As someone who has lost more than 100 pounds (i.e. 45 kilograms, over 4 years), I consider myself a person who has undergone one of the most radical body transitions that we see on social networks with images showing the stages of the “pre and post” transformation. While the path of losing my weight deserved that weight and how I did it in a single article, I wanted to share with you here some of what I learned on my journey, and I would not wish anyone had told me before I lost weight or during that stage.
The first step is to find the real "motivation"
If you are trying to lose weight and you don't know why you want it, you should stop reading now and ask yourself: "Why do I want to lose 15, 50 or 100 pounds?"
Your reasons could be any of the following: to be in good health, to have better sex, to get rid of diabetes, or to look great at your wedding. But keep asking yourself the real reason.
Dig deeper into this, and try to understand the motivation behind some of the emotions and consequences behind your desire to change your body.
It should be something that stimulates sweet feelings and makes you excited about losing weight.
For me, I was fed up with being unhappy about my looks in the mirror and my desire to own another person's body or body differently.
My motives were:
I want to wake up every day with a wonderful feeling about my body. To feel great when I walk down the street or enter the conference room.
I want to feel confident and empowered through my body.
Write down your motivations in a place you can always see.
I strongly believe that your body will follow your mind and that when you intend to do something, your mind will find a way to achieve it.
However, this step is more important, because when things go wrong and hard (trust my words, days will pass you this way), it will help you remind yourself of your motivations, and it will urge you daily to be a better version of yourself.
You have to search for what you love
Yes, losing weight is difficult. But some find maintaining a steady weight more difficult. Success in life is built on the rituals you perform. Likewise, losing weight is essentially re-establishing new rituals for your body.
As Tony Robbins says:
We always want quick solutions, but the truth is that healthy living is a lifestyle.
The only way to make weight loss steady is to love the rituals and the process itself, and to enjoy what you do.
I started my career in a regular gym and found going there regularly was incredibly frustrating. So I decided to try new things and ended up doing all kinds of exercise, from yoga to pilates, barre, CrossFit, HIIT, and gymnastics. I found out that I enjoyed HIIT camps, and I was looking forward to it.
But had I not tried all of those types, I wouldn't know which type I really enjoy. Once you know this type, you can then adjust your athletic routine based on your goals at the time. For example, my current week includes 6 days of switching between HIIT and weight lifting exercises. But the whole process of looking after my body looks better now, because I enjoy part of it.
You need to change the way you speak to yourself
Losing weight is not a sudden change. Doing it right is a slow, gradual process. You must learn patience and compassion for your body. While I was at my heaviest weight, I suffered a very negative self-image.
When I started to lose enough weight because the others around him saw him, I began receiving a stream of praise from those around me. But the words I used to tell myself when I got out of the bathroom were still the same. I was still looking at myself and seeing all the flabby that I didn't like, even though I made a really big progress from what I was when I started.
I lost weight from outside, but inside I was still the same person. After a lot of research on how to change the inner voice in my head, I began to practice NLP Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
NLP has helped me lower the negative inner volume, and create an embraced inner voice that replaces it.
I put some alerts on the bathroom mirror and the bedroom wall saying "I am satisfied", "I love myself", "I am loved", "I am important", and I often return this talisman aloud at home or while I'm driving and on my way to work And I even set some alerts on my phone to remind me of them in the evening, and I used to say them to myself while working.
A few days later, I noticed that I started looking at the mirror itself, but now I was not focusing on the flabby, but on the fact that I can now see the bones in areas I had not noticed any of them before, perhaps because they were hidden under layers of fat.
This practice instilled in me a deeper sense of self-love and self-worth, and it helped me to love myself more.
I began appreciating the person I had become and looking forward to achieving all the accomplishments that I had been working on. So I cannot stress more than this the importance of changing the way you talk to yourself.
People around you will change as well
There is enough scientific research to reveal to you that your personality is truly a product of the effect of the closest 5 people you spend most of your time with .
