The Ultimate Body Plan: 75 easy recipes plus workouts for a leaner, fitter you

WARM-UP/COOL-DOWN (#litres_trial_promo)

PHASE ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

PHASE TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

PHASE THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

YOUR PROGRESS (#litres_trial_promo)

LISTS OF SEARCHABLE TERMS (#litres_trial_promo)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)

INTRODUCTION (#ulink_d895e690-6eec-5396-818a-db58fbd04ac4)

Dear Reader,

Hello and thank you for picking upThe Ultimate Body Plan. This 12-week nutrition and exercise plan will make you leaner and fitter and give you the body you love. How do I know? Because I did it!

My name is Gemma Atkinson. I’m an actress, radio DJ, model, dog fanatic, pyjama-wearing supermarket-goer and proud Mancunian, who can often be found sweating it out in the gym.

In the last couple of years my life has changed beyond recognition, and, as some of you may have noticed, so has my body. I train. I watch what I eat. I take looking after myself seriously. At 34 years old, I feel more confident about how I look now than I did when I was in my twenties. With that confidence comes so much else: I’m healthier, I’ve got more energy, my skin is clear and I sleep like a baby (when I want to…).

You may know me as sulky schoolgirl Lisa Hunter from the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks. Or you may recognise me from Casualty, Emmerdale, Strictly Come Dancing, the lads’ mags I used to model for, my Hits Radio show, or even solely from the fitness-inspired posts I upload to Instagram. Or perhaps you’ve never seen me before in your life, but picked up this book because 12 weeks to a shiny new you sounds like something you want to get on board with. However you arrived here – to these pages of my very first book (argh!) – welcome! I’m so excited you’re up for making changes, because the plan detailed here transformed my life and it’ll do the same for yours too.

I’m really proud that I’ve found what makes me happy and what makes me feel good, that I’ve learned how to appreciate my body for what it is and what it can do and that I can share that with others. So many people go their whole lives without feeling good about themselves. You can do this. Just change your environment for 12 weeks and I can guarantee you won’t ever want to go back.

By picking up this book you’re taking the first step on a journey that will change your life. All you have to do is decide to commit and you’ll succeed.

Good luck!

How it all began

So, what inspired me to write this book? Well, since getting my first TV acting role when I was 15 years old (good old grumpy Lisa Hunter), I’ve spent nearly 20 years having my appearance scrutinised, analysed, criticised, complimented or casually dismissed in the press or online. You know what? I’m fine with it.

At least I am now.

Because since I started training and properly respecting my body and what it can do, I feel AMAZING.

I have learned to not only give zero f***s about any negativity directed my way about how I look, but to actually love my body and truly appreciate the skin I live in (it’s true; stop rolling your eyes please). How? By discovering my inner Xena Warrior Princess, inner Jet from Gladiators and inner She-Ra (yep, spot the 90s kid). I can chest-press 15kg dumbbells for three sets of ten reps and deadlift 100kg. If you don’t understand a word I just wrote, don’t worry – I didn’t until a few years ago. But I do now, and trust me when I say that challenging my body and understanding how it works has boosted my confidence and self-esteem no end. It’s also changed my perspective on everything: ambition, family, friends… even love… Sound a bit dramatic? That’s because it is!

This 12-week programme incorporates 75 delicious recipes, carefully curated to give your body what it needs, with monthly phased workouts – both home-based and gym-based, so you can choose what works best for you – that increase in intensity as the weeks go on. There is a ridiculous myth that women shouldn’t do weights. Bollocks! Weights are the only way to get truly lean and sculpt your body. This plan will make you fitter, healthier, stronger and leaner (and curvier in places you want curves – hello J Lo bum), but, most importantly, it will totally alter how you see your body. Instead of hating your ‘thunder thighs’ (a personal one for me – more details on that particular nickname in the next section), you’ll credit them for getting you around for 34 years, for being half of your mum and half of your dad, and for being able to do four sets of 20 walking lunges with 15kg dumbbells in each hand.

All I’m asking is that you dedicate 12 weeks – just 12 weeks! that’s nothing in the grand scheme of things – to seeing how far you can go and how good you can feel. The results will be dramatic. You’ll lose fat, gain muscle, and even see other subtle changes like your skin, hair and nails becoming visibly healthier. Loads of people message me saying, ‘What creams do you use on your skin?’ Nothing but Egyptian Magic skin cream. My skin looks good because I eat well, exercise effectively and get proper sleep. That’s my not-so closely guarded secret!

Follow this plan and you’ll see physical changes in just 21 days and discover a whole new attitude to life. If you really throw yourself into this and take it seriously, you’ll feel more capable, more positive and more able to deal with whatever comes your way. By the end of the plan, you’ll have learned how to break bad habits, how to stop punishing yourself for not being or looking like someone else, and to accept the things you cannot change. We’re all different and are built in different ways. This plan is about appreciating your body for what it is, working with it and trying to be the best version of you that you can be, both physically and mentally.

