Kanye

Mr. West! Mr. West! Mr. West!

The Apollo with the oh-so-cool "Kanye West" headed entrance

Kanye West at the Hammersmith Apollo... To be honest with you I wasn't expecting to be at the concert as I didn't know he was even having one; my little brother had so generously acquired me a ticket to go with him. Well, it was actually because he had refreshed a page on his browser when ordering and received a second ticket that he couldn't sell on. Oh well, better for me really.

Cold as Ice

Two hours after the doors opened, West came on dressed in a straight jacket onto a square white stage and against a white backdrop. All white. And onto these white surfaces was projected moving images of Arctic ice-movements and ocean-panning. It was all very "cool" (punny...). He bounced around the stage to "Cold as Ice" to begin with and the crowd was really feeling it.

"Kanyeti" feathered mask

He donned a mask twice throughout his performance. The first being a feathered white "Yeti" or "Kanyeti" Mask, and the second a diamond-encrusted "Maison Martin Margiela" creation. It was quite strange to see and even nerve-racking at points where he didn't seem to know where he was stepping. It was however very different to anything I've ever seen.

Diamond encrusted "Maison Martin Margiela" mask

Energising the crowd

As you may have been able to deduce, I was in the seated portion of the Apollo, but this doesn't mean I was doing much sitting. In fact, the majority of the time that West was on stage, the whole crowd was up, out of their chairs, singing along, gesturing with hand movements and head swaying (it wasn't just me, honest). My brother was one of the dots in the front row. I can't complain too much about being up in the heavens though (which was quite fitting during Jesus walks) as I had a good view of all the projections, his musicians and DJ and could also feed off the energy of the crowd.

Flashing Lights

I would like to say that people got their moneys worth at about £70 a ticket. He was on for a couple of hours and did a mixture of songs, most of which I knew which was a plus point. There were a few dud moments like when he played an electronic synthesizing-type instrument quite sporadically, and his ten-minute moany-whiny "singing" where a song would end only for him to continue stretching out his "oohs" and "aahs" with seemingly no sense coming from them. I don't know, maybe the die-hard fans got it.

Thank you Mr. West

All in all though, I'd say it was well worth trekking to Hammersmith to see Kanye West, especially since it was free. I really enjoyed the show he put on, even with the confusing masks and one-man-band portions of the show. I'd recommend if he's in town again that you go see him!

:-)

Elky

Some of the Songs that he performed on the night were "Cold as Ice", "Mercy", "Power", "Jesus Walks", "Heartless", "Homecoming", "Flashing Lights", "All of the Lights", "Good Life", "All Falls Down", "Stronger", "Run This Town", "Runaway", "Touch the Sky".

Weight Training, Training Weight.

When I was growing up I was a skinny little kid obsessed with watching martial arts films and Power Rangers. I guess because I was so active, my metabolism was quite high.

As soon as I hit secondary school though, I became a more serious individual. I had no time for fly-kicking the air and play-fighting with my brother (I had a lot of time for sitting around eating lunch though), and I gradually put on more and more weight.

I was a large guy going into university so I started at the gym and gave up after a month. I hadn't noticed any change but apparently I lost a lot of the weight from seven years of inactivity. I couldn't see this though.

Which brings me slightly more up to date. My weight has fluctuated up and down for the past three years but it was only last year when I noticed just how much I had put on that I decided that something had to be done!

One step at a time.

I had to talk myself into it really. When I look at the bigger picture, I usually feel goals to be quite daunting, so I made mine very vague. Find the quickest and biggest cheat to get rid of the weight!

I went into research mode (thank you journalism degree!) where I looked into different diets, exercises and training routines and I started to understand how exactly my body differed from other people's.

I am an endomorph (if I remember correctly) and this means my body doesn't work as hard to burn fat. Add to this the fact I wasn't doing anything in particular to help this fact I was just heading toward obesity!

A few sit-ups, attempts at pull-ups and push-ups and that was how I started. I'd do this everyday for a while until my curiosity made me look for training videos which started to teach me that I didn't have to do cardio to achieve the results that I wanted!

I really didn't want to give up food, because I love it so much! And I knew I wouldn't get a physique that professional models and body builders have but I was okay with that! I'm not really a calorie counter so I knew that wouldn't work. But I had to have a basic knowledge to get by on.

I learned that protein would help me on my quest while carbohydrates would only benefit me if I was very strict, so I cut them out and replaced breakfasts with a diet protein shake. This immediately meant that I was cutting about 250-500 calories out of my regular routine and giving my body a different energy source to run on.

After this I cut fizzy drinks out completely which I used to live on! Again I had learned that liquid calories were not my friend. Things like gravies and sauces (and those sugary fizzy beverages) were pushing my calorie intake over the recommended amount.

It sounds like there was a lot that I changed, but actually the bit that nobody believes is that I never stopped eating what I wanted. Instead of a few meals a day I would indulge at lunch time. Whatever I wanted. I ate out a lot so it wasn't really on the healthy side. Pizza buffets, fried chicken, kebabs, burgers. The worst of the worst. And I don't recommend this method to lose weight, but it worked for me...

I'd make sure I had my dinner before the 5 o'clock mark and would not eat just before I went to bed as this was something I was really bad with beforehand.

So I was slowly becoming more and more active. Losing hours in the day to weight training and also eating differently so that I was actually training my weight. My body started adapting to the change in my patterns positively. I noticed better toning in my arms especially and the numbers on the scale kept going down week by week.

I would say over a six-month period, from July 2012 to January 2013, I got rid of about 2 stone (or about 12kg).

I have gotten back into bad routines though. I've become lazy again, I eat many times throughout the day and even before bed, but I'm at a stage where I am quite happy with what I have achieved. That, and I've trained my body slightly so that it helps to keep the weight off more than before!

I am a lazy person, and to be honest this isn't really a motivational story. I did everything the wrong way and by cheating to get to where I wanted. I'd recommend people go and research what is best for them. The only message I was trying to get across is that even a lazy person can get the job done. ;-)




"I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it."
― Bill Gates

:-)

Elky