Intro
I was reading up on some of the threads here in Health wise forum and thought I might share my story of losing weight. I am not sure if anyone will read it or not but I hope for those who do this brings some new ideas or just bit of motivation. If I help 1 person I will be more than happy. Oh also I did not write anything in a while so if there are mistakes or maybe some stuff is unclear that might be because I corrected some stuff or just decided to change the direction of my storytelling.
About me
Just a short preview of why I am writing this how I managed what I did. It is not so important if you want some tips but if you are interested then thank you for reading.
Spoiler (Click to View)
It is quite hard to break a habit cycle. How many times did you suddenly grab that snack from that stash of sweets? How many times did you try to live more healthy and suddenly found your self sitting in front of your computer thinking to your self: "What the hell am I doing with my life".
Maybe people said that humans are creatures of habit. That is true but there are ways to change that. We are not slaves to our bad habits and we can change but first we need to understand how habits work.
Maybe people said that humans are creatures of habit. That is true but there are ways to change that. We are not slaves to our bad habits and we can change but first we need to understand how habits work.
Sports & Gym
So in January of 2018 I started to do something and that was joining the local Gym. That did not work quite well. First of all I was in a gym for the first time in my life and had no damned idea what to do. Looking at Videos on YouTube did not help a lot once I got there and my shyness did not help either. I was stuck. So I went few times did some running, my first attempt at running got me to about 2 km in over 30 minutes of running at 10 km/h for 2 minutes then walking at 5 km/h for 5. I was tired and few days after I had such sore muscles. After about a 2 weeks I stopped going there. It was too boring and hard.
After that I had the luck of seeing a YouTube video on rock climbing. I decided I want to try that so I went and it had me. It was simple. You just climb. At first I could climb problems that are about as hard as climbing a ladder. It was hard but I had fun for the first time in my life. I wanted to do a sport.
Do not just go and join a Gym. Very few people have the willpower to go and do some boring static training. If you had the required willpower to suddenly start going to gym or run you would not be overweight in the first place. Try to find an activity that is fun for you. Mine was climbing. What is yours? After my first 2-3 month climbing I decided I want to get much better at it, and that gave me the motivation to join the gym and now I am 1.5 years in training every 2-3 days changing between climbing and gym depending on mood and need.
Tip 1: Try to always have a gym bag ready and at hand. I have mine in my car at all times. I never go home after work I drive directly to do sport. If I go home I just know I probably will not leave it for the day.
Tip 2: Might be hard for some but get a friend to go with you. It is always fun with someone.
Now with this whole sport out of the way here are few other stuff I did to help me lose weight. The big one. The hard one. DIET.
Diet
Diet is more important then sport in many ways. And is the one harder to regulate. I did this by not just jumping in and eating salads every day drinking only water and no candy. Most people try that and fail. The willpower is just not there yet. The strength to change is not there.
I first noticed I was drinking large amounts of soda. Oh damn that bloody cola-orange mix. I just love it. But I did not throw it out completely. At first I just decided to buy the light or zero version of it. I know some of you might crucify me for this but listen. At the course some are going with weight gain the diabetes will kill them faster then the carcinogen shit from the artificial sugar. The idea is to reduce the sugar intake. You do not ask a drug addict to just stop with drugs you still give him drugs that are not as bad as the ones he was on before and slowly reduce to a stop. Same idea here...
Anyway I slowly reduced the intake of sodas and drank less and less as my willpower kept building. Now I drink one when I am out with friends or at a party, at home I have just water. Other big item are the sweets. To be honest anything sweet that actually tastes good in stores is bad so here you cannot cheat your way out that easy. Maybe you find something you like that is not as terrible as your usual M&M, Oreo or whatever you stuff your mouth with in this moment as you are reading this. But my suggestion is just do not buy any sweets and use your lack of willpower and motivation to move to your advantage and hope you do not go and buy some at the moment of weakness.
Last part is eating healthy. For some this might be hard to do since most do not cook, or have busy schedules and cannot eat properly. My suggestion is just to try and implement some fruit as a snack before meal. Idea is that you get satiated before you go eating. Eating an apple before you visit McDonalds might make you decide to eat only 3 Big Macs instead of 4. It is a good start.
With time I managed to just get more fruit in my diet. I now eat no bread or pasta. For breakfast I stick to fruits and cereal, for lunch some wok style meal with lots of vegetables and some meat and for dinner I end my day with some leftovers from lunch or just eat a salad with some fruits after. I also treat my self every day or 2 with some small sweet like a chocolate pudding. (I should slowly try and get that out of my diet too).
So my idea here was not to give you a tutorial on how to get fit. I will not give you any pointers to how your training should look or how you should eat. I am not giving you receipts for a healthy meal. This may not be the best way to do this. but it worked for me. This was just my life over the last 1.5 years where I step by step managed to get healthy and fit. I am by no means extremely fit. There is a long road ahead and I have a lot more to work towards. My goals are still not completed.
Me today
For anyone interested here are some of my stats. I went on one of those scales that show you your body composition and stuff and here are some numbers:
Spoiler (Click to View)
Also I am always open for any messages. Me getting fat had a very bad impact on my life and I really do not want anyone to have the same experience.