And the biggest losers are...

8 weeks of healthy eating - 50 lives changed for ever!

"Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat." - Greg Glassman

This is basically what we based our latest "CCF 8 Weeks to Own Your Lifestyle" Nutrition Challenge on and then we added the biggest prize values we've ever had with a total of CCF Memberships worth more than R65,000 on the line to incentivise our members to take control of their nutrition - and talk about the participants taking ownership of their lives!

Full disclosure: we had a little bit more than 50 members starting the challenge in the middle of January 2019, and a total of 46 followed through and did their re-measurement - the below stats are based on those who did re-measure after 8 weeks.

46 finishing participants - 175kg of body weight loss.

Now, the challenge wasn't actually about weight loss per se (it's not even a score giving factor when we decide winners), but this is still mind blowing. Below you'll see some amazing numbers, especially considering this was only an 8 week period, and since this is the AVERAGE improvements - which shows you how good ALL the participants did in this challenge:

• Average Body Weight Lost: 3.8kg
• Average Body FAT Weight Lost: 3.0kg
  (meaning that contestants also lost some Lean Body Mass, which is naturally the case and usually water weight).
• Average Waist Lost: 4.0cm
• Average Body Fat % Lost: 11.8%*
  

*This is what we base the challenge scores on: We take the lost Body Fat % units divided by the Starting Body Fat % as this simply rewards a percentage wise improvement in body composition instead of for instance weight loss which would be much easier for someone that has a lot to lose to start with to improve on.

We then also take visual change in consideration and let our CCF Coaches simply rank the best improvements in the participants before vs after pictures and then placing in both the Body Fat improvement & the ranking based on Coaches Votes determine the winners. 
NB: We aren't posting pictures of all the winners yet as we still want to confirm their consent to do so.

And the winners are:

This time around we gave away these epic membership packages to the top 3 in EACH CCF Box - so here you have them listed in each box.

CCF GARDENS

1. Wessel Olwagen - 12 months of Free CCF Unlimited Membership (value R16,788):
   - 27.6% Improved Body Composition (1st), From 17.1 to 12.2 Body Fat-%
   - Lost 10.5cm around the waist
   - Lost 4.9kg Body Fat Weight.
   5th in the Coaches' Vote.
2. Morris Rosenberg - 3 months of Free CCF Unlimited Membership (value R4,197): 
   - 14.8% Improved Body Composition (6th), From 24.5 to 20.9 Body Fat-%
   - Lost 9.8kg Body Weight
   - Lost 8cm around the waist.
   1st in Coaches Vote.
3. Zahrah Price - 1 month of Free CCF Unlimited Membership (value R1,399): 
   - 24.8% Improved Body Composition (3rd), From 19.7 to 15.0 Body Fat-%
   - Lost 2.7kg Body Fat
   - Gained 1.9 Lean Body Mass!
   6th in Coaches Vote.

Wessel obviously crushed the challenge with his massive loss of body fat % and +10cm around the waist(!) but what's also cool to see here is that Zee didn't loose a lot of weight (didn't have to much to lose from the beginning) but by going from 19.6 to 15.0 in Body Fat% she placed high anyway!

CCF NEWLANDS

1. Gareth Bern - 12 months of Free CCF Unlimited Membership (value R16,788): 
   - 21.6% Improved Body Composition (1st), From 25.1 to 19.7 Body Fat-% 
   - Lost 5cm around the waist
   - Lost 5.0kg Body Fat Weight
   - Gained 2.5kg Lean Body Mass(!)
   2nd in the Coaches' Vote.
2. Luis Martin - 3 months of Free CCF Unlimited Membership (value R4,197): 
   - 16.3% Improved Body Composition (3rd), From 25.7 to 21.5 Body Fat-% 
   - Lost 8.9kg Body Weight
   - Lost 8.5cm around the waist.
   1st in Coaches Vote.
3. Philip Botha - 1 month of Free CCF Unlimited Membership (value R1,399): 
   -17.8% Improved Body Composition (2nd), From 18.9 to 15.6 Body Fat-% 
   - Lost 4.1kg Body Fat
   - Lost 3cm around the waist.
   3rd in Coaches Vote.

This was a close race! The gentlemen winning all ended up in the top 3 in terms of both body composition improvement and coaches votes - but in the end Gareth's impressive fat loss AND lean body mass gain paid off.

CCF CENTURY CITY

1. Rafeeq Price - 12 months of Free CCF Unlimited Membership (value R16,788): 
   - 29.7% Improved Body Composition (2nd), From 17.8 to 12.5 Body Fat-%
   - Lost 5cm around the waist
   - Lost 4.8kg Body Fat Weight
   - Gained 1.8kg Lean Body Mass.
   2nd in the Coaches' Vote.
2. Charl Knoessen - 3 months of Free CCF Unlimited Membership (value R4,197): 
   - 19.4% Improved Body Composition (5th), From 20.1 to 16.2 Body Fat-%
   - Lost 12kg Body Weight(!)
   - Lost 7.9cm around the waist.
   1st in Coaches Vote.
3. Dylan Stacey - 1 month of Free CCF Unlimited Membership (value R1,399): 
   - 38.5% Improved Body Composition (1st), From 24.6 to 15.2 Body Fat-%
   - Lost 8.8kg Body Fat
   - Gained 6.8kg Lean Body Mass(!)
   6th in Coaches Vote.

At CCFCC we saw similar to the other boxes trends where the best performers managed to not only lose body fat, but also put on lean body mass - Dylan's transformation was pretty crazy as an example - but also look at Charl that lost 12kg in an 8 week period!

CONCLUSION: Eating healthy & Training with High Intensity can change your life.

What has been really cool with arguably, once again, our so far most successful Nutrition Challenge is that we can really see that it's not rocket science that create life long results - it's simply sticking to the basics and holding yourself accountable. 

In this challenge we never asked our members to weigh and measure their food or go on any crazy diets, but what we did do was this:

• We asked the members to chose one out of 5 ways of Eating Healthy from our "CCF Nutrition E-Book".
• We sent out a SIMPLE Weekly Habit to follow, to allow this to become a lifestyle the participants could take with them forever.
• We then gave the members a Score Card, for their own use, where they got points for sticking to their chosen way of eating, for training in class, for doing mobility work & for sleeping!

You see in the end the path towards a healthy and fit body is not really so complicated, it just takes determination and consistency do to the right things over and over again.

So if you too want to change your body composition and improve your results in the box here's what we think you should do: Throw sugar, especially the refined version, out of your diet. Train hard in our Cape CrossFit classes 3-5 times per week, and once in a while get outdoors and use your fitness.

See life is meant to be lived in a healthy and fit way, and the above prescription doesn't sound like a bad life to us?

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PS. We ran a Performance Challenge along side this Nutrition Challenge and will reveal those winners in another post later this weekend!