So you’re looking for how much weight you can lose at a boot camp? It’s a really subjective answer. In fact, it all depends on you and your body. Obviously, you have to research your boot camps carefully to find a one that’s going to suit you and your body goals. Secondly, you have to make sure you’re prepared for the boot camp and fully commit to the gruelling schedule. I’m going to tell you how much I lost at a week’s boot camp, because I know that’s what you’re here for. But first, let me prepare you for what happens at boot camp.
I headed to Who Dares Slims in Andalucia, Spain in the last week of January for an intense week of fitness. The company is ran by (soon to be) husband and wife duo Jamie and Nicole. Jamie who has over 12 years of experience as a personal trainer in the military, training men for Special Forces. Who has now turned his hand to training women at his boot camps over the last four
Find Out How To Lose 10lbs In 7 Days At A Boot Camp
Meet the team
Alongside Jamie, Nicole (and Lynda) there’s Lori, the physiotherapist who is on hand to give deep sports massages at the end of a hard day. Isobel the Yoga instructor who is calming and a welcome break from being beasted. Don’t be fooled though the Yoga is intense.
There’s Louise-Ann the nutritionist who comes to talk about the best diet to follow post boot camp. Finally, Jamie recruits a trainer from the army too to help him make sure that you’re getting the best out of yourself. The whole team are super friendly and really make you feel so welcome. The whole family atmosphere makes you feel a little more relaxed than you may think you’d feel on an intense fitness camp.
Arriving at Malaga airport we were greeted by Jamie who took us to the house, Retiro Sambana. An hours drive away, to get settled in. Arriving to meet Nicole we headed to our rooms to get settled before being given our first timing. Timings are everything at Who Dares Slims. Being run with military precision. You wouldn’t expect anything less now would you?
Our first timing was for our weigh-in. The dreaded weigh-in. Followed by our first meal together. Served up was a chilli-con-
Fitness first
As it was still dark until 8am we were up and at breakfast for 7.30am where we were served scrambled egg, a slice of rye bread and a small helping of avocado. At
If you can push through the amount of exercise on these portions, you can survive everyday life on smaller portions! If you take nothing else away from this, let your portion sizes be smaller and your waists be slimmer.
Our first session began shortly after breakfast and this was a simple circuit to ease us into training. What was really good about this circuit was that it was exercises you can do at home with very little equipment. Whilst one person in the partners did, for example, press-ups, the other person ran to and from cones laid out in a specific order. Then once they had returned, each partner swapped. So, in essence, you were doing the exercise for however long it took your partner to run.
The second session a timed run up the drive. Great, you think? What if I told you that the drive was 1.5km in length and was all on an incline? Not so great now? The drive was my least favourite thing entirely. I have some serious questions to whoever designed the drive. Nevertheless, we had a very hot and sweaty journey from the bottom to the top.
No rest for the wicked
For our third session of the day, we completed another circuit in the grounds of the house. This time there were 11 stations and we did 30 seconds on each of the stations, this included; squats, battle ropes, lat raises, bear crawls and even Jane Fondas. After the first round, we completed another round of 45 seconds this time and then a final 3rd round of only 20 seconds. These kind of circuits are my favourite fat burning exercises as you change focus every so often and the time goes quickly.
After lunch, we headed out to a nearby town where we headed off on a hike. The weather was glorious and we ended up walking a total of 9 km on our first day’s walk.
Day 1 dining
Food for the rest of the day included; our first snack of mixed raisins and nuts. Lunch was a delicious Spanish Lentil and Chorizo Stew. On our walk, we stopped for our second snack of the day which was carrot, celery and radish with lemon and sesame hummus. Finally, for dinner we enjoyed baked cauliflower and garden salad followed by Smoked salmon, kale and sweet potato puree.
For day one I had completed a total of 28,778 steps and had burned over 3,600 calories in the day, according to my Fitbit.
After our tiring day, we all headed to bed super early, around 8pm. I don’t think there was a day that week where I was awake later than 9.45pm.
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New day, new challenges
Day 2 fast came around and I knew this was going to be a difficult day. The programme of events followed like this.
