6 months ago for New Years, me and my family went all out as usual. We had a huge dinner to celebrate the new year 2019, complete with steaks, seafood, slabs of salmon drenched in butter, 4 different types of cakes, all the drinks in the world and some ice cream to dim off the cold outside. For Christmas, we’ve had the same, only that time it was all topped with homemade cookies and loads of Milka and Kinder products. My favourites.
Starting on January 1st, I began yet another diet to try and lose some weight. I did this numerous times. I’d lose some weight, feel great, then fall back on bad eating habits and cut the sports out entirely. It happened to me once too many times.
To be honest, my lack of commitment and poor mindset were the reason why I’ve been a fat fuck for most of my adolescent and young adult life. I have no excuse. At my worst, I was 108 kg or a gazillion pounds for you American readers. That’s a fucking lot for a short dude like me.
In this guide:
Changing my mindset
It all starts in the mind, right? How many times I’ve heard this phrase, it hurts my guts just thinking about it. But it’s true. There, you have it in written form! The mind really is everything. What you think, you become. On January 1st I decided to become normal. I was done being a sick, fat, lazy asshole, always complaining about how I was overweight, unable to do sports and eat right. Right before New Years, I decided I was no longer that person. I came up with a plan and started working on it the minute the new year started.
My only two rules
I tried a ton of diets and plans over the years. They all failed. Well, I failed at them, but I was too big of an ignorant fat fuck to admit it. Which is why I decided to cut all of those plans and diets to just two simple, easy-to-follow, foolproof rules that I’d stay with, NO MATTER WHAT, for the next 364 days (my birthday is October 15th, I can eat whatever I want and do no sports on that date):
1. No bread and no sugar;
2. Exercise every single day.
My diet
I began by removing bread and sugar from my diet completely. No burgers, no croissants, no pretzels, no pizza, baguettes, sourdough bread, sweet bread, cakes. No chocolate, no ice cream, no Oreos, no Milka, no Kinder. Nothing. No exceptions. Feeling down? Fuck you, you can’t touch anything sweet or made from flour. Feel like eating. Suck it, fatass, have some water and run an extra mile. You sick, fat fuck!
By applying the first rule I removed a huge part of my regular diet right out of my life. I feel sick when I now think about just how idiotically I was eating on a daily basis. Not just bad food, but huge portions of bad food. And how much I was eating and relying on food to make me feel better. Not realising that it was the same food that gave me that immediate pleasure, that was actually the source of my overall misery.
6 months later, I can’t even stand looking at sugary foods. I ate half a cake slice for a birthday and that was basically it. In 6 months. Even just that is a huge win for me. I did have some gelato in Italy. Twice. They have a law that states you have to have gelato when in Italy, so yeah… I’m not going to jail for a diet!
I began eating lean meats and a lot of veggies. Then I began loving making my own food and ordering salads instead of kebabs or crispy strips. I started experimenting with tastes and flavours and I am now able to make delicious vegetable curry and some tasty wok stir-fried rice noodles with shrimp. We basically fight for them once they’re ready.
My training
I never really liked lifting weights. To be honest, I did some in the past, but it never stuck with me. I did some biking in the past but also gave that up when about 8 dogs chased me for miles one night. I needed something new, something available at any hour of the day or night and something so simple, even I could do it. On January 9th, I got my brand new treadmill, placed it inside my room and turned it on. The rest is history.
With the exception of a bunch of travel days, in which I scored an average of 20.000 steps per day, I mounted that treadmill every single day for the last 6 months. My goal? To see the kilos drop from the scale, and nothing else. I don’t plan on becoming a marathon runner or Usain Bolt.
Fuck, running is goddamn hard.
It makes me sweat so bad, I have to take 2 showers when I’m done, I swear on my damn eyes! But after a while, running became just another part of my day. It doesn’t matter if I’m doing it for 10 or 30 or 60 minutes per day. What matters is consistency. In order to lose weight, you have to consistently do the thing that will get you there. I now feel sick if I don’t run for a day. It still hurts, but I’m addicted to it.
Take it slow, improve as you go
I run a 5k almost every day, now at an 8 km/hr pace, combined with some power walking in between. That’s it. I do have days when I go almost double that, to 7, 8 or 9k, about once or twice each week. I have days, like Sundays, when I go half that, in what I like to call the “Mile Sunday”, doing just a mile in a relaxed pace, just to add a mile to the total and let the legs breathe. My weekly goal is 25 kilometres or 100 per month, more or less.
This has helped me lose around 2 to 4 kilos per month, for a grand total of roughly 20 kilos or 44 pounds in 6 months. Is it a lot or very little? Who cares? I feel amazing, I see the changes with my own eyes, I’m still alive and I am all over it like it’s my first day. This works, which is the most important aspect of it all.
Results
I have no single shirt that fits me right now. All my pants are baggy. I lose my underwear from the bathroom to my room after I shower. They just fall off. I need to go shopping as soon as possible. The results are so obvious, for the first time in my life I actually feel like a different person. I look like a different guy. I just can’t ignore them, looking in the mirror or at my scale.
Sure, they’re not “before/after pics” material yet, but I’m not far from it now. Whoever says they can’t do it, you are all lying to yourselves. You can do it. I can, I am, and I will. I am barely halfway there, but I am doing it and that is the most important thing in this entire losing weight story.
The “I’m doing it” part.
I’ve had my fair share of doubts. Rough days. Headaches. Discouraging mirror glances. Bad moments. Deceptions. I will also have them for the next 6 months and then for the rest of my life, as it is naturally the case with humans and their brilliant intellects. But no matter what, I will still be doing it. Every day, all day, no matter what. Unless I’m in a coma or my leg breaks in 3 places, I will do my miles, I will eat my sugarless and flourless meals and I will be grateful for every drop of sweat that will drench my body.
I found my achiever self
Losing weight is supposed to be hard, and it is. You are a champion just for trying it. Even if you fail once or twice, you are still better than the people who are doing nothing about it. It is the only way to train your mind into knowing how bad it is to be overweight and how hard it is to become healthier and better at being human. It’s consistent, everyday struggle, getting just one step closer to your goal, one mile at the time. It is the hardest thing, by far the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life, but also the thing that I feel added a new dimension of myself into my life.
One that I had no idea was somewhere buried deep down inside of me, probably under all that cheesecake, fries and sodas. The warrior who’s never been put to the test. The achiever. The mindful doer. Thank God I found these parts of me before it was too late. From now on, there’s no turning back for me.
The next 6 months?
I don’t fucking care, I’m doing it.
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