Hello r/loseit, I felt like I should share my stories with you guys, so here it goes.
First some stats:
FEB 20 2018 - 97 kgs today - 79.5 kgs
I have always been a chubby guy. Eating mum's good food and keeping myself busy to studying, I never really prioritized physical activities. I totally used to laugh on quotes like a healthy mind resides in a healthy body and always used to think that people who go to gyms have empty brains. There were two instances where I happened to lose weight because of diseases but I gained them back again. Fast forward to college, I realised I need to lose weight. I always used to think I will never be obese. And that I will lose weight, but I always failed. Every attempt and after 2 days, I gave up.
My height is 5'9" and my weight when I entered college was 81 kgs and when I left college I was probably around 88-89 kgs. I got into a job, joined a gym lost 3-4 kgs and went sincerely for 3-4 months and then stopped going. And then I just gave up. After a while, I was 97 kgs (approx 32.5 BMI). And my sedentary lifestyle meant my body was not in good shape at all. I also had depression and food seemed to be my only escape, something that I realised much later.
I work as a software developer and so most of my job requires me to sit in front of a computer. I remember I started having back pains while sitting because my tummy was so huge and used to fall out. I again joined a gym around November 2017, went there but then my frequency dropped. So I would go like 1-2 times a week and even when I used to go I did not push myself. Like I used to run for 5 minutes on the treadmill and get tired and thought that's enough. And then I wondered why the f**k is my weight not dropping.
One day, I was talking to one colleague of mine who is a pretty fit guy but had been out of the gym for a couple of months. He was again trying to get back into the rhythm and so he told me he will hire a personal trainer to get into the rhythm. I thought that's actually not a bad idea. I mean I had spent on gym memberships before, why not just spend a little more and get someone to scream at you.
So I got one, he did a fitness test and I scored an 11/28 on that. One good thing he told me that don't expect any visible changes in 1-2 months. He only had one slot free at that time which was 6 am to 7 am so that meant I had to wake up at 5:30 am, do all morning rituals and get my ass to the gym by 6 am, which seemed really hard. But two things helped.
One is a quote from one of my friends when I told him about the personal trainer.
whenever you wake up and you feel like sleeping again and skipping the gym, slap yourself.
and second was this image
And I just started going to gym after that and somehow I was making it to the gym without failure. I also bought a weighing machine to measure progress which I think helped a lot. After a while, I was addicted. As in I had bad days, where I still ate a lot of junk food but made sure I went to the gym in the evening. Something that otherwise would have never happened before.
I initially did not make major changes to my diet, just made sure I cut down on things like chips, fast food, ice creams. that's it. By the end of may, that is after 4 months. I was down to 87 kgs. That meant I had lost 10 kgs. Woohoo
And to be honest, I was really shocked with myself. Before I began, I did not even have the confidence I would be able to do it. That I did not even take a picture that time to create a before-after image and that's kind of the only thing I regret doing (but not that much)
But then came the period, that I dreaded, I had reached a plateau. No matter what I did in the gym I was just stuck at 87 kgs. But I told to myself, I should keep doing this because going to the gym is definitely better than not going. After 2 months of the plateau, I discovered my fitness pal, thanks to this blog post
I just downloaded the app at that moment and set myself up. I choose to restrict myself to do 1500 calories daily. I was amazed by the huge amount of data in it. I am an Indian so I was not expecting regular Indian food in its calorie database, but it has it and I was totally amazed by that. Soon, I realised how many things I was doing wrong with my diet. I was eating all these high-calorie things which did make me feel full but I was easily consuming around 2000 calories and above before that.
Although, I realised that there are two separate problems with this. First is restrict yourself to 1500 calories and second is logging everything you eat. So for the first week, my only goal was to log everything I eat to develop that habit. Then from week 2, I started the calorie restriction. And then I finally broke my plateau.
Since then, I have been doing my fitness pal sincerely and going to the gym as well. I do occasionally skip the gym but I do manage to go 5 times a week at least. I still have cravings which I do satisfy because I also see that have 1500*7 calories to consume in a week. So if I overate on one day, I would make sure to balance it out during the rest of week.
My goal is to reach 73 kgs because then I will be under normal BMI, but that I have realised that it should only be a milestone and not the goal. I still have a lot of fat and still need to up my body strength especially my upper body strength. The good thing about these past 8 months has been that I learnt that fitness is a journey and not a goal. It has helped me think clearly at work, gives me a positivity after a workout. My head is now more clear, my confidence has increased. And I have started to embrace this lifestyle. Eating right and exercising and have small goals in the way. Because it's a lifelong thing. Even when I will manage to reach my optimal weight and body composition (if I do), I will still need work to maintain it.
My advice to all the people starting out would be is - don't have lofty goals and don't expect results too fast. This is what did wrong with every one of my previous attempts and I got right with my ongoing one. I broke down problems. My first problem was going to the gym. Then my other problem was logging my diet and then actually restricting my calories. While in the back of my head, I always knew about my target weight, I never really thought too much about it. Once I started losing weight, I gained confidence and now I know that I will reach there for sure, maybe in 2 months, maybe in 4 months, but I will reach there. Things will be really hard just when you start, but most of that hardness is self-inflicted. My initial attempts failed because I had decided to exercise vigourously and eating right from day 1. Exercising was hard because my fitness was poor and suddenly asking myself to fast or not eat was a pain, so I made things too hard for myself and then I just wouldn't be able to take it anymore and give in to a bag of chips and sandwich.
Next post - when I reach normal BMI :)
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