A transformation journey is usually full of learnings, so was mine. I’m here to give you some idea about things I learnt personally during my health transformation. I will also try to cover some of the simple facts and myths I uncovered.
Don’t worry I won't bombard you with health facts. I’m sure you can get that pretty much anywhere. I hope my story can help you out.
Before I deep dive into that, I would like to say that I was never into the concept of healthy living, clean eating and sustainable lifestyle. In fact, I was on the opposite end of the spectrum — I never really cared about it until I went down a path of self-reflection keeping my inane doubts on the side. Can I do it? Do I have what it takes?
The life I had led until then proved to be a huge stumbling block to answer those questions concisely as I was almost always ready to fall back on my excuses and quit easily. Well, people learn through their mistakes, so did I.
I was able to shred off 23 kgs of unhealthy weight through my transformation in a matter of 4–5 months. This is not to boast, but to give you confidence and hope that if I can do it, so can you!
So, let's get down to it.
Right Mindset: One of the most important things to develop or learn when you decide to make changes in your life is the right mindset. Things will go off track for some days, but it is important to keep track of the bigger picture. The power of visualization plays an important role. I witnessed this first hand when I took the decision to excuse myself from the list of people affected by obesity across the world.
Discipline: You will never be motivated for a long time, it simply never lasts. Instead, focus on creating discipline within you. With that said, don’t overstress yourself when things go wrong. Rather, focus on balancing it out. There will be distractions, but you have to learn to dust ourselves off and move on whenever we fall. For example: Having a cheat meal is fine as long as you will come back from it with your next meal being twice as healthy.
Get a plan: Get a plan and stick to it. If it doesn’t work, go out and find another plan. It is important to have a goal and a process to help you achieve that goal. When you start seeing the progress, you will eventually start loving the process and will stick to it rather easily. Proper guidance is essential and there is no use of random plans or diets as it doesn’t work in the long term. Also, one plan of action won’t work for everyone. It’s important to understand we have different bodies and how our bodies adapt and behave can be learnt by experiments and body science. Never compare your progress with anyone else, it is not going to be the same.
Don’t focus on numbers: Any progress is good progress. You must stop dwelling about the numbers. The goal should be to make your body healthy from the inside (which is something you can’t physically measure). Your sole purpose should not be on losing weight, any way possible. Learning how to sustain it over a period of time is also an art you should master. The time you take to achieve your goals does not matter as long as you feel better every day of the process. Tracking a few key parameters like the stress levels in the body, your cravings, your energy levels, sleeping pattern is much better than just the weight.
Patience: It takes time to learn about eating right, things that suit your body and that you can easily adapt to and digest. It is not something that you will learn in one go. It is about experimenting with different types of foods and tracking what suits your body.
Nutrition: One of the most important aspects of a healthy lifestyle is nutrition, NOT CALORIES. Be obsessed with getting the right nutrition to your body. Nutrition will help the cells to function properly and even improve the self-healing properties of the cells. Not all calories are the same and it does not help in knowing how many calories is present in each food item. Instead, learn about the nutritional content since it will help you in the longer run.
Education: It is important that we educate ourselves with the right kind of knowledge and science about the process of healthy weight loss. For instance, the focus should be on fat burning and not weight as weight also consists of water, muscles and proteins. We should learn the difference between fasting and starving. Drinking fluids is fine, as long as we don’t overdo it. YOU DON’T HAVE TO DRINK 8 GLASSES OF WATER EVERY DAY!
Diet and Exercise balance: Dieting will pretty much make up 80% of your weight loss efforts. Eating the right things can help you trigger the fat-burning hormones in the body. Exercise is not that critical for weight loss. It sure helps to work out and keep your body in shape, detox the body through the sweat. Some exercise is better than no exercise and even brisk walking works well.
Perspective: We must remember that everyone has their definitions of being healthy, so we shouldn’t impose our meaning onto others. For some it’s the gym, for others it’s clean eating, etc. Simply put, we should learn to appreciate people who put the effort to be healthy.
Cheating: Of course, this is the most interesting aspect of the whole process. Can I still have junk food? Do I need to stop drinking altogether? Well, the answer is NO, YOU DON’T HAVE TO! After all, who doesn't love pizza! You should be fine, given that you are able to balance it out and change your mindset a bit. For example: When you know you will be going out for drinks and will be consuming junk food, it is imperative to plan the rest of the meals of the day so that there is adequate balance in what you eat through the day. You can avoid using a mixer with hard liquor and use water! It helps you out two ways: Less sugar consumption and more hydration.
In the end, I would just say that the focus should be on a sustainable lifestyle. You must be ready to make some changes to maintain your health over a long period of time. Stay healthy, stay safe!
Crisp and cool 👌🏻