Hi Everyone

I’m going to tell you a story today. My weightloss story. And certain lessons I picked up on that journey. Until I went to college, I had never struggled with any weight issues. I had a healthy diet, was quite athletic and participated in a number of games. Well that was until I went to college. The sudden ‘freedom’ to eat anything I wanted and the excuse that ‘mess food is always bad, so I better hit the canteen’ led me to gain weight quite rapidly. Everyone in my family kept trying to motivate me to lose it. And after a while, I did start thinking about it, but started off on the wrong foot. I  would try some random ‘diet’ off the internet, lose a few kgs and then fail miserably. It even got to the point where I would have a weak moment, binge on junk foods and then ‘punish’ myself by starving for hours.

Needless to say, all my efforts fell flat. That’s when I began to wonder how I had never had this problem growing up. And it got me thinking. At my home, I was never allowed to have junk & packaged foods more than 2-3 times a month or maybe less. And I had quite an active lifestyle back then. So I decided to repeat just that. And I am happy to say that I lost about 8-9 kgs on this lifestyle! Below are some of the pointers I picked up during this journey which I’m going to share with you all today. Ofcourse by this time, I had come back after finishing college so that made things a little easier to follow.

Never Go Hungry

Eat every 2-3 hours. And never leave the house empty stomach. Always keep a healthy snack (like some fruit or nuts) with you when outside. The  underlying idea is the same. Never let the body starve to the point that it starts clouding the judgement. Our brains can think clearly and stay on track only when NOT hungry. Once the hunger sets in, you are bound to grab the first carbohydrate rich food you can find!

Plan Your Meals Ahead

Again, when you plan your meals ahead, you are less bound to make spur-of the-moment irrational food choices.

Have Lots of Salads

I am one of those who absolutely detests salads. If given a choice, I will always opt against it. But you know what? It works. The day I started including a salad with my diet, it turned things around. For the better. It gave me ample roughage, essential nutrients which improved my skin and hair and most importantly, it filled me up enough to help me control the size of my meals. It worked best if I finished the salad just before I started with my meal. And it didn’t have to be a fancy one. In my case, I just included any 2 veggies of my choice. I did make sure not to put extra salt or dressing on it.

Never Deprive Yourself

During this phase, I learnt never to deprive myself of ANY food whatsoever. Some people fix days to binge. Its good if it works for you too. But it did not work for me. That’s because the rest of the week, I would find myself desperately (and quite miserably) waiting for my binge day to arrive. Plus whenever that day would arrive, I ate much more than I had planned for given how much waiting I had to do.

So I decided to eat whenever I had a craving. But disciplined myself enough to only have a small potion which now brings me to the next point.

Quantity is the key

Whenever you make a lifestyle/dietary change, you’re bound to have weak moments. Moments where you feel ‘to hell with everything in the world, I need to have that food’. That’s when portion control comes into action. As I said earlier, I ate whenever I felt the temptation. But I promised myself to not let it get ahead of me. If I couldn’t stop thinking about the food, I’d go grab a small piece for myself. The more the ‘junk’ element in it, the lesser I’d have. This would take care of my craving and still not ruin my hardwork.

Take Pictures

Try taking pictures of how your body looks like or how certain clothes fit, as you prefer, in the beginning of your weightloss journey. Keep taking regular pictures along the way during your weightloss journey and compare them to where you started. When you see the change happening infront of your eyes, believe me, it’s a much bigger motivation than any scale telling you likewise.

Remember “ Something you love will get you started, results will keep you going”

I will talk about the first half of the above quote along with some other points in the Part 2 of this post. So watch out this space for that next week! Hope you guys like this post. If you do, please subscribe to remain updated. Thanks 🙂

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3