Warning: very very very long.
I’ve struggled with my weight and self esteem for a long time. In my teens, I started gaining weight, and proceeded to move from normal range to overweight to obese over the next decade.
It wasn’t until just before Covid started that I got a frightening wake-up call: I strained my knee running for a bus, at 27 yo.
Then Covid hit, along with a job loss, which ended up giving me a clear 1 year to balance job-hunting with eating better and exercising.
At the start, I couldn’t run, but I could walk. So walk I did - 5km a day as a start. Within weeks, that went up to 7-8km. Then I started adding running, using strap-on knee braces for support. It would be short distances - 50m at a time every few minutes. Then it became 100m, then 200m. By the end of that year-long stretch, I was running 5km straight, no pauses, no knee braces. I added light weight training and lots of stretching. My daily regiment was: 90min walk/run mix, 15min stretching, 15min weight training, all every morning, and then a 45min walk every evening.
At the same time, I was counting calories, not to starve, but to make sure I wasn’t overeating. I was shocked to discover, once I measured the ingredients, that one of my favorite salads was 1000 calories! And I was having that just for lunch! I swapped it with a big bowl of chili con carne that I would eat with a single slice of bread, when the entire meal came to 400 calories. I always ate the same thing for breakfast: muesli with plain yogurt, and some fruit. I made sure to maintain a reasonable calorie deficit, based on the exercise calories burnt, and the result was approx 1.5-2kg loss a month.
By the end of the year, I was down from 83kg to 65kg, and fitting into clothes I never imagined fitting into, and being so much stronger and fitter than I ever dared to imagine.
Since then, I gained all that weight back, as I was overcompensating with being unemployed and doing a lot of overtime, with no time left to cook again - the challenge was finding a rhythm that could work around my work schedule. It was very start-stop, and one time when a routine did start, it got broken because of an extended trip.
I am back to working regular hours and now have a new routine that works: morning run/walk for 45-60mins + 15 min stretching, going into office during lunch hour (hybrid work policy), plus meal prepping on Sundays. Every Saturday is cheat day, when I eat whatever I want, but always counting calories, even if they are “over the limit”. Got a cheap treadmill for home for rainy days so no excuses.
I’m down 6kg in 3 months, and I feel so much more motivated, so I think it’s sticking this time!
Sorry for the word wall, and even if nobody reads it, I’m so proud of me, I wanted to just put it out there. If it helps anyone, that’s a tremendous bonus!
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