Haven’t you all seen advertisements which say you can lose 6 kilograms per week. Today I am going to share my journey on how I lost nearly 4 kilograms in 3 weeks and lost another 3 kilograms in past 4 months. So in total, I lost about from 83 Kg to my current weight which usually falls in the range of 76.5-77.3 Kgs in 5 months.
So, first of all, I just want to say it’s perfectly okay to be fat or slim. There is no need to be ashamed of your weight. If anyone comes says you are and says you look like a Hippo. They are just doing an act of body shaming. To know more about body shaming, I would recommend you to watch more about podcast episode about Body shaming in Ennodoppam Malayalam Podcast. To lose or not lose your weight is your choice.
For me, the motivation to lose weight was to go back to my old shape like when I was in my school days. And a lot of cousins advised losing some weight during my college days. Yet the real motivation for me was when I was watching an episode of Chai TIme Data Science show featuring Robert Bracco. Robert talked about the importance of taking gambles with his friends and reaching his goals. Hence, he stays inspired to continue the plans promised, and his friends act like an accountability partner.
This acted for me as an inspiration to get started on my weight loss journey. Coincidentally my cousin brother invited me to do some exercise with dumbbells. As an effort my part, I made a massive gamble by promising him to buy a biryani, if I didn’t lose 6 kilograms by the end of the month(July 2020).
As an initial step, I started exercising by going to cousin brothers place daily and spend about 30-40 minutes daily in weight training. This was followed by doing 20 minutes of Yoga which I learned attending a class in February and March(before the lockdown started). The weight slowly started decreasing, and I was delighted. All the plans went well for the first 2-3 weeks, and I was in the range 80 kgs very quickly from about 83 kg. It was looking to reach that goal easily if the curve of growth was decreasing linearly.
During this time, I picked up another good habit, that was to avoid eating Tea with Sugar. So I joined the club of folks having tea without sugar which usually only aged people drink. Regarding sugar, I now understand it’s very injurious to health after watching The Sugar film. Sugar is a major cause of fat which is very hard to lose generally. Also, sugar is present literally almost every food item. I highly recommend you to watch the Sugar film and think about your sugar intake.
Sugar intake is a significant cause of obesity, and avoiding soft drink can help reduce your weight. I haven’t followed it thoroughly, yet I am steadily reducing my intake a lot after this small change. I even followed the method of measuring individual food items calories with Healthify app. Yet, it didn’t work out well for me.
Yet in the last 2 weeks, I hardly lost any weight, and I lost the challenge. I had to cook up a biriyani for my cousin brothers family. It was a experience, which made me pursue my goal of continuing my weight loss even further.
I continued this journey further for the past 4 months, even though during this time there was not much weight loss, while I was able to be in almost 78-80 Kg weight range during this period. This was my time in the Plateau of Latent Potential but for me, I continued with the good habits I learned. This is a core principle from the book of Atomic Habits. I highly recommend you to check mjbraganza blogpost on atomic habits.
Then in the past 3 weeks, I was continuing my weight loss journey further when Vellaunty challenged us. It was a three-weeks hectic diet to reduce my diet by avoiding Rice(daily food) + snacks(which includes in my daily evening routine). So in effect, I had to make my own food daily, i.e. every day I used to make chapatis and Oats. The first few days were a bit challenging for me personally, yet I kept going through all the challenging days. I slowly started loving the process of making my own food.
During these days, Vellaunty and Nun used to continually check in each other. In one week, I lost about 1 Kgs. In the coming days, I tried to add a bit more rigour to my diet, by following a diet where I was not having any food between 8AM to 4PM. This idea was inspired from the below video by Goal Guys on how they finally managed to stop gaining weight.
At the end of three weeks, I emerged as the winner of the challenge. During these three-weeks, I reduced my weight from 81.6 range to my current weight of 76.5 weight at the lowest degree, which means I lost about 5.1 Kgs. Folks, please don’t fret with these numbers, it doesn’t mean anything.
At the end of my weight loss, for me, it’s all about changing the habits. I am planning to continue the following practices even after the end of the challenge:
- Daily walk 5000 steps
- Strictly avoid eating any meals from 8AM to 4PM
- Avoid having snacks as much as possible
- Continue the habit of drinking without tea
- Include Chapathi and Oats in the diet for five days
I wish you all good luck on whatever journey you want to embark :)