
08:18There's two things that can specifically help to address this though.
08:20One is interval training.
08:22So bursts of sprinting with quick breaks in between.
08:25I say as I've just taken a seat.
08:28It's not just a way to get more calories because interval training,
08:31it trains your heart to actually get more oxygen to your muscles
08:33and it trains your muscles to be able to use that oxygen better.
08:36Now, I'm also not made of time.
08:38So I think the best way for me to get these sprints in is just the
08:41last eight minutes of my nice, easy, fun, incline walks.
08:45The second thing though is this guy, the AeroFit Elite.
08:48This is something you keep around your mouth and it basically makes it harder to breathe.
08:53It forces you to be able to work with less so that when you have a normal amount,
08:56you feel like a superhuman.
08:58And it's a clever little thing.
08:59You can see it measuring the air going in and out of your lungs in real time
09:03and then using it to track your progress.
09:05So just like the DEXA scan, I'm going to retest my VO2 at the end of this transformation.
09:09And I pray to God that it's better than fair.
09:12But it's the lifestyle changes that I think will add rocket fuel to this journey.
09:15Stuff like this, the Spottle.
09:17I have searched for years for the perfect water bottle and I think, I think I found it.
09:22It's a glass bottle which makes it feel cleaner than plastic, but then with silicon on the outside
09:26so it doesn't thud when you put it down.
09:28To drink, you can either sip with the straw or chug with the nozzle.
09:31And in case you hadn't noticed, the thing is two liters with the measurements actually marked out on
09:37it.
09:37So it gives me a sort of real life progress bar.
09:39If I can top this up each morning and just have it finished by the time I sleep,
09:43alongside the water that I'll naturally end up having in other things,
09:45I know that I've had all the water I need to have to keep my body performing optimally.
09:50And it should also help keep me a little fuller so I eat less.
09:53I just realized I am killing it today.
09:55Every few days I've also been treating myself by emptying one of these electrolyte sachets in there.
09:59These ones from Element are the best that I've found.
10:02They make the taste much less boring and they're quite clean.
10:05The only sweetener is a bit of stevia.
10:07The hardest thing though that I'm going to need to address is stress.
10:10Stress is such a significant factor in health that if I don't get it under control,
10:15it could single-handedly just kill this entire run.
10:18Stress leads to bad sleep, whether you have a wedge pillow or not.
10:21Stress triggers the fight-or-flight response, which makes you crave energy-dense, unhealthy
10:26things like candy.
10:27And it can stop you losing weight or gaining muscle, even if you're eating everything right,
10:30because it's reallocating your body's resources towards short-term survival.
10:35And that's scary because I get stressed a lot.
10:37I'm someone who really likes things to go to plan and filming YouTube videos is a complex,
10:43messy process that let's just say very rarely does.
10:46Are you alright?
10:47Yeah.
10:47So there's three things I'm going to try.
10:49A is just a complete rework of my calendar.
10:52Just giving myself more time to get the same things done,
10:55so that I'm not constantly rushing to finish the next thing fast
10:58and getting worked up when that doesn't happen.
10:59B is kind of the flip side of this, gratitudes.
11:02I'll give three things that I'm grateful for to Drisha, my wife.
11:05She'll give three things to me.
11:06And this is something that currently we're only doing when we get particularly stressed.
11:09And it really helps because it refocuses your brain on all the amazing things that no doubt
11:14are happening in your life.
11:16But I'm curious to see how much difference this will make if we just do it every day.
11:19And then finally, for stress, of course, it's me as a gadget for that.
11:24I've only just started using this TheraFace mask, but I think I'm going to absolutely love it.
11:29Because you just stick it on your face and turn it on and it treats you with red light,
11:33which is de-aging, blue light, which is good for skin clarity.
11:36And then while that's happening, it does a light massage. And that combination of feeling good
11:41because of the massage, while also feeling like you're doing good for yourself with all the lights,
11:45all in this really comfy package that's USB-C rechargeable and keeps your eyes out of it
11:50so you can carry on watching TV, is I think a potential game changer for the evening wind-down routine.
11:56The only thing left to do then is to gain some ball knowledge.
11:59Here are my current stats. I have never in my life watched a football game from start to finish.
12:04And out of 30 shots at goal, I managed to score 18.
12:07If that sounds impressive, bear in mind there was no goalkeeper.
12:10I was only eight meters away and I nearly decked myself in the process.
12:14So I booked a coach. Three times a week I'm going to train football,
12:17which should also help a little with the fitness equation.
12:19And then I should also start watching some games for strategy.
12:22But thankfully that fits very neatly into my time incline walking on the treadmill.
12:27So I'm filming this video on January 18th, three months before the match,
12:31which is on April 18th, which means by the time you're seeing this video,
12:34I am well into the transformation and I have basically one month to go.
12:38I'm scared. I'm very scared. I've never done anything like this.
12:42But what an opportunity. Let's get to work.
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