I Finished Kayla Itsines’ BBG — And The Results Were Completely Unexpected

I’ve never been very athletic.
In fact, my dabblings in sport at school were limited to one miserable season in my year’s B-team hockey squad. Where, it’s worth noting, I won a prize for scoring the most goals. But only because my coaches counted all the own goals I managed to whack into my own team’s net. Bless them.
So, when I started my very first nine-to-five, as an intern at a magazine in Johannesburg, I found myself hunched over a desk for most of those painfully slow-moving eight hours — with nothing to break my day other than a hearty Alfredo pasta from the greasy cafeteria downstairs.
My new, desk-bound life, coupled with the fact that I just moved in with an old school friend who was as thin as a rake and an unbelievable baker, meant those sneaky kilos started creeping up on me.
By the time I realised, “Hey Kirst, you’re pretty chubby and unhealthy, maybe we should look at doing something about this” — I was about 10 kg overweight. And desperate.
I must have tried every fad diet I could get my hands on
Now, that may not sound like much but on a slight, 1,59 m tall lass, it felt revolting. And it meant I was on the cusp of overweight, with a BMI of 25.
So, in my desperate quest to drop that blubber — and avoid the gym at all costs — I must have tried every fad diet I could get my hands on. Cutting out carbs, living on SlimSlabs, ghastly reality TV star-endorsed diet pills… I even convinced some poor hapless GP into prescribing me some hardcore appetite suppressants. Absolutely nothing worked. I’d drop 0.5 kg and be so desperately hungry I’d binge — and put on more weight. And so, my unhealthy relationship with food was born.
In the interim, I’d moved to my magazine’s Cape Town office, where I got into the magical world of Instagram.
It was here I found Kayla Itsines. The Australian trainer was already becoming wildly popular, on the cusp of exploding into the global fitness phenomenon she is today.
These girls are just like me. And they’re just getting stuck in and going for it. So why couldn’t I?
Of course, even the idea of a 28-minute workout three times a week — which is was Kayla Itsines’ BBG (Bikini Body Guide) is in a nutshell — sounded terrifying to clumsy, uncoordinated old me.
But then I started exploring the BBG community. These girls were not athletes or fitness models — far from it! Some of them were geeky, some were pudgy, some very overweight, some were just trying to enhance their curves…
It struck me — these girls are just like me. And they’re just getting stuck into the programme and going for it. So why couldn’t I?
