The task of losing those extra pounds looks difficult for me: I like to eat delicious food and refuse normal food, tasty beer, and even more so to start starving - definitely not my option. A sharp restriction led to the fact that after 1-2 weeks I had a breakdown and a quick return to the previous weight.
I want to say right away that I am not a doctor or a nutritionist and have not turned to professionals. I experimented on myself, looking for trends, looking for what works for my body and what doesn't. And below I want to share my view on the process of getting in shape, to talk about what helped me personally lose 30 kg in 6 months in 2012 and 23 kg in 4 months in 2018.
Both times the approaches were fundamentally different, but there are several general points with which I would like to start.
The key is correct goal setting. The goal of “losing 10 kilograms” is unproductive because it is not under your direct control. Losing weight is a result, not an effort. If you accidentally gain a couple of pounds, then you will be upset and may even give up, although, most likely, this did not depend on you. During the process, the weight fluctuates all the time down and up and it is very important not to give up, but to consistently perform the intended actions. I set goals for myself, the fulfillment of which was within my control, for example: the number of physical exercises per week, a certain diet, control of calories consumed.
It is important to switch from two meals a day to three meals a day... As soon as I started skipping lunch, dinner turns into a not-stop gourmet meal. In my case, the feeling of hunger was so strong that there was not enough willpower to control the amount of food eaten for dinner.
Active exercise (a lot of running and walking) helps, but does not have a decisive effect on the process of losing kilograms. From personal experience I confirm: you can run as much as you like, but if you eat like a vacuum cleaner, no mileage will save you. I will share the figures confirming this fact at the end of the article.
year 2012. May-October, 125 kg -> 95 kg.
It's already distant 2012. The key factors that made me start tidying up were:
- The fact that I weigh like a born elephant calf (125 kg) put pressure on my psyche))).
- A 30 minute game of football (and I stood at the goal and ran to a minimum) - after which the body refused to breathe normally and for almost a day I breathed like Darth Vader.
After analyzing what the World Wide Web writes on the issue of losing extra pounds, I opted for a diet based on blood type. The link is a very similar plate to the one with which I then worked. The main reason why I chose this diet is that you do not need to give up food that you like. The foods corresponding to my first blood group also matched my taste preferences. The optimal cuisine for this type of diet is Italian. Main menu items:
- Meat, but exclusively beef and lamb.
- Quality Italian pasta.
- Spinach and broccoli.
To eat the above foods (especially spinach and broccoli), they need to be cooked. Accordingly, I got high-quality kitchen appliances, good dishes and several dozen recipes for dishes that I learned to cook expertly.
Pros and results of the chosen approach:
- Fast and comfortable weight loss without giving up delicious food and a serious restriction on quantity (of course, the third supplement had to be abandoned, but this can be dealt with))).
- I forgot what heartburn is. The set of foods listed in the table really worked for my body.
- Broccoli and spinach can be really tasty)))
- Minus 30 kilograms in 6 months (dropped from 125 kg to 95 kg).
Disadvantages:
- The regularity and complexity of food preparation. You need to cook 5-6 times a week, some dishes may take 1.5-2 hours to cook.
- The rarity of most of the ingredients in stores, some of the items are impossible to get in small towns.
Disadvantages and crippled the chosen way of eating, which could not stand the change of the city of residence, the change of your apartment to a rented one and, as a result, the rejection of the usual kitchen appliances, dishes and shops. I had a partial return to the old diet and gradual weight gain that followed. By the end of July 2018, I came up with 118 kilograms and I was again faced with the question of dropping those extra pounds.
From nutrition by blood group, there is an understanding to which foods my body reacts positively and, if possible, I try to make a choice in their favor.
2018 year. August-November, 118 -> 95 kg.
One of the biggest hidden problems with my 2012 weight loss was the lack of automation. If I found a convenient Endomondo program to control my workouts , which I still use, then I could not find anything convenient, simple and free with the programs for controlling what you eat. Here Excel and EverNote came to the rescue, which, of course, could not fully replace the specialized mobile application.
In 2018, I started by choosing a program that could digitize the process and results in order to prevent excess weight gain in the future. And the choice of programs aimed at helping in the fight against obesity pleasantly surprised me. I chose the mobile application Lose it! and have been using it for almost two years now. The main advantages of the application:
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Everything described above is available in the free version.
Below is my result of losing those extra pounds.
I have not yet found any drawbacks in this application. When the goal is reached, the program controls the amount of calories, increasing it when it is within the allowable weight and decreasing it when it goes beyond the target value. I now have a robust digital system that corrects my weight gain on a daily basis. And it works - at the beginning of 2020 I returned 100 kilograms (holidays, Germany, a sea of food), but by mid-February I again weighed 95 - and this happened naturally and without an inner feat.
The key benefits of weight loss by calorie intake that keep me in shape after achieving results are:
- do not limit yourself in the choice of dishes, limit yourself in their volume;
- the presence of an automated and convenient control system that allows you to hold the conquered positions.
And if you want to eat not only tasty, but also a lot - 10 km of jogging gives you such an opportunity)))
At the moment, I have more than 720 days in a row registering calories in the program and my current weight is 89 kg. And most importantly, the weight has remained within the normal range for a year and a half.
Impact of sports on excess weight
In conclusion, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that active sports in my case have nothing to do with weight - the key factor is the amount of food. Below are the distances covered and calories burned from 2012 to 2018.
Distance
covered in training Calories burned
You can note that in 2012, I covered the kilometers and burned much less calories than in 2015-2017 (70 thousand calories versus 114-120 thousand). But that did not stop me from losing weight in 2012 and slowly but surely gaining it in the period 2015-2018.
Sport helps to lose weight, helps to be in good shape, helps to switch, many worthwhile ideas come to me while jogging, but in my case it is not the key driver of weight loss...