Let’s get one thing straight right off: this is not a quick-fix diet plan that promises you’ll weigh a certain amount in a few weeks if you starve yourself to near-death and stop doing everything that makes life fun and worth living. I think those plans are unsustainable and bad for you. (Plus, I’ve always hated that the first three letters of the word diet are ‘die’ – I think that says it all really.) This plan is a lifestyle change – something that you’ll learn to fit into your daily routine that’ll overhaul things long-term. The longer you do this, the more your body will adapt and the stronger it will become, so when you do slip up (because hello, that’s life), or need a little time off, it’s fine, because you’ll know exactly how to get back on track. And the best bit is, you’ll want to keep at it because you’ll feel so much better doing it than not doing it.

Sure, it’s easier to carry on watching TV than to work out, but it’s also going to be easier putting on that outfit and feeling good about yourself, than putting it on and crying because you feel like absolute crap. In 21 days your stomach and thighs will feel tighter when you sit down, your arms will look more toned, you’ll feel less bloated, you’ll be sleeping better and you’ll have more energy. And that’s in just three weeks. Imagine how good you’ll feel in 12.

It’s time to look after yourself and to stop neglecting your body – it’s yours, and if you’re lucky, it’s going to be with you for a long time. So often people do everything to look after their kids, partner, dogs or mates, while disregarding themselves. It’s time to spend some time on you, for you.

Nothing looks better on someone than confidence – and I’m going to help you find that. I’m going to help you feel and look great, so you can rock that bikini with pride, stride into that job interview with your head held high, get over that ex who didn’t deserve you, and give a big middle finger to anyone who says it can’t be done.

Tomboys and thunder thighs

Growing up, I was a tomboy. My family would wind me up saying if I’d been born first, my parents wouldn’t have had another child, because our kid, my elder sister Nina, really was the perfect baby. She slept through the night. She’d say, ‘Mummy, dirty hands’ and hold them out to be washed. She’d help with the food shopping and the chores. She was just all-round great. Then, seven years later, I arrived. I never slept. When I helped out I would sulk about it, or at least ask for some pocket money in return! I was trying to hustle from the age of 10, ha! I used to go and hide in my dad’s pickup truck, lay flat on the trailer and come in covered in mud. Mum would panic whenever I went out as I’d always come home with cuts on my head and scraped knees. Plus, I spent all my time in the garage with my dad and granddad, ‘helping’ them to build the Caterham Super 7 cars (two-seater sports cars) that my dad raced. I remember him working on this white and silver one for a year and when it was finished he’d take me and my friends, one-by-one, for a ride in it on Sundays. Whenever he raced, we’d make a weekend of it, piling into the caravan to go watch him with our packed lunches. Of course, this meant a lot of the time I was covered in oil and grease and I absolutely loved it!

I was into Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Barbies and stuff? No chance. I had a WWE wrestling belt and ring instead. I had all the wrestling stickers and books. People still say to me actually, ‘You should be a WWE Diva’, and if anyone from the wrestling world is reading this – sign me up!

Because I was into kick-ass women – the Xenas, the Jets and the She-Ras – whenever there was a chance to do sports at school, I took it. I did hockey, netball, rounders, athletics and trampolining. I also ran the 100m and was the fourth leg of the relay for local club Manchester Girls. I absolutely loved it for the comradery, being part of a team, and getting stronger, even though I didn’t come first (although at the time I clearly thought I was Sally Gunnell).

That’s where the nickname ‘Thunder Thighs’ came from: the fact that I was both a runner and had big legs. At the time it never bothered me because it was only ever said in a funny, affectionate way, and it never stopped me from doing what I loved. But I think subconsciously it may have got under my skin a little because I do remember thinking, ‘My legs are quite muscly, I don’t really want to get them out,’ and I’d always wear trousers at school when we were allowed to, during the winter. Plus, wearing trousers also meant I didn’t have to bother shaving my legs! (Shaving – what a total, utter and absolute ballache.)

That brief history might give you some idea as to why I responded the way I did when my mum picked me up from school one day when I was 15 and, instead of taking me to the dentist like she’d said, took me to a modelling agency. ‘No way! ABSOLUTELY NOT!’ I roared as we pulled up. Which is exactly what she’d known I’d do, which is why she’d kept it secret. Me? Modelling? I’d got hairy legs and didn’t own a single lipstick. I lived in trackies and dungarees. ‘Listen, a few people have seen family photos of you and said I should enrol you here. You never know what it’ll lead to,’ she said, ushering me in, while I mentally prepared my escape route.

So we turned up at Manchester Modelling Agency (MMA) and I genuinely couldn’t believe I was there rather than at home on my Playstation. Surprisingly, bearing in mind the confused, gormless look on my face, the agency signed me up. They took some photos, made me a portfolio and sent us on our way. I didn’t think anything more about it. Then, about a month later, they called saying there was a casting for Hollyoaks. The soap was looking for a grumpy schoolgirl called Lisa Hunter and the agency thought I’d be a great fit! Charming. But I did the audition and two hours later they told me I’d got the job.

