How I lost 5 pounds in 5 days (of torture)

I've been stuck at a weight-loss plateau for two months and tried to juice cleanse and exercise my way out of it with no success whatsoever. To make matters worse, I fell off a bicycle, scraped a big chunk of skin off my left knee, sprained a ligament in my knee and my right ankle- eliminating half of my workout routine entirely.

A few weeks later I heard about Haddins Advanced Primal Transformation, a nutrition and exercise programme that claims a loss of up to 10 kg of body fat in just 28 days. This differed from Haddins usual Primal Transformations because of the food control aspect of the programme.

Shortly after that my limbs were finally starting to heal, so what did I do? I signed up for the Primal, of course!

The orientation was a rude awakening- this wasn't going to be some fun session spent in an air-conditioned glossy gym; it was more along the lines of an hour a day, five times a week in the life of a caveman. That along with a modified paleo eating plan, support from a private Facebook group dedicated to the programme and a few homework challenges were what the next 28 days were going to revolve around.

I chose the 6am session and started on Sunday, forcing myself out of bed bright and early at 5am. The struggle to wake up that early must've been the hardest part of the week for me.

The first four days of exercise were accompanied by a detox that involved one green juice a day (made up of cucumber, broccoli, spinach, lime, lemon and ginger) as well as 3 vegetable protein shakes and an unlimited amount of cucumber, broccoli and spinach. If you were desperate you could have a palm-sized piece of steamed white fish- none of which felt nearly enough to sustain our one hour daily workout.

Every time I ran up a flight of stairs, did a set of burpees or bear crawled through slippery, just-watered grass I became light-headed and, at some stage, began seeing stars.

After a massive slip-up on day four (yesterday), where I didn't wake up to go to the session nor did I have my juice or shakes, I was overwhelmed with guilt and vowed to push myself even further.

This morning I woke up with a renewed sense of confidence and didn't even get the sound of today's routine let me down; we had to carry a lorry tyre (meant to represent a buffalo that a caveman might have hunted down and carried home) between four people, across the whole of Zayed Sports City- which comes out to about three kilometres.

I'm the one in black and white in the above photo. That left shoulder that I'm using to prop the tyre up is already bruised and swollen. However, I weighed myself after the class and saw that I lost two and a half kilograms since Sunday- even with yesterday's mishap. My skin is glowing and I'm nearly two times as productive at work- not bad for five days of torture.

Watch this space for updates on my second week of the Advanced Primal Transformation.

For more information visit Haddins Facebook page, email [e-mail] or call 02 403 4233.