This is not meant to be an inspirational blog but more about some techniques that I feel can help everybody. You really don’t have to exercise a lot to lose weight but the input is where almost all of your focus needs to be.
Around October of last year, I had made up my mind that I WILL drop weight as it had reached astronomical figures of close to 150 kgs, about 60 more than what it was supposed to be (90) .
Despite the fact that I have lost so much of weight in the last 12 months, the journey is still on and would be on for quite some time if I want to do it right.
Before I proceed further, want to get it out there that I’m not a nutritionist and don’t recommend anybody reading this to follow this to the tee. My weight was getting to a point where I had to lose weight to avoid further damage and had to take a chance.
Below are some of the things I did that you can try:
What is your instinct towards food?
I have always loved my food, right from when I was a little boy. As I grew older, my emotional connect with good also grew. All of us a have a different connection with food. You could be one of the below:
You eat to survive and not get distracted at work
This is ideally where we need to be, simply eat sufficient to carry on with our daily tasks. The food need for our bodies in terms of quantity isn’t much. For example: If you have 100 gms. of boiled peanuts (about 350 calories), it would be sufficient for a good 4-5 hours whereas feasting on a biryani would make you feel so full that it may put you to sleep
You eat because you want to be full and gratified till there’s no space left
Clearly, I fall in this bucket. There was an emotional connect with food, the point was to not just eat but to destroy, empty and finish its existence. Almost like giving a fitting reply to hunger - “Here’s to you hunger, what are you going to do now!”
For some , eating is a task which is worth it ONLY if the food is tasty. You have to like what you do, right? Same rule applies to eating, the more you like, the more you eat. I realized that this relationship needed to be altered.
You don’t care because your metabolism is naturally good
These folks are lucky plain and simple. Enough said.
It’s damn near impossible to change who we are and have been for the best part of our lives. It’s just not possible. As we grow older, we can only modify habits to suit your eating trait.
For example: If you always eat till you are full, simply eat your favorite fruit, vegetable and Prove Your Love for it :)
It sounds funny but this is what worked for me. I always loved drinking water so it was time to prove my affection for it. I survived on water melons, ladies finger, carrots,cucumbers, peanuts and about 4-5 litres of water for a good three months. Needless to say, the results were great initially as I lost about 25 kilos. Then it began to stay there until I decided to exercise a little but most importantly I added protein to my diet. Just stopping the carbohydrates may lead you to gain back all of your lost weight. This is where protein helps.
I love my fried chicken, so I simply replaced the regular sunflower oil with extra virgin olive oil, reduced the salt and spice a little bit but again I had to prove my love for it - So I started surviving on it for a few weeks. The thing with chicken is its low on carbohydrates and high on protein - arguably the cheapest source of protein. Drank plenty of water because protein digestion requires a lot of work on the inside.
Cucumber and carrot were always my favorite but making that a whole meal was tough, so I added things to it to make it tasty yet healthy. Things like lemon, peanuts, chicken pieces, sometimes curry. Be wary of the quantities, about 80% of it needs to remain just carrots and cucumbers!
Stay away from pure sources of carbohydrates like rice and roti while on a weight loss program. I know people talk a lot about having cheat meals but it didn’t work for me. The more I cheated, the more I felt like cheating even more.
Muscle memory makes you do things, tweak it to your advantage.
All of us have routines, something we do to gain momentum and repeatedly do to accomplish our tasks. I created a new one - counting my calories and water intake.
Ideally, exercise should also be on the list but I was never an athletic person so I let it pass. Like I said, don’t change who you are, identify what you love, best calorific value and simply live on it.
Some of my best practices are below:
Drink a liter of water with EVERY meal
Have about 4-5 meals a day
Make a note of the time you are getting up and when you sleep (for me, this was about 16 hours of up-time and 8 hours of sleep). The longer you are up, the more you would feel the need to eat. For example: Say you get up at 6 am in the morning and sleep by 10 Pm.. At any point in the day, measure how many hours have passed and how many are left before you know you will go to sleep. Plan your food accordingly.
I did not give myself a break until months into my diet, gradually I lost about 35 kgs and currently trending at 41 kgs (currently at 108 kgs) but there's miles to go - about 20 kgs to be precise
Use muscle memory to your advantage:
See Biryani, destroy its existence, right? Don’t have it.
Survive on fruits, salad, chicken, water - stuff you love but low on calories. Because this wasn’t a habit earlier, your body wouldn’t know what to do - feed your body with new data so that a new muscle memory is created
Don’t change who you are, just prove your love for what you like!
There’s got to be something that you like which may be (even accidentally) healthy and with a lesser calorific value.
Find it, Eat it and Destroy Its existence! :)
