So, I gained a lot of weight when lockdown started. And I gained that weight very quickly. Since I came back home from Uni for the summer (and then for the whole years) I decided I really had to do something about it, fair to say its worked fairly well.
Its been nearly a year now since I started keeping track of my weight, and I've decided to post this here with my methodology, and some thoughts I've had regarding it, so here goes. Details are in spoilers so the main points are easy to see and not lost in the wall of text.
The Method
- Eat homemade food and don't eat dessert. At University its fair to say that I didn't do much cooking... at all. I ate ready meals, pastries, and basically whatever junk I thought would taste good. And perhaps because I wasn't in a good head-space I ate a lot more than I should have. Everything was extremely tasty, and everything was extremely convenient. Once I got home I went on a more limited diet. Not saying you need to eat exactly the same as me, but homemade food means you'll be a lot more conscientious of what goes in, and how much goes out. I like 'big' batches of food so I don't need to spend much time preparing. Once a week something will be cooked, and then portioned out for every meal until next week. I cycle between Chillie, Soup, and variations within. Ok, so it's basically all the same meal just different forms. Lots of tomatoes, beans/lentils/chickpeas, and meatballs/mince. That's my holy trinity because I love the taste and it's not super unhealthy. Obviously, add spices or herbs and other veggies to make a meal of it, but those 3 ingredients are my pillars and part of essentially everything I've eaten over the last year. As for dessert, as you eat homemade food try not to buy desserts at the supermarket or wherever you go to buy stuff. I'd suggest just buying ingredients and then bugging out, don't even look at them if you can help it. Luckily I don't know how to even make sweet stuff, do I didn't really think much about it, and after a while, I didn't even really care about desserts.
- Walk 10k steps every day. I'm lucky enough to live in a village at home, so we've got some nice countryside around, but I also lived in Glasgow during term-time and while I didn't walk as much as I should have I KNOW its possible to have good walking routes in the city, so I'll be continuing this habit back at Uni when I go back (spoiler alert, I think I'm gonna fail my exams and drop out so maybe not...). Essentially it's as it says on the tin, walking 10k steps every day. If you have an active lifestyle this might just happen on its own, for me, I go for an hour or two worth of dedicated walks every day. 10k steps are the minimum, but I've got a nice place to walk, and recently I've been doing around 10k-15k, as you get used to it it gets easier. Yeah, walking isn't the gym, and it's not a run, but it's also a lot easier and it's worked for me. Its pleasant, relaxing, and personally I also read fiction on my phone while I walk, but don't do this if you can't walk and read at the same time. Its not very strenuous on your body, and won't make you very sweaty outside of summer, but it does burn calories, stretches your legs, and makes your heart work.
And that's pretty much it as far as my method goes. It's not much, but it's what I did. And as you can see by the attached records, I didn't go straight to 10k steps a day, and I didn't always manage it afterwards. Likewise I didn't ALWAYS eat homemade food, and I didn't always manage to avoid dessert. I don't live alone, and I'm not a robot, so these things are unavoidable, but I kept aware of it, and didn't give up, and that was enough to pull through and see results, even if they took a while.
Also, you can see the 'Christmas slump' pretty clearly on the weight graph. Managed to bring it back, then now 'progress' also slows as I approach my 'target weight'. To be honest, after the first few months I didn't weigh myself as much. Seeing the numbers go down at first was very gratifying, but once I started feeling healthier, I just took measurements once a week or less to keep records. I might make it to 75kg, I might not. As long as I keep my healthy habits I don't really care tbh. Even at 80 flat I'm a lot better than I was, and as long as I don't get into a habit of pigging out I should tend towards whatever weight matches my lifestyle, however healthy it really is.
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