“The Incredible Real Weight Loss Journey That Shattered My Limits”

“My Personal Battle: how I lost 20 kg in 5 months.

I tried dieting every year, but I stopped before I got any results until I reached the stage of obesity.

I succeeded in losing weight only with the help of sports and healthy eating. In five months, I got rid of 20 kg of excess weight, shortness of breath, and the belief that my type of figure is a “pear. ” I’ll tell you how it went my real weight loss journey.

Why I decided to lose weight.

I began to notice that I quickly ran out of breath when going upstairs and taking the bus instead of walking. One day, for the sake of interest, I weighed myself as a guest, and the data I saw became a game changer – 75 kg at a height of 162 cm. It was my anti-record.

A week later, I realized obesity and shortness of breath were not my goal. I made another promise to myself to start losing weight on Monday. This time, it came to fruition.

Motivation

I used to try to lose weight in the following way: I started popular mono-diets, gave up sweets, and excluded fat and bread from my diet. But all this lasted up to three days. I had a breakdown. I wanted to see in the mirror a beautiful woman with the body of Venus of Milos, but the desire to drink tea and cake was more substantial than that. But this time, I decided to act the other way around.

I convinced myself

I convinced myself it would be problematic only during the first three weeks. I read that habits develop within 21 days. So, I should be patient for three weeks to get used to sports and nutrition and be proud of myself the rest of the time. So, weight loss became a willpower experiment for me.

I divided the goal into stages.

Internet calculator BMI showed that the range of healthy weight at a height of 162 cm is from 48 to 65 kg. So, I set a clear goal: lose 60 kilograms and return to my average body weight. At that time, it seemed to me to be something unrealistic, but I still wanted to try. To make the process easier psychologically, I divided it into three stages: 75 to 70 kg, 70 to 65 kg, and 65 to 60 kg.

I chose a reward. 

For every five kilograms I lost, I rewarded myself with clothes. Realizing that with every kilogram I lost, I could choose not the dress that hid flaws but the one I liked, which was incredibly joyful.

Successful success stories inspired me.

 I looked at pictures on forums or YouTube videos with stories of people who had lost weight. If others succeeded, then I would soon achieve the desired result.

Consult a doctor

This article does not give recommendations. Consult your doctor before deciding on a treatment regimen. You are responsible for your health alone.

Preparation

I didn’t have anything at home to keep track of my figure. I decided to fix that – I’ll tell you what I bought.

Smart Scale.

 It works with an app that shows my weight, BMI, percentage of internal and subcutaneous fat, water levels, skeletal muscle health, bone mass, and body age. It also tracks weight loss by week, month, and year. 

Kitchen Scale.

 It helps calculate the calorie content of each food item. Of course, it is possible to do it more sophisticatedly: look for the energy value per 100 g and calculate it depending on the total weight. But if you buy products by weight, there are other options. 

Sportswear.

 I bought loafers and a T-shirt to exercise at home and run around the neighborhood in warm weather. 

Dry Massage Brush.

 I learned somewhere that dry massage helps to get rid of cellulite. Looking ahead, I note that cellulite disappeared: I don’t know if it’s thanks to that brush or regular exercise in the gym. 

Measuring tape. 

It turned out I didn’t have one at home. I bought it to measure body parameters. 

Diet

I always thought that I was fat-prone and that my body type was “pear.” I didn’t gain excess weight in a day or even a month – it accumulated over the years. I spent my pocket money in high school on cola and my favorite white chocolate. I hated vegetables in high school and began to eat very little of them. At university, I found out about the existence of coffee with syrups.

The nutrition and weight issues did not bother me at that time. I did not think about the calories and benefits of products; I ate all the most delicious things. For breakfast, I drank tea with sausage sandwiches or a piece of cake or ate scrambled eggs with fried bacon. I had soup, a second meal, a dessert, and a can of Coca-Cola for lunch. I could have tea with a whole chocolate bar or a packet of mini croissants for dinner.

My portions were as significant as a basin: eating a small amount of food was impossible. I also snacked on coffee and chocolate bars, ordered pizza or rolls on Fridays, and went to fast-food restaurants with friends on weekends.

