How I Eliminated 20 Kilograms Of Excess Fat In A Year...
And kept it off, permanently. It all starts with the mind!
Before I started my weight loss regime, I was fat. No, actually, I was moderately obese. I would have been at higher risk of developing chronic inflammatory illnesses as a result of all that extra weight, really.
At a height of 185 cm (6 ft 1 in) and a weight of 115 kg (253.3 lbs), it would suffice to say that I was fat. Even my best friends conditioned their kid to call me “Uncle Fat” (in a loving way of course, not that I minded).
I wasn’t really a workout fanatic when I was doing my PhD in Melbourne. I’d go for a 2 hour session of social badminton, play about 45 minutes in total, and sit there huffing and puffing, while getting entertained on the court sidelines by the foibles of other players on the court. Of course, I’d collapse like a sack of potatoes when I got home, and refuse to wake up the next day because just about everywhere had this sensation of soreness.
Somehow, A Switch Was Flipped…
Interestingly, towards the end of my tenure in Melbourne, a colleague of mine then introduced me to a multi-level marketing business opportunity with nutritional supplements.
I thought, this looks good. I did my research, and found that it claimed to market quality products. However, as the adage goes, “self praise is no praise but international disgrace”. One can claim whatever they want to claim, but can that be verified?
I dug deeper and found that there were independent third party lab testers that verified the label accuracy on many of the brand’s products. And that’s something that we don’t really think about when we go after supplements: Does the product really contain what their labels state that they contain?
But I digress. The team of people that I met were telling me how the products they had consumed had benefited them. Armed with all the “personal testimonies” that I obtained, I decided to embark on a journey myself and be my own guinea pig to see if I could experience what they did experience. Not just the supplements, but it was going to be a whole radical lifestyle change. Go hard or don’t ever think of going home!
It All Starts With The Mind.
Starting a new routine always requires discipline, because it is something new. We move through the Four Stages of Competence, where we always start out something new at a level of unconscious incompetence (we are unaware of what we don’t know) to the highest level of unconscious competence (executing it so easily that we can do it in an unconscious manner). I chose to start the routine on 1 Jan 2018, not really knowing what I was doing, just knowing that I had a weight loss New Year’s Resolution that I wanted to work on and see how far I could go with it.
The problem with supplements is that the consumption of most of them don’t seem to give one an effect until one has taken them consistently for long enough. The first 2 months felt normal — I did not see any “whoa that was unexpected” changes happening.
However, as I embarked on trying out various different exercises to see what I really liked to do, I found high intensity interval training (HIIT) to be something that I enjoyed. I coupled that with badminton and proceeded to work on 2x 30 minute HIIT sessions per week, and 2x 2 hour badminton sessions per week.
What I did notice was an ability to stay on the court longer. In Melbourne, I was playing 45 minutes out of 2 hours. Back in Singapore, I’d be playing 80–90 minutes out of the 2 hours. My stamina improved. Somehow, my brain would be saying that it was time for a rest (as per the Melbourne days), but my body was saying that it could continue and take more punishment.
In addition, I didn’t wake up with the aches and pains that plagued me in Melbourne. I could play 80 minutes one day, wake up the next day and do a 30 minute HIIT session in the evening. My recovery speed improved.
As a biochemical scientist, I did some research into recovery rates too. The idea of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), I found, was borne out of inflammatory signals generated by our immune system to repair the micro-sized injuries to our muscle fibres as we work out. A healthier immune system, aided by the consumption of less junk food, more exercise and quality nutrients would support a swifter immune system response for muscle repairs. In addition, I didn’t fall sick that whole year either.
All that was achieved even as I attempted to cut my calorie intake down to 1500 on a consistent basis. I succeeded 80% of the time, because my cravings for refined carbohydrates dissipated. It got to the point where I was drinking sugarless tea (though still flavoured with milk), when in the past I’d have gotten it with a good dollop of sweetened condensed milk. Giving all that sugar up cold turkey felt next to normal. The only times when I blew past the calorie limit? When I was out socialising with friends — you know, they want ice cream, and you get an ice cream with them to humour them, yada yada.
So this is what I ended up looking like in the span of 1 year:
There was a visible reduction in the amount of fats on my face. My best friends changed my nickname from “Uncle Fat” to “Uncle Fit”.
Bucking That Trend!
They say it gets more difficult to lose weight as we age beyond our 30s. I’m still trying to buck that trend — while my peers have been on the weight gain trend, I went on a weight drop trend.
In that one year, I went from 115 kg to 98 kg. That was a weight drop of 17 kg, or 37.4 lbs.
The problem was that this weight loss journey bucked so many of the norms that people come to think of when starting a weight loss regime and left people (more than pleasantly) surprised.
The friends in Melbourne who heard of my weight loss regime and who saw updates on my social media feed stopped by in Singapore for a holiday trip, and we caught up for dinner (highly calorific, of course). They expected me to look more haggard and tired because of the calorie restrictions that I had in place. But no, according to them, I was glowing (that might have been the effect of the skincare regime that I was using, but I digress), healthier and slimmer.
But enough of that experience, here’s what I learnt:
Consistency is key when setting goals. We can’t expect to be experts in a skill overnight. Expertise is gained by trial and error, putting in consistent effort to sharpen one’s skills, and remaining disciplined enough to execute the effort on a regular basis. In this case, it means that I would have had to be disciplined to work out at least 3–4 times in a week. It also means that I would have had to be disciplined to reduce the frequency of eating foods that would be detrimental to my waistline drastically.
It’s easier to get into the rhythm of smashing goals when you’re with a team of like-minded people. I had a group of people that I worked out with once a week for HIIT sessions — until I found their intensity was too tame for my liking. I had a group of people that I met with to play badminton for 2 hours a week — and then I figured I needed more run, so I stopped joining them and I started joining another group that had 3 hour sessions.
It’s easy to say something, but it’s not easy to execute it. Telling yourself “I want to lose weight” or “I want to save money” is easy, but then when there’s something out there that entices your feelings to go against the goal that you have set, you’d find it very easy to stray from the path if you don’t have that discipline to tell you why not. Eating fried chicken is definitely much easier than clearing out a HIIT session, for instance.
The nutritional supplements were a good quