Yep, 10Kg, that’s how much weight I’ve lost recently.
Why? Well, because I was getting to be an overweight geek, despite all my half-assed efforts to turn up the exercise –it just won’t happen! :-)
Overweight to about 7-8Kg in fact. So what did I do? Well, I finally caved in to my wife’s requests and decided to take care of it.
After making that decision I talked to my uncle who’s recently lost something like 20Kg (!!) and asked for his advice which, like any good engineer’s advice, is plain common sense.
The magic formula (heh) is simple: ingest less calories than you spend in order to reduce body mass and then start ingesting a bit more to maintain it. Also, if you want to help the weight loss process, make sure you burn up more calories than usual, faster.
So after a full two months of sensible eating (absolutely no candy, no sugary drinks, no alcohol, no fats, no more than 100g of meat or fish a day, eating regularly thru-out the day and a few other obvious measures) aided by a daily walk or jog of at least 6-7 Kms I’ve come to weigh 10Kg less than I started out with.
Then I stopped the daily exercise and eased up on the eating regime to see how it would work out and now that I’m eating comfortably (I was never a big eater to start with, so that helps, of course) ;-) and haven’t exercised for a few weeks, I’ve settled in a nice weight (I’ve gained an average of 1,5Kg during these weeks but it varies daily, of course).
Now that I’ve gotten to where I want to settle from now on, I’ll just keep on monitoring the weight and being mildly careful with my intake (as I’ve been on the last few weeks) and that’s it.
All it took was a little self-discipline to follow my eating regime with absolute strictness for a couple of months (and let me tell you, it’s not me I have to worry about here, it’s other people around me who get so uncomfortable with my “diet” that they’ll constantly try to make me break it. Funny, huh?) and then a little care afterwards to keep up the shape.
It’s not rocket science, it wasn’t that hard and it sure was no drama. Like everything else in life, all it took was to make the decision to do something about it, make a plan and then to go for it.
And in the end I’m not doing any great sacrifices on my daily life, I’m just eating sensibly. After all, when was the last time I had to stock up on calories to push through a tough winter of walking around fleeing tigers and hunting bears for food? ;-)