Shwetank Dave knew the time had come for a life change when the button popped off his jeans after yet another lavish family meal in India.
Last year, the 28-year-old software engineer spent two months in India for back-to-back weddings. Guests eat well, quite well, at an Indian wedding. And when you’re a relative on an extended visit from Canada, the kitchen, it seems, never closes. A diet rich in butter and cream soon took its toll.
“I love the food, but I started to get disgusted by all that grease,” he said.
Shwetank described himself at that time as a 140-pound pear. Through high school, he had that lean and narrow runner’s physique, without much muscle mass. Back then, he could run five kilometres in 20 minutes.
But his exercise routine slid off track in university and didn’t recover when he entered the workforce. As a vegetarian, Shwetank believed there was no such thing as a bad carb. He ate a steady diet of vegetarian pizza, pasta and soybean takeout burgers. He also made the mistake of often eating dinner late in the evening, only a couple of hours before going to bed.
By the time he returned from that trip to India, bursting buttons on his 32-waist jeans, he had decided to take action.
“I made a bet with a friend that I wouldn’t shave my beard until I could run that five km in 20 minutes again,” he said.
He stopped shaving in January 2015. But his own attempts to get back in the running groove often ended far short of the distance or the time.
The months passed. That beard got longer.
“I just didn’t know the approach I should take to get fit,” he said. “I didn’t know how effective weight training could be, or how to do it efficiently or safely.”
Last fall, Shwetank decided to seek professional help. After only two sessions at FFF’s Kanata location with trainers Nicolas Antal and Monique Vautour, he realized this was the push he needed and committed to a full year.
That was 14 months ago. Since then, he’s been on an ambitious program, training four or five times a week, two with his trainers, the other times on his own.
“I was never motivated until I joined FFF and I realized what the outcome could be,” Shwetank said. “I like that this is a client-only gym. There’s not a lot of people, it’s not crowded, like it can be at one of the big fitness chains.”
Changing his vegetarian eating habits outside of the gym has been crucial. He eats a lot of stewed vegetables and legumes now, avoids those late-evening meals, skips the pizza and soy burgers and substitutes quinoa pasta for wheat pasta.
“I could have taught myself these things by researching online, but before I came to FFF it just never occurred to me what might be bad about my eating habits,” he said.
Shwetank did finally hit his mark on that five km run, and shave the beard, last November. But he has since committed to a new goal – achieving the Spartan body – the Gerard Butler 300 Spartan body.
To that end, he’s been gaining weight by cutting fat and adding muscle mass that he never had before. Thanks to a training program tailored just for him by Nick and Monique, this former pear has drastically changed his body composition and increased his mass to 170 pounds. His goal is to hit 180 before the end of the year, then trim back to a lean and muscular 175.
On Shwetank’s five foot eight frame, this will make for a Spartan body, indeed. Haroo!
