Hi Guys

Last week, I wrote a post on my weightloss journey and some things I learnt in the process. If you haven’t already, you can read it here. As promised, today I will continue with the rest of the post. So let’s get going…

7) Take Up Something You Love

Take up any physical activity that has the potential to break you into a sweat. Any! Don’t go about looking for ‘Best exercises for weightloss’ and stuff like that. I’ll give you my example. Initially, when I started thinking about incorporating exercise into my weightloss regime, I concluded that hitting the gym was the ‘best’ option to lose weight. But since I never enjoyed it, very soon I started to despise going there. It worsened upto the point where I would find EXCUSES like not having had enough sleep or bad weather to skip it. Fed up, my mom suggested I take up swimming again, which I completely LOVED till I went off to college but never thought of restarting as it was never on the ‘best exercises’ list. To cut the long story short, I took up swimming again and rather than despising it, I began to look forward to it. Rain or no rain, sleep or no sleep, I’d show up. And this regularity played a big role in shaping my weightloss goals into a reality.

8) Stay Positive

Develop a positive outlook to your body as well as life in general. Be at peace. Do everything that makes you happy. Leave the baggage. Trapped negative emotions not only effect your general well-being but will encourage to over-eat, make wrong food choices and binge from time to time.

9) A Hack To Stay Motivated

Ok. This may or may not work for you. But it has worked very well for me! One day I went to Zara and I completely fell in love with a dress there. But I bought it not in the size I was (at the time) but rather in the target size I desired to be. It worked amazing well to keep me motivated for the rest of my weightloss journey. And now, whenever I put it on, it makes me realise how far I’ve come 🙂

10) Ditch The Scale

Believe it or not, the weighing scale is actually not the best method to gauge your success. It fluctuates on a day to day basis and is dependent on a lot of other factors. Rely on more reliable methods- how your clothes fit, using a measuring tape or as I talked about in the part 1 of this series, comparing your before and after pictures.

11) Focus on Inchloss

As I said, the scale is NOT the most accurate method to gauge your success. Especially if you are doing strength training simultaneously. When I first started with strength training, I actually gained around 3-4 kgs in the first 7-10 days. And it was so frustrating! In retrospect, I wish I knew that when you start with any physical exercise, the body starts to retain water which causes the initial but temporary upsurge on the scale. You might also gain weight later incase you put on muscle. You will ofcourse continue to shed inches all throughout this period. And that’s what counts, right?

12) How To Get Rid Of The Cravings

I read somewhere that when your body craves something, mostly it is undernourished with a specific food type. And when you choose ‘junk’ foods, it continues to feel deprived, hence giving birth to more and more cravings. And this vicious cycle continues! So how to get rid of them? Flood the body with a well-balanced diet. If you have cravings initially, indulge in them once in a while but do so intelligently. Do not feel discouraged or guilty after that. Keep on continuing with a balanced diet. Sooner or later, when your body starts to feel well-nourished, the cravings are bound to decrease.

13) Clean Your Kitchen

If you need a little extra push in the beginning, empty your fridge and kitchen of any processed foods. If they aren’t infront of your eyes in those weak moments, you’re less likely to go astray from your path.

14) Stay Hydrated

Drink a lot of water! Most of the times when you feel you’re hungry, you’re actually dehydrated. In addition to hunger, in my case, I also felt the sudden desire to have something sweet. And if I drank water, the feeling would immediately go away.

15) Emotional Hunger vs True Hunger

Learn to identify if what you’re feeling is a true hunger or just a way of alleviating any emotional stress. Incase of an emotional hunger, you’d likely be wanting to eat a specific (mostly carb-rich) food. And if you’re actually hungry, any food should do. While there are many other ways of identifying what kind of hunger you’re having, this method worked best for me. I soon started recognizing the difference and this put an end to my unnecessary binging.

And this concludes the last part of this series. Do let me know if you’d like me to write on any specific topics. I do apologise for the long post though. But I really wanted to share all these points with you. If you like it, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Thanks for reading! Until next time 🙂

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