Dan's Personal Blog
500 Calorie Challenge – The Results!
This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 26 - The final day of the fitness challenge!

by | May 13, 2015

30 days ago I set out a plan to challenge myself. I aimed to burn 500 calories every single day, in one training session, in the shortest amount of time possible. I did this using my X Trainer (cross trainer) so I could burn more calories faster by increasing the resistance.
  • St Albans Personal Trainer Dan Johnston has let himself go a bit. So he has created a 500 Calorie Challenge to burn that fat! This is the picture from Day 1

    St Albans Personal Trainer Dan Johnston has let himself go a bit. So he has created a 500 Calorie Challenge to burn that fat! This is the picture from Day 1

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 2

    Day 2

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 3

    Day 3

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 4

    Day 4

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 5

    Day 5

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 6

    Day 6

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 7

    Day 7

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 8

    Day 8

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 9

    Day 9

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 10

    Day 10

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 11

    Day 11

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 12

    Day 12

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 13

    Day 13

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 14

    Day 14

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 15

    Day 15

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 16

    Day 16

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 17

    Day 17

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 18

    Day 18

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 19

    Day 19

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 20

    Day 20

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 21

    Day 21

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 22

    Day 22

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 23

    Day 23

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 24

    Day 24

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 25

    Day 25

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 26 - The final day of the fitness challenge!

    Final Day - Day 26

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 26 - The final day of the fitness challenge!

    Final Day - Day 26

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 26 - The final day of the fitness challenge!

    Final Day - Day 26

  • This is the result from the St Albans Personal Training 500 Calorie Challenge Day 26 - The final day of the fitness challenge!

    Final Day - Day 26

One of the biggest lessons this challenge taught me was the discipline of doing something every day. One of the many reasons so many people find a training programme doesn’t work is because they cannot commit to the regular exercise required, and they cannot give 100% – particularly if they are “too tired” or just not up for it. I learned that by managing my state and pushing myself to do something that I wouldn’t normally do, I could achieve a far better result than if I had just exercised inconsistently for the past 30 days.

I hope you’ll give me a bit of grace on this one, but during Easter I put on a fair bit of weight. I gave myself the excuse that I was stressed and I needed to work hard, and that this meant I had no time to stick to regular exercise. As you can see in the picture below, I did not look good! That is both the effect of a bad diet and stress which I placed upon myself:

St_Albans_Personal_Training_500_Calorie_Challenge_Day1-min

Tired, stressed out, poor diet (I was still eating good nutritional food but I was snacking a lot on top of it), finding any excuse to avoid exercise. Even when I was exercising I was barely giving 50%.

That’s one of the great things about this challenge. It forced me to give 100%. If I were to beat my times each day then I had to give 100%.

My first time was pretty bad. I burned 500 calories in 00:28:29. With each day I gave it my all to beat the previous days time. Check out my times below:

Day | Time

1      00:28:29

2      00:24:58

3      00:24:13

4      00:21:02

5      00:21:13

6      00:21:29

7      00:21:12

8      00:21:35

9      00:20:56

10    00:20:53

11    00:20:30

12    00:21:31

13    00:20:49

14    00:21:49

15    00:21:44

16    00:19:55

17    00:19:49

18    00:21:49

19    00:20:24

20    00:20:01

21    REST

22    REST

23    00:19:26

24    00:20:01

25    00:19:39

26    00:20:08

27    00:19:50

28    00:21:01

29    00:19:57

30    00:19:58

My best time was 00:19:26. I knew that if I were to get a good time I had to burn at least 25 calories a minute, so this is what I aimed for. This is not at all easy, and I can tell you that you are left absolutely gasping for air and water once you reach 500 calories! But 20 minutes is not long and you equally recover quickly. It’s manageable and it’s something you can do every day.

So what did it to my body over the coming weeks? Take a look at the Gallery at the top of this post!

Not bad going for 30 days training for just twenty minutes. I did do this on top of my usual workout, but my usual workout (weights, calisthenics) did suffer. On some days I felt very tired, others I felt my muscles had nothing to give. But I still pushed through!

Do I think this is sustainable every single day? No, only as a 30 day challenge. Is it effective as part of your workout? Yes, this is a great way to burn fat in a short amount of time, and you can add it to the end of a workout. I wouldn’t do this without recovery days (unless I were to do the 30 day challenge, which to be honest I would still recommend 1 rest day a week).

What do you think? Would you like the training programme to build up to burning 500 calories a day? Would you like to take on the challenge? Drop me a message and I’ll send you the details (all for free!)

All in all this has been a great amount of fun, and I am going to continue utilising this particular exercise and add it into my own training.

SHARING IS CARING