And that’s where it all started, and I’ve got my mum to thank for everything! She was spot on. I loved it as soon as I did it. But had she told me her idea before arriving at MMA, I wouldn’t have gone. All the things I’ve done and achieved in my life resulted from that very first audition which I got because my mum believed in me. Thanks, Mum!

Calendar girls

I’d never acted properly before. Drama classes at school mostly consisted of sitting in the common room chatting for an hour a week. I’d also never even seen Hollyoaks! When I got the job, my family and friends were way more excited than I was, saying, ‘Oh! You’re going to get to work with Gary Lucy and James Redmond!’ while I had no idea who they were. I didn’t realise it was a big deal. It was only after the show came out and people started stopping me on the street asking if I was on the TV that I thought, ‘Ah okay, people other than my mates watch this’.

I did an acting course before shooting my first scene and found the whole thing exciting, but I think being so young made me quite blasé about it. Mum wouldn’t let me extend the initial contract until I’d passed my GCSEs though, so I got the grades I needed to study sports therapy, which is what I’d always wanted to do, then I signed up to Hollyoaks full-time for a year. That ended up turning into seven altogether; five on the main show and two on the spin-offs Hollyoaks: Let Loose and Hollyoaks: In the City.

Chilling with my dad. I always felt safe up there on his shoulders

Rocking my one-piece in Tenerife. I’m fuming because Mum made me cut my hair short the week before

Helping Dad build our back fence! I was probably getting right in his way, right under his feet and right on his nerves, but still he always let me help

Fifth year of high school in my PE kit. My fringe hair-sprayed within an inch of its life!

My first BMX. I fell off at least 20 times in the first week learning to do wheelies… But I always got back on!

I always joke with my friends now that it’s a good job social media wasn’t around when we were at school. I didn’t have that extraordinary pressure young people face now to look a certain way. I remember the first moment I ever felt truly insecure about how I looked: when we shot a Hollyoaks calendar in Ibiza when I was 17, I was with beautiful women who were two or three years older than me, were quite slim and also more physically developed, like the lovely Sarah Dunn who played Mandy, and Elize du Toit who played Izzy. When I saw the photos I thought, ‘Oh gosh, I don’t look like these other girls. I look heavier, my roots are quite bad, and my nails are all bitten’. They’d all had manicures and pedicures and their hair done, but, because I was young, I thought that’s just how they looked all the time. It didn’t occur to me that they had got their hair and nails done specially. It was the first time I really questioned my appearance.

Earlier that year, in April 2002, my dad passed away. It was, and still is, the single biggest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life and it hit me massively hard. While I didn’t go off the rails as such, I did stop looking after myself a bit. I’d think nothing of going out and sinking five shots of vodka of an evening. My friends and I would go out on Friday and Saturday nights drinking, have a McDonald’s on the Saturday and a Chinese takeaway on the Sunday. None of us would ever think, ‘I’m going to feel like crap tomorrow,’ or ‘We’re going to get fat’. We just did it. It’s only when I look back now that I realise, ‘that’s why my face was puffy, my skin used to break out, and why I didn’t sleep very well. I mean, we used to get a flight to Magaluf on a Friday, come back on Sunday and then head straight to work on the Monday. We weren’t on our phones trying to get our best angles to upload to Instagram, we just let ourselves be and we needed that. I needed that. That whole period was full of laughter and love.

But it all took its toll, meaning I definitely didn’t look my best when shooting that Hollyoaks calendar. It was, I think, my very first insight into what social media is now – being forced to compare myself to other women. I spent that whole week in Ibiza thinking, ‘This is so embarrassing. I look chubby, young and stupid.’ I even wondered if the press people would regret me being in it. Then, when it came to promotion, the agency said to me, ‘The Daily Star, The Sun and The Mirror all want to use your shot to advertise the calendar.’ My photo – out of all of them. I couldn’t believe it. Many of the papers did use my photo. Then, off the back of that, the agency said, ‘The response has been great. We want you to do your own calendar.’ So I shot my own, the whole time thinking, ‘Is anyone actually going to buy this?’ But then the lads’ mags picked up on it and it basically kick-started my modelling career. Which just goes to show, you know? I spent an entire week – and all the lead-up to the calendar being released – panicking about it. Panicking that I didn’t look right, that I was too big and un-groomed, too much of a tomboy; that I didn’t look like everyone else. Yet off the back of that I ended up shooting five or six of my own calendars. Something great came from a week of stressing over something that was all in my own head. It taught me that we never know the full story, that we can look at an Instagram post and think, ‘Oh, look at her with her perfect life’, not realising she’s spent the day doubled over with anxiety about something or other.

That was a big lesson for me – how comparing yourself to others can send you down a spiral of self-doubt. And, as my modelling career took off and papers and magazines started becoming interested in my personal life, I’d have a few more lessons coming my way…

The heartbreak diet