Vegetables, fruits, and plain water were my diet’s most miniature everyday items – even when I was most thirsty, I chose juice or soda.

I didn’t know what to eat to achieve real weight loss journey. I read forums and often came across praise for the Osama Hamdia diet, designed for people with diabetes who need to lower blood sugar levels. I didn’t have any diseases, but I was addicted to sweets, so I decided it would be good for me to reduce my cravings.

Food which I ate. 

The rules of the diet were as follows: the duration – four weeks; breakfast, lunch, and dinner for each week are in detail; snacks are forbidden. Skipping days or changing products is prohibited; everything must be consistent and strictly according to the schedule. If you break a rule, you start over. You must return to the first, even if it was already the fourteenth day.

You should not add salt and oil; you can only drink green tea and drink at least 1.5 liters of water daily.

I bought food for a week so as not to go to the store every day, and there was no temptation on some days to buy “Rafaello” instead of eggs. The main inconvenience was that I didn’t purchase the products by weight. Cheese in a package weighs 160 g, but according to the diet, you need only 60 g. Some of it was useful for the next week, but I had to throw away the rest.

The way I felt. 

Initially, I liked the large number of prohibitions; nothing needs to be invented, and everything has already been done before your time. I only had to adhere to the strict rules and enjoy the lost kilograms.

Every morning for two weeks, I ate eggs and half an orange. The first time, it was easy, but after ten days, I was already closing my nose to avoid tasting them. It was the opposite with oranges: if before I thought they tasted sour lemon, they tasted honeyed later.

In the third week, I began to feel weak. I fell into a fainting spell several times on the city bus. When I went home, I ate the hated eggs and thought I couldn’t take them. Eating the same foods without salt and spices was killing me. I wanted to snap, but not on a Big Mac, but on a slice of black bread and an extra cucumber. Digestion also broke down, and once a week, I drank a laxative because, without it, my stomach did not want to work. The body lacked something.

On the eighteenth day of this diet, I decided to stop experimenting with diets taken from the Internet and switch to a proper diet. The effect of Osama Hamdia was good: I lost five kilograms in two and a half weeks. But these results were not worth torturing myself in my real weight loss journey.

What’s wrong with Osama Hamdia’s diet

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder that depends primarily on one’s lifestyle. One of the significant risk factors for its development is obesity. That is, the more weight we gain, the higher the chance of having type 2 diabetes. The opposite is true: the more weight we lose, the lower the probability of its development and the greater the chances of long-term remission if the disease has already appeared.

By understanding this relationship, any successful protocol for treating diabetes or improving a person’s metabolic status can be designed – based on weight loss.

Osama Hamdia’s diet is no exception: it maintains a strict caloric deficit, so it is effective for weight loss and, as a result, improves some of the metabolic health of people with diabetes. You can get the same effect by following any calorie-deficit diet plan.

However, this diet plan is rigorous and monotonous. That means it is impossible to get all the vital nutrients from it and to stick to it for an extended period.

Strict food restrictions increase the risk of failure during the diet or rollback after completion – when a person pounces on the deprived food. And you end up eating more than is optimal for your health. This strategy leads to a yo-yo effect:

Weight is reduced on the diet

The weight comes back and takes a couple of extra pounds with it.

It is more important to work with eating habits and gradually change eating behavior for a long-term effect. For example, if regularly consuming vegetables becomes a habit like brushing teeth, the probability of a setback tends to zero. A person eats vegetables not because they are necessary but because they are no longer tasty without them. In other words, a person does not limit themself, but on the contrary, expands their diet. It does not create an increased craving for forbidden products because they cease to exist.

Healthy eating

The desire to eat unhealthily disappeared after two and a half weeks of dieting. I wanted to continue losing weight, but in a tasty way, not eating eggs and unsalted chicken. I watched a lot of videos on YouTube which recommended proper nutrition. I decided to try this method in my real weight loss journey.

First, I needed to calculate the calories. A unique site helped in this, which allowed me to calculate the daily calorie intake and the balance of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates based on my weight, height, age, and level of physical activity. So I learned that it leads to consuming about 1400 kcal per day.

Tracking individual products’ calorie content is easy: it is written on the package. Cooking on your own requires more work. You need to calculate the calories of each ingredient and summarize everything. To avoid endless mathematical calculations, I downloaded the first app with a calorie counter on my phone – YAZIO, which already has a database of dishes and products with their energy value.

Which products I ate. 

Proper nutrition has the advantage over diets because there are no strict rules and restrictions. The menu for 1400 kcal can be delicious and varied, so you do not want to break it down.

I tried to follow the golden rules of the plate: half of the plate is occupied by vegetables, and carbohydrates and proteins – ¼ each. I completely excluded potatoes and pasta from the side dishes: they contain a lot of starch and carbohydrates. I don’t know if they are as harmful as some nutritionists say, but I replaced them with chickpeas, lentils, and other cereals from the legumes category, which contain much protein.

Dinner was light and hearty, containing fiber and lean protein:

Chicken cutlets with stewed vegetables

“Caesar” with diet yogurt instead of mayonnaise

Rice with seafood

If I wanted to, I would pamper myself with something delicious once every two weeks, like a couple of slices of pizza or a chocolate eclair.

To keep the menu from getting boring, I looked for new recipes on social networks, where there are many accounts with examples of diets and dishes.

Menu plan for one day

Products Calories

Breakfast Curd with banana, toast with salmon and cottage cheese, green tea 289 kcal

Snack Apple or nectarine 45 kcal

Lunch: Steamed turkey meatball, buckwheat, cucumber, and tomato salad with sour cream 357 kcal

Afternoon snack cappuccino, sugar-free marshmallows 111 kcal

Dinner Cauliflower baked in the oven with cheese and chicken filet 252 kcal

Besides food, I tried to keep water balance because sometimes hunger can be confused with thirst. Every day, I drank one and a half liters. At first, it wasn’t easy, but it became a habit.

How I was feeling.

 Initially, I was losing about five kilograms per month, but after two months, the weight started to drop more slowly. I lost weight faster on Osama Hamdia’s diet but had no energy at all. I came home and immediately fell asleep. I couldn’t even think about sports; I felt weak; my eyes started to darken even when I was sitting in the subway, and my hands and feet were cold inside, even in a warm room.

Proper nutrition gradually helped me overcome these problems. I now had energy for work and training, and the constant feeling of hunger disappeared.What is proper nutrition and why we do not call it so?

Scientifically, there is no “right” or “wrong” nutrition. Focusing on “correctness” in food creates a lot of anxiety and pushes you towards neurosis. Feeling like you’re doing something wrong if you eat a slice of pizza or a packet of chips is hardly conducive to supporting health.

In a scientific approach, the focus on balance is providing a diet where a person can get all the nutrients they need and stay healthy. Such a diet is often called a balanced or healthy diet.

Here are a few principles:

Meals must include fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and whole grains. The rest are optional;

you should eat about 400 grams of fruits and vegetables every day;

Salt, sugar, and saturated fats should be limited. This means that you should not avoid them but should not make them the basis of your diet. For example, do not drink sweet sodas instead of water, and do not regularly eat fast food instead of lunch, chips, and donuts instead of dinner.

Harvard School recommends organizing a healthy diet and the approximate balance of food on the plate.

In a balanced diet, there is a place for any product; it’s all a matter of quantity and regularity. Health ministries of developed countries need to publish menus with ideal recipes for conditionally correct products. Their primary focus is balance and variety, not exclusion and strictness. With this approach, we reduce anxiety around food, stop dieting, and stop adding value to foods like chocolates, buns, and hamburgers. In doing so, we get all the nutrients we need from food and stay at a healthy weight.

Sports

There were no sports in my life before weight loss. Even in school, I didn’t like gym class. I didn’t want to sweat and feel tingling in my side, so I begged my mom three times a week to write a note ending with the phrase: “Please, release my daughter from classes for family reasons.”

But a month after I started losing weight, I suddenly wanted to buy a fitness club membership. The only one near my house was a premium club with a gym, a swimming pool, and a spa area: sauna, hammam, and Jacuzzi. I could go to group workouts: stretching, yoga, Pilates, total body, Saikle, step, kickboxing.

