It wasn’t crazy fast, it was sustainable. But it was also long-lasting.
Let me preface this whole story with two facts:
1: I had weight to lose. My doctor agreed.
2: Your size is in no way an indication of your worth as a human being.
Stay safe!
On with the story.
When I graduated college, I moved back home. And let me tell you, the college had taken its toll on my body. I had been gaining weight since my junior year of high school, but after college, my levels of non-fitness had reached a new high.
But even though I desired to lose weight, I didn’t really set out to. At least, not at first. But, you don’t want all this back story. You want to know how I did it.
So, here it is:
Sleep
Exercise
Water
Nutrition
Basically, the 4 pillars any fitness guru will tell you. But I want to break it down for you from my perspective.
Sleep
Some people have this amazing ability to thrive on only 4 or 5 hours of sleep. I’m not one of those people. If I don’t get at least 8 hours of sleep, I’m a walking zombie.
Only getting even 7 hours of sleep is not sustainable for me. After a couple of days, I am drained, I want to do nothing, I live in a fog.
9–10 hours of sleep per night is my real sweet spot.
Unfortunately, life rarely offers me the opportunity to get this kind of rest because I’m also more of a night owl. I feel like I’m often quite productive between 10:00 pm and midnight.
It’s where all my good writing happens.
In fact, It’s 10:39 right now.
But I digress.
Having just graduated from college, moved back home, and having a couple of months before my grad school term started, I had some real downtime. I soon found myself falling into the luxurious sleeping pattern of staying up till 11 pm or midnight and then sleeping in until around 10:00.
I felt amazing.
I had energy, creativity… life was good!
I also noticed that my cravings for junk food were a lot less when I was getting the right amount of sleep for my body.
This makes sense because your satiety and hunger are controlled by hormones that can be thrown out of whack if you aren’t getting enough sleep. All this brings me to the next pillar.
Nutrition
This one has a couple of facets.
Timing
Since I was sleeping in so late, I would often not eat anything until around noon when I had lunch with my family. It seemed silly to eat breakfast on my own and then not be hungry to eat with company, so I waited. We tend to eat dinner pretty early compared to some families as well, (around 5 or 6 pm) so I had started inadvertently intermittent fasting.
I found that for my body and preferences, I really liked this format of eating. I could eat more at each meal, and I didn’t get as hungry outside of those meals.
Restriction
During this time, I was also straight-up eating healthier.
Not all of these changes happened on the same day, but within a couple of weeks of good sleep and somewhat better eating, I started noticing a change in the scale. Which propelled me to further improve my nutrition.
I didn’t do anything drastic.
The only thing I cut out was sweets. Ice cream is too cold anyway, and I found that the more I declined sweets, the easier it was to decline. Seeing the progress those decisions caused was also a great incentive.
Portion
I started limiting myself to one serving at dinner, instead of going for seconds. I realized that if I waited a little bit, my body soon caught up to the food that I had eaten and I felt full. I just had to wait a few minutes. If I was feeling restless, I drank some water.
This brings me to my next point.
Hydration
Idrank a ton of water.
It was summer, so it was hot, but I also realized that I felt better when I drank enough water. I had more energy, and my skin even looked better.
One thing that happens when you start drinking a lot of water is that first you pee a lot, of course. But also, you get thirsty more often. It’s like your body has discovered that you’re willing to hydrate it, and suddenly, it cannot get enough!
At least, that’s what it was like for me.
Another thing to note is that we can often get hunger pangs and thirst confused. The signals are not always as clear as we would think. Once I was hydrating myself properly, I knew that if I was hungry, it was because I was actually hungry.
Exercise
I’ve always been reasonably active. College was a less active time, but I still biked and walked to school, and around town.
When I came back home, however, I took up the study of Aikido again. I had started learning this martial art in high school, and I was only a few ranks away from the black belt. I started going to class again 2–3 times per week. Throwing myself back into this training, as well as some supplemental conditioning exercise with some friends was no doubt a key to burning the extra energy I was carrying.
I had a good mixup of high intensity (running up the stairs of our local extinct volcano) and low intensity (going on walks, and bike rides). My martial art classes also tend to be a good mix of high and low intensities. The main thing is that I truly enjoyed what I was doing. I love going to class and getting my butt kicked. I enjoyed spending time with my friends, (though I’m not sure I can say the same about those stairs). And I love going on evening strolls with my sisters.
And so, after about 3 months of these habits which I was mostly able to continue on from the lazy summer days and into my first term of grad school, I managed to bring my BMI to within “normal” parameters. I know that BMI is not the be-all and end-all of health, but for me, it was a solid accomplishment.
None of this felt hard or super restrictive. It was just a few small shifts that led to big-time results.
It wasn’t crazy fast, it was sustainable. But it was also long-lasting. In the years since I’ve pretty much hovered around the same weight. So, while I have many fitness goals still to accomplish, I can take pride in what I have accomplished.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/w7h3g0/i_lost_20_pounds_in_3_months_years_agoand_kept_it/
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