Today marked a pretty important milestone for me. I have now lost 60Kg (photos are both a bit out of date, I have lost about another 5Kg since the more recent one and I was a bit heavier that the original one there).
I have gone from ~145Kg to 84Kg. Some stats about this weight loss
BMI has dropped from 42 to 24.
Resting heart rate has gone from mid 70’s to mid 50’s
Doctors have told me that based on blood work not only have I prevent a very early death but they say I have blood work/blood pressure and other indicators closer to that of someone 10yrs my junior
My fitness level has gone through the roof as well.
The story behind this is that post COVID locakdown I hit a really low point mentally. I was eating horribly an was utterly miserable, to the point where I knew if I kept going the way I was it wasn't going to be long before I died.
My wife asked me if I want to have weight loss surgery so I looked into it and, for me, I felt like I wouldn't learn anything about weight loss if I did this and I knew I would just slip back into old habits and waste the money. So I decided to give weight loss a proper try. I knew that I knew nothing about eating properly or exercise. I spent the first month working on why I was eating what I was eating. What was I getting out of it? For me it was emotional eating, I ate for comfort, to feel better, especially when I was depressed. I hadn't properly dealt with the passing of our eldest daughter from an eating disorder. Mentally realising that I was doing the exact same thing as she was but in reverse hit me hard. I also made the conscious decision that I didn't want to die an I wanted to be around for my wife and kids.
With the mental work well on the way I needed to figure out what would work for me food wise. I am not a morning person so breakfast needed to be fast and I needed to be able to prep my lunch really quickly as I ran out the door to work.
Food prep on a Sunday became critical. I am super lucky that I can eat the same thing day in day out an be fine. Chicken breast, brown rice and broccoli every day for lunch in a frozen container, nice an easy.
Dinner was already fine as my wife has always eaten well.
I cut out all the chips I was eating and started going to bed at a reasonable time. Finishing work at 2am after eating 2 large bags of chips and a 2lt bottle of coke had taken its toll and was a big contributor to my weight.
I made a lot of diet mistakes on the way with eating way too few calories for a long time. Being 120kg and eating 1400 kcal is not great!
If you want to know what I do here is the list
Mon-Fri: Gym for weight lifting using the Stronger by Science program for hypertrophy
Tues & Thurs: stationary bike spin class on Apple Fitness+
Wed: Yoga
Sat: Bike or Martial Art session for conditioning (push ups, sit ups, dips, squats, punch kicks, loads of bag work) for around 1hr (this depends on how beat up I feel from my week at the gym)
Sun: Yoga
Food wise I eat high protein and 99% whole foods. I track my foods with MacroFactor app.
Sounds like a lot huh? Well if you want to start, start small that is what I did. First get your food right. Find your Total Daily Energy Expenditure TDEE and minus 500 calories. Then split that calories into your macros of about 40/40/20 for protein, carbs and fat. Once you have done that just move a bit more, walking, couch 2 5K, gym whatever, find what works for you.
Things I have learnt
1. You can’t out run a bad diet
2. Weight Lifting is highly important for improving you metabolism and building muscle
3. Cardio is great for weight loss but weight training is still overall better
4. Finding r/fitness and r/loseit where I could ask dumb questions was super important
5. Finding people who’s advice I trusted was huge. YouTube content creators like Jeff Nippard, Stronger by Science (Greg Nukols & Eric Tressler), Dr. Mike Isratel, AlphDestiny
6. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable - pushing your self is important, not to the point of injury but always striving to be better than last work out pushed me as I went along.
7. Sleep is sooooo important for weight loss, 7-9hrs/night is massively important to weight loss and craving management.
8. Weight and track your food - MacroFactor is amazing for this
From here on out I am going to keep doing what I am doing because I love this amount of activity and I am working on recomp at a 100-200kcal deficit while building muscle and strength with the aim of dropping to around 15% BF down from around 19% currently.
I really hope this helps someone, please dont get disheartened by how much you need to lose, break it up into small goals and remember it is a marathon not a sprint. You can do it! Find your why and hold onto it, it will make the blood sweat and tears all the more easy.
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