How I worked out in my real weight loss journey .

 I decided to start with cardio workouts, alternating them with stretching, because, after a mini examination at the same club, it turned out that I had poor muscle tone in my back. I took an introductory training session where it was explained to me how to use the essential training equipment.

For about two months, I worked on the ellipsoid, treadmill, and stepper four times a week. Yoga and Pilates did not impress me, but cardio training allows you to combine the pleasant with the healthy: I stand on the machine, turn on a movie or audiobook, and enjoy the process.

The weight went off much faster with physical activity. After a month, instead of 70 kg, I weighed 65 kg. But other problems arose: because of the rapid weight loss, the skin began to sag, and “appetizing” parts of the body were significantly reduced. To avoid the condition of skinny-fat – as we call the situation when a person with low weight has flabby skin and fat instead of muscle – I decided to replace cardio with strength exercises.

Working out with a trainer was expensive for me. So, to save money, I ordered a workout plan from a fitness blogger I was subscribed to on social media. She wrote me four days of exercises for different muscle groups, with the names of the exercises and the number of approaches.

I needed to figure out the right exercise equipment and how to do the exercises correctly. Like a blind kitten, I learned everything on my own – from videos on YouTube. I typed in the name of an exercise in a search engine, watched the video, and then repeated everything in the gym, randomly picking up the weight. At that moment, I didn’t need to consult a fitness blogger: the Internet is full of free exercises for all body parts.

After weeks of useless workouts, I freaked out and went home from the gym. I was lifting too heavy weight: I was quickly exhausted, and I didn’t realize if I was doing everything right. I didn’t see any results in the mirror either – only bruises on my legs because of overstrain and incorrectly selected weights.

Finally, on the fourth month of weight loss, I had to take a session with a personal trainer, and I regretted not doing it earlier. The trainer had chosen a workout for me, taking into account my physical condition and the parts of my body I wanted to train, and explained to me how and which muscles should be strained on the machines. After this session, I realized that my previous efforts could have been more worthwhile: not the right muscles were pumped, or they were not tensed at all.

My trainer and I agreed to meet once a month and change the program. During the rest of the time, I could ask her any questions on WhatsApp, and she was always in touch. That was enough for me to understand the correct technique and continue practicing independently.

Besides, I ordered a beautiful tracksuit to feel like a natural athlete and be inspired by the result. 

Training outside the gym

It is possible to skip workouts, but I didn’t want to, so sports became a habit. So, if the opportunity to come to the gym was not available, for example, during a vacation, I looked for other options for sports load. I trained under Chloe Ting’s workouts or did simple physical exercises available in exercise groups for weight loss: scissors, pelvic lifts, plank, and others. Sometimes, I would do them in the gym on a rubber mat.

In the summer, I liked to do sports outside: running in circles at a slow pace, riding a bike, or just walking at a brisk pace. My favorite ellipsoid was found in almost all street gyms.

Expenses

My real weight loss journey took five months. The main expenditure items are a fitness club membership, individual sessions with a trainer, clothes, and accessories for losing weight.

Now my weight is 55 kilograms. I continue to exercise and stick to proper nutrition even after achieving the result of my dream. I work out three times a week in the gym. The annual membership I bought at the beginning of my weight loss is still valid, so I have only one monthly expense – a session with a trainer.

However, my average food expenditure has decreased significantly, mainly due to cooking for a few days, carrying food with me in containers, and giving up junk food. 

I don’t count calories now; I eat what I want in moderation. I can eat a couple of slices of pizza at a meeting with friends or try a cake at a party, but the main thing for me is not to addict myself and to be able to stop in time. It’s better to eat an extra bun now and go for a run with a clear conscience than to dream about it for a few days and go for a loaf of bread.

The most surprising realization after losing weight was that my figure type is not “pear,” as I thought all my life, but “hourglass.” And in general, it turns out that it was not a wide bone and a predisposition to fullness but a wrong lifestyle. I had to change it, and my life began to shine with new colors.

I’m glad to share my real weight loss journey with you.

Translated from https://journal.tinkoff.ru/pp-diet-20kg/