| Tabata | This short, sharp and effective work out included planks, press-ups and other exercises in short sharp bursts |
| Circuit | This circuit included Jamie’s favourite…the bear crawl, burpees, more battle ropes and a lot of upper body workouts |
| Boxing | The first boxing session, to help work those arms and core. We threw jabs and uppercuts in this fast-paced circuit |
| Obstacle Course | Jumping into a pool with your clothes on. Ideal. That is until you have to run a wheelbarrow with sand in around a tree. Bear crawl across the garden and throw a medicine ball up a hill |
| Exercises with Run | Whilst everybody else in the group was doing one specific exercise including burpees, planks, star jumps and more, one of the group had to run around the house twice. |
| Yoga | Taught by Isobel the Yoga teacher we were introduced to Hatha Yoga, which is the practice of asanas (yoga postures) and pranayama (breathing exercises), which help bring peace to the mind and body, preparing the body for deeper spiritual practices such as meditation. |
Food for Day 2
Breakfast: Chia seed pudding with banana and almond
Snack: Homemade Flapjack
Lunch: Scotch Broth
Snack: Devilled eggs. ½ an egg with curried tuna and half an egg with coriander lime and avocado
Dinner: Thai green curry and wild rice followed by 3 chocolate-dipped strawberries
Total steps: 14,325
Total calories burned: 3,675
Definite changes by day 3
Day three began with me looking at myself in the mirror and thinking wow, I can really see a difference and I’ve only completed 2 days of boot camp. In a great mood, I headed to breakfast where we enjoyed porridge & a satsuma. Our snack for the morning was 2 apple slices and peanut butter. This was followed by a lunch of lentil soup.
Our second snack of the day was a feast of 5 almonds, 1 piece dried apricot and a small piece of homemade granola. Evening dinner was butternut squash soup followed by 2 fajita chicken skewers. This dinner was probably the most difficult for me as I’m used to lots of guacamole and salsa when I know fajitas are on the cards. It was the only evening in the entire week where I felt a little peckish.
Just keep pushing
By the third day admittedly my body was feeling achy however the show had to go on. First up in the morning was an abs circuit. As somebody who doesn’t train abs as much as I probably should I thoroughly enjoyed this circuit.
Although difficult it was great to work muscles that don’t get much attention when I train by myself. This was then followed by hill sprints up the lawn. It was gruelling however towards the end of the week heading up the virtually vertical lawn became easier as my fitness levels increased.
The next session was a TRX session on the frame in the garden. TRX is one of my favourite pieces of equipment and if you don’t have one I highly recommend you invest in one.
With the TRX you can train different areas, it’s perhaps my favourite for arm day as you’re actually using the weight of your body which gives for a much harder workout. You can hang a TRX anywhere too so it’s great to take on holiday if you’re not near a gym. After the session working on the TRX, we headed out again for another hike. This time we walked for over three hours and walked a huge 13km.
Day three’s total steps were: 27,053 and a staggering total calories 3,857 burned.
Past halfway, the end is in sight
Over halfway there, Day 4 approached. By now I was really noticing a difference to my body and my face. In fact, a couple of the ladies commented on my face slimming down. With my weight loss showing we got ready for the beach day.
Before we headed to the beach though, we completed our first session of the day. The tun up. This was in fact my favourite session of the entire week. I’m a huge fan of circuits over cardio. The tun up works like so and is an amazing exercise for you to do on your own or with a group of people. The board shows 10 exercises.
We were in teams of 2. The first person ran to the other side of the garden and did 10 reps of the first exercise on the board. They’d then run back and the other person would go and do 10 reps of the first exercise. Then when they returned the first person would go and do 10 reps of the first exercise and 10 reps of the second exercise.
The other person would then complete the same. Then the first person would complete 10 reps of the first exercise and 10 reps of the second exercise and 10 reps of the third exercise. This continues on until you’re doing 10 reps of each of the 10 exercises on the board. So in total, you end up doing 550 exercises.
Beach day ready
Let the hard work commence
After we caught our breath we headed down to the beach for what we all knew would be hard work and would involve a lot of running on the sand the day’s food and exercise on the beach looked a little like this.
| Exercise | Food |
| A game of cups and saucers – where 2 teams had to turn cones the opposite ways to each other. Team with most cones their way won | Breakfast: ½ boiled egg, rye toast, avocado |
| Around 100 balls were put in the middle of the sand and everybody stood in a circle. They then had to run and collect 1 ball at a time. After all of the balls were gone, they then had to steal one ball at a time from each other | Snack: 2 ryvita and cottage cheese |
| Sprints to cones ridiculously spread out with a lie down at every cone reached. | Lunch: Nut Salad |
| Boxing – 20 reps of an exercise then a run to a cone and back, 18 reps of the same exercise then a run to the cone and back all the way down to 0. | Snack: 1/2 strawberry and 1 square of dark chocolate |
| Boxing – 20 jabs, then a run followed by 20 uppercuts then a run, 20 wide swings then a run and 20 jabs with a run. Completed 3 times | Dinner: Prawn stir fry with rice noodles Followed by Chia seed pudding with coconut and mango |
| Farmers walk with sand filled water cans to a cone and back | |
| Throwing a medicine ball to a cone and back | |
| Caber tossing | |
| Jamie’s ‘Tunnel of Love’ – enjoy a scenic view of a face full of sand whilst crawling through a human tunnel in a race against the opposing team (see above) |
Sounds like a hard day?
It was but it wasn’t over. Upon returning home we had to go on a little run around the grounds to get our bearings for what was unbeknown to us as part of the orienteering trail the day later. Finally, we finished with hill sprints with exercises at each cone up the lawn at the front of the house.
Total steps for the day – 15,865
Total calories burnt – 3,714
Gibraltar bound for a hike
The penultimate day was the point where everybody’s bodies began to tire, my right Achilles began to niggle and hurt, however, I didn’t want to give up and I certainly didn’t want to miss out on heading to Gibraltar to climb the Mediterranean Steps in our 10.6km walk. With the house being a short drive from Gib and Nicole’s mum and dad living at the bottom of the rock we headed for a morning out.
Arriving back we were greeted with a hill sprints session where we had to run as teams with one item at a time up and down the hill to make the same ‘gun’ from tennis balls and cones that Jamie had created. After this orienteering began, up and down and up and down that 1.5km long hilly drive. This was then followed by a game of logic where we had to problem solve stacking tyres.
The day was finished by my second favourite activity of the week, the stretcher race. Using a tarpaulin we created a stretcher which was loaded with a sandbag, having to carry it in teams up that hilly drive. This was hilarious and thoroughly enjoyable, probably because the group of us on the boot camp all really got on exceptionally well together and worked so well as a team.
Food for the 5th day was muesli and 1/2 grapefruit for breakfast, 2 oatcakes & beetroot hummus of our snack. 1 egg and ratatouille for lunch. 1 rice cake, cream cheese and a slice of cucumber for our second snack and we finished up with Prawn and avocado boat followed butter beans with chicken.
Total steps 26,010
Total calories burned 3,489
The final countdown
The final day came around so fast and everybody had a mix of emotions, glad it was nearly over because of their bodies aching but not wanting to leave because we had all had such a great time experiencing this together. The rain had been bouncing all night and a lot of the roads were flooded. We had planned to go out for an early walk, however because of the weather we weren’t able to do this.
After breakfast which was Greek yoghurt with almond flakes, 1/2 strawberry & 1 slice banana we threw ourselves into resistance band training followed by self-defence training which was really interesting and something that I think every female should know. We then headed away for the day’s hike which was the Southern trail of the walk in which we walked the Northern trail on the first day. I made sure to bring my backpack that had a charger powered by the sun to prevent my camera from dying, so I could take photos of the beautiful landscape
On our
Our final day’s food was a snack of sesame Ryvita, cream cheese, turkey ham and a slice of cucumber followed by 1/2 boiled egg walnut and chickpea salad for lunch. A protein ball for our second snack. Before dinner, on our last evening we enjoyed a celebratory glass of fizz which oh my goodness after that week, it was the best drink I’ve ever had. Our final meal was Harissa chicken with Mediterranean salad and avocado chocolate mousse to finish.
How much weight did you lose at boot camp?
We all headed for an early bed ready for our weigh in the following morning. Everybody nervous we all headed to the scales. I was absolutely gobsmacked to discover I had dropped 10lbs (4.6kg) in the week and lost 9 cm from my waist.
What was even better is that I wasn’t the biggest loser either. Virginia (an incredible woman who I adore) lost a staggering 14.5lbs and Ally, my Mum from home for the week dropped an amazing 12lbs. Everybody on the boot camp that week dropped between 8-14.5lbs which is a phenomenal amount.
Since returning home I lost a further 2lbs the following week as my body was still in fat burn mode, and I did the minimal exercise to try and rehab my Achilles. 12lbs in 2 weeks is not bad going if I say so myself and what’s best, I’ve lost it the proper way. By moving more and eating less, no fad diets!
So there you have it, you can lose over a stone at boot camp in a week with sheer grit and determination! Who Dares Slims is an amazing concept that works. I love their brand values, the training is varied and exciting. As no day way the same you weren’t sure what was coming next. The element of surprise also kept it exciting. We were so lucky to have been a group who got on so well and we forged friendships that will be long-lasting. So much so that we’re going to do another boot camp together in October.
Hard but rewarding
The week was single-handedly the most difficult week of my life but also one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. Having previously thinking Bootcamp wasn’t for me, I’m a total convert and can’t wait for round 2. If you’re looking to lose weight or even increase your fitness I can’t recommend Who Dares Slims highly enough.
They are accommodating to all ages, abilities and fitness levels. Whilst Jamie is an excellent trainer, it’s reassuring to know that he’s not scream-in-your-face military trainer which I was apprehensive about prior to going to boot camp. If you do have any queries if you’re wondering if Who Dares Slims is for you then drop Nicole an email at info@whodaresslims.co.uk where she will be able to answer your questions.
Who Dares Slims offers boot camps in both the UK and in Spain. You can find out when their next camp is on directly on the Who Dares Slims website.
