I cast my mind back to the summer of 2007. Standing in front of the mirror, the 33 year old me looked in better shape than I'd ever been. Biologically younger than when I was 18, my body was slimmer and more toned than my pre-baby figure. Not surprising, I was spent half my life hard out cycling or in the gym. I could eat anything and still not put on any weight.
Twelve months later, how did I become a hefty 30kgs heavier? It's pretty easy. I was out of action for six months following a cycling accident. Suddenly switching from an intense training regime to doing zilch, yet carrying on eating the same number of calories, the weight piles on thick and fast.
I told myself, all I had to do was get back on the bike again, but that's harder than you think when you've gained almost 50% extra body mass. It's pretty demoralising when you can no longer keep up with your training buddies, or ramp up the treadmill. Defeated, I resigned myself to my training days being over, and welcomed the new, obese me.
I reassured myself that my size didn't matter and the person underneath was important and that's all well and good. In reality, being so over weight was not doing me any good. I was sluggish, tired all the time and constantly felt stiff. Getting out of bed was a strenuous effort. My confidence diminished. What's more, I didn't feel too sexy either. There was chafing where my thighs rubbed together and this was affecting my knees.
I had to lose weight ..... but the realisation this was going to take me the best part of a year was daunting. It just seemed too far away. The most you can realistically lose in a week is a kilogram, so at best, that's 30 weeks without chocolate or cheesecake.
For most people, that is the biggest obstacle to losing weight. Too many restrictions for too long. This is why people go for the quick fixes and subscribe to diet fads that promise mammoth weight loss of up to 15kgs a week. Of course, that is totally unrealistic, and if you do lose that in a week, it's not because you're shedding fat. I did try a few of those, and guess what, I put the weight back on faster than I lost it. There is a reason for this that I will cover in my next post on PHONY WEIGHT LOSS.
For so many diets, the emphasis is on how many times you can eat something unhealthy. And this is why they fail. Think about the point system diet. Every food has a point value, so yeah, you can have five chocolate bars a day, but that's all you will eat. No doubt you will feel pretty hungry and yes you will give into cravings. We all know, on top of that, you're metabolism will slow down, so consuming smaller amounts of food will cause weight gain.
So how do you get over these initial barriers? It took me seven years to get over mine. What was it in April 2015 that flicked the switch?
Skydiving. I wanted to do a parachute jump, only there was a weight limit and I was 3kgs over it. Losing 3kgs didn't seem such a big deal, although I set myself a target of 5kgs to be on the safe side. About 6 weeks before the jump, I sat down and wrote as diet plan. I knew quite a bit about weight loss from my fitness freak days and reckoned it could be done in before the jump. The diet had to be strict. I stayed off anything containing added sugar or wheat, didn't eat bananas or potatoes and stuck mainly to salad, fruit, white meat and fish.
About 7kgs came off in the 6 weeks. Admittedly it was a quick fix that would be hard to maintain in the long run. Eating a diet which is stricter than paleo is pretty extreme. What it did do, was kick start the weight loss process and give me the confidence that another 7kg loss was only 6 weeks away. I decided to merely maintain the weight by not eating food with added sugar. This got me thinking that maybe setting small weight loss goals then having a dieting break was the way to go. It certainly helped maintain the will power, and ultimately led to me shedding the 30kgs I gained in 2008.
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