10 pounds lighter

Regular exercise and ability to do heavy physical activity whenever required wasn’t enough to keep away that excess fat around my belly. My diet is moderately regulated, but sometimes it just goes berserk, chocolates and sweets are my greatest adversaries when it comes to losing weight. A hundred times I had tried dieting and failed. It’s not that dieting never worked, but the thing was I had such great expectations, that I was stubborn to have it all or nothing. So whenever I hit a plateau I just quit. Recently it became so worse that I just quit the effort of keeping my weight under check. And as expected this had a dire effect. With weeks and months passing by my weight kept on mounting. The weight that fluctuated between 68-70kg, was now 73 and it didn’t feel right. 

Back from a trip to Goa, I was quite pumped up to lose that extra flab and feel good about myself. Received some very useful tips from my close friends and felt the time was right to just do it. Below is my journey of four weeks that helped me lose more than 10 pounds about 5kg to be more exact. The only thing different this time was that I had better tools, better control and better knowledge of my situation.

Week 1
First week is usually neutral. There is enough will power in reserve, and although body and mind provides a good deal of resistance the will power counter balances it.

Diet:
Breakfast: 1 raw egg, oatmeal, green tea.
Lunch: 1/2 chicken tandoori or sprout-vegetable salad.
Eve-snacks: omelette with brown bread
Dinner: sprout salad

Supplements : 1 vitamin-mineral capsule (Revital) after dinner.

Workout:
Body weight exercises in the morning, with focus on upper and lower body on alternate days.
20-30min walk after dinner.

Lifestyle changes:
Meditation 10min, morning and evening.
A good 8 hour sleep.

Challenges:
Convincing friends, colleagues, family of my intentions, and confronting the ensuing embarrassment. There is not a soul in the world except for you who thinks dieting would be successful.
Weekends normally ruin your resolve, I chose to stay vigilant. I exercised moderately on weekends to remind myself of the goal ahead.

Week 2
I could already see changes happening, I did feel lighter. Overall lethargy of the body was reduced to a great extent. Muscles felt more in control. The Monday felt awesome.

Diet changes:
Eve-snacks: omelette was replaced with no-sugar fruit juice. I freaked over omelette being fried & oily, thus me consuming more than necessary calories.
Dinner: 2 spoon Apple cider juice before sleep, apple cider is known for reducing obesity, I thought of giving it a try.

Workout changes:
Swimming after office hours for about half an hour.

Lifestyle changes:
Meditation 15min, morning and evening.

Challenges:
Avoiding those innocent moments where someone offers you a chocolate or a pastry or some other sweet. Sometimes I felt I was being too conscious, but it helped. I didn’t fall prey. I knew I wouldn’t last for long if this continued, but I wanted to fight it out as long as I could.

Week 3
The weight had reduced considerably. However I felt very low on my overall energy level. It was becoming increasingly difficult to improve my strength training routine. I always felt short of inspiration and energy. Also I had hit the plateau, most visible fat had reduced and it was difficult to spot improvement by just looking at the mirror. The week was long and arduous. However the results were incredible. By the weeks’ end I had made a considerable progress.

Diet changes:
Eating nuts almonds/walnuts whenever possible throughout the day.
Eve-snacks: eating almonds, no fruit juice.
Dinner: 2 spoon peanut butter with sprouts.

Workout changes:
Daily walk of 30min after dinner.

Lifestyle changes:
Meditation 20min, morning and evening.

Challenges:
I was considered for a serious project work which demanded more time, and more focused work. This new task drained a lot of vital energy and I felt exhausted on almost all days. Sometimes I would straight away go to sleep after coming from office so that I didn’t indulge myself on happy food due to lack of energy. Once I had a nice nap of about 20-30 min. I would wake up and go about the tasks remaining for the day.

Week 4
I knew very well that my diet has to end, and it should end on a happy note. I shouldn’t regret it being broken. There shouldn’t be any feeling of guilt when it broke. So I had to gradually switch to eating normal. Also indulge at times but with total awareness of where I was headed to. This week I was merrier as I felt privileged to try stuff that was forbidden for 3 weeks. Now I could observe myself being conscious all the time about whatever went inside my stomach. I was polite in refusing, whenever some delicacy was given due indulgence and it was time to stop.

Diet changes:
Breakfast: 1 raw egg, oatmeal, green tea, with freedom to try any other on alternate days.
Lunch: 1/2 chicken tandoori or sprout-vegetable salad or any other meal that is just about enough and did not make me feel bloated.
Eve-snacks: omelette with brown bread
Dinner: normal meal, no rice.

Workout changes:
Strength training in morning, brisk walk in the evening.

Lifestyle changes:
Meditation 10min, morning and evening.

Closing note:
Dieting is challenging stuff, but we should aspire to see the change in ourselves. Everyone’s body type is unique and experimentation is the key. Experiment, observe and make changes, repeat this process for as long as is possible until you are sure what works best for you. It’s a wonderful feeling when you are lighter, when the clothes just fit and don’t make any effort to contain the body within. Overall it requires one to change the entire routine one follows and be absolutely religious about it. I would confess I didn’t adhere 100% to what I had planned but 100% was always the goal, so don’t feel disheartened if you fail at some time, but make sure you learn from it. The goal should be 100% effort always. Health is a lifelong habit, so make amendments to your life such that they stick with your forever. Get in the habit of reading good articles and research related to wellbeing. Learn yoga and meditation, they will be your guiding light for the days to come.

Couple of videos that helped me visualize what I wanted to achieve.
http://embed.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sandra_aamodt_why_dieting_doesn_t_usually_work.html

http://embed.ted.com/talks/lang/en/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days.html