If you are overweight due to an unhealthy lifestyle, ask yourself: How much was this caused by the influence of the beliefs and customs of the people around you?
To achieve that new weight, you must implement new and healthier habits.
My social life has changed in many ways. I lost some friends, as going out to the bar and eating out was more important to them than our actual friendship. I also promoted some other friendships, as we had some common health goals, which helped us to support each other.
Also, I gained some new friends who did not know me in the event of obesity, and I promoted getting that new start with them.
Your friends may not help you more than this to find the picture you want to see yourself in. Make sure that you make these changes in order to strengthen yourself and your personality. Use this opportunity to learn how to strengthen your other relationships as well.
I no longer allow people in my life to descend me and not serve me and my goals positively. Through this matter, I allowed people to treat me well, get up, and look after me. I am open to being more and more open. I am still "myself" more than before.
It is not about a diet; But your relationship with food
Do not misunderstand me, I have been satisfied with fluctuating and volatile diets; Some of them achieved tangible results, while others were not successful. However, all of these "crazy diets" were unsustainable and unsustainable, due to my lifestyle.
I returned to my weight that preceded the start of the diet within the next few weeks of the diet. While I fully understand that you want to shorten the path frequently, you change the diets that follow, but you really have to discover the appropriate diet for you.
This means trying to find foods you really enjoy eating, and your daily diet that fits your schedule. After trying over 10 different diets, I began to notice healthy meals that I really enjoyed eating. And I started to discover healthy and delicious foods at the same time.
Make sure to try to change your relationship with food, and try to eat more foods that you know are beneficial for you. Since I said this, you should not punish yourself for the food that you ate yesterday.
Be aware that there is absolutely nothing wrong with cheating (open day) days and indulging yourself.
I am currently practicing "immediate awareness" reflections on eating; The art of sitting, breathing and chewing slowly while eating. But I feel the feelings for me; It was a practice of gratitude for the food I eat.
I try to pause and think about how this food got to my plate and how lucky I was to get it. I am also grateful for the way this food will fully nourish my body: including my mind, my heart, my hormones, and my body cells.
All of my organs have the nutrition they need to function and function for me.
Measure everything But make sure you measure the right things
Yes, it is called “weight loss”, but if what you really want is to change the body’s composition and composition, then the number on the scale does not matter.
Instead, you should use the percentage of body mass without fat and the percentage of body fat as a measure of success in the diet.
It should target not only fat loss, but also muscle gain. And because muscles occupy less body space than fat, they make you look thinner and stimulate the metabolism, and later help to burn more calories.
When you exercise, you gain muscle, stimulate your metabolism and metabolism, and then lose fat, but this fat loss process is not always visible on the scale.
While it will appear in your measurements, the suitability of your clothes to you and the appearance of your body in general.
All of this can happen without even moving your weight on the scale. So make sure to take pictures before and after at regular intervals during the diet, and track your body measurements using a tape measure.
This will benefit you. If you want to go back and see if you have already made any progress.
Reward yourself for the simple things
Weight loss depends on the consistency and consistency of the actions.
Stability can be - day after day - difficult at times.
I knew that seeing the results was most encouraging me to continue. But you know from the previous point on the top, that the number on the scale is no longer important after a while, and what I really wanted to measure was to see if I was progressing towards my goal.
It was the percentage of fat in my body, I knew that this number was slower to move and go down; Hence, helping to maintain enthusiasm over time was more difficult.
So I started celebrating small victories unrelated to the balance, such as the first 60 seconds of Planck exercise, the first time I succeeded in performing the pressure exercise, and my success for the first time in performing the squat exercise carrying 150 pounds, and other achievements. Every week in my diary, I score the goals that I look forward to in my workouts during the week, and if I achieve these goals, I would reward myself with some small pleasures.
These fun things can range from sipping my favorite cappuccino to dessert in my favorite Middle Eastern restaurant and buying that dress I had been looking forward to some time ago.
I was going to buy these things myself anyway, but my knowledge of the fact that I “deserved” these pleasures helped make them better.
Tracking these activities also helped me focus on: my strength and endurance, my moods and my behaviors.
This helped me improve my overall health, especially when my weight did not budge, but I felt like I was still making progress.
Everyone has an opinion or advice for you ... but listen to your body
Every body is different from other bodies, and every body responds to food differently. A diet that works well for one person, may not do well when someone else applies it.
So, please do not copy the diet of one of the social network icons you follow or the celebrities you love.
Pay close attention to how your body responds to different foods.
I have always been a vegetarian, but one of my friends, who always ate meat, lost a lot of weight when I stopped eating all kinds of meat.
It was only after a long period that she became sensitive to some common types of meat. Likewise, you will find that there are some foods that your body responds to better than others.
Unfortunately, there is no quick and easy answer that leads to discovering what gives you better results. Rather, you should try different types of foods, and notice how these types affect you.
One of the golden rules is that you neglect caloric calculation, and focuses on taking advantage of these calories.
Put the word "nutrition" at the top of your interests. For example, a piece of cupcake may contain 250 calories, which is the same amount of calories as 1.5 ounces (42 grams) of almonds; But both affect different levels of sugar and insulin in the blood.
When the metabolism is stable, the likelihood that all carbohydrates will turn into fats increases in the case of cupcakes.
In the case of almonds, a slight rise in sugar levels occurs, and the body consumes more time to digest, which helps you feel full for a longer period. Add to that the wonderful benefits of vitamin E and antioxidants.
Remember: nutrition> calories
Plan, plan and plan! Especially at the beginning
Change is difficult. Losing weight requires you to make changes in your lifestyle. And every time I want to increase my weight-loss speed, I start with an elaborate and accurate business plan that includes the smallest details.
I often travel for work, which can make it difficult to maintain a consistent and consistent program. But every week, I specify the times I want to do my exercises, set up my BodySpace routine, my weekly workout , and I plan my homework in advance.
And in the week I don't travel, I cook twice a week, thanks to pre-prepared foods.
I try as much as possible that someone is boring to choose what I will cook , by planning in advance for that, and I really believe this helps me to strengthen the willpower and not to deviate from the right path and avoid self-deception.
Even if you are someone who does not like "planning" but "doing", this is very useful when you start a new food style.
Once this becomes routine, you can skip the planning step and start listening to your body rhythm.
But remember that your body requires some time to cope with any new diet, meaning that it will take a period of time before your body begins the desire to exercise and craving healthy meals.
And until you reach this stage, remember that maintenance is the key to success.
Your body may not look like you imagined
It was important to me when I started getting pictures of celebrity women in dreams on the vision board that I used as inspiration for me to lose weight. I had dreams that I would wear these costumes as soon as I reach the "ideal weight / ideal body fat percentage".
However, you should know that there is no such thing as a natural loss of a specific point of the body, that is, you cannot lose weight from a specific part of your body.
Your body shape after losing weight will depend on where you were storing extra weight before losing weight.
Most of my weight was concentrated in the waist, thighs and arms, those areas where my stubborn fat was still stuck.
Although I lost a lot of weight in the abdomen, I still wanted to become more fit before I could wear the top top (a dress that shows the stomach) and the saree (the traditional Indian dress I plan to wear at my brother's wedding).
Now, if I were going to stick to my image stuck in my imagination with the “perfect body” I had imagined, why would I be so happy and would have completely ignored all the progress I had already made? My self-love and self-care system helped me stay positive, as well as focus on my mission.
So I am currently continuing to define and strengthen my muscles through training in carrying heavyweights.
I hope these tips will help you maintain your strength and continue your self-love during the journey of losing weight and self-love.
Note: I have always felt scared and ashamed to share the story of my weight loss, and I am also trying to overcome it with this first post. Please, be gentle. I would like to know if I have had any similar experiences or you want/want me to clarify any of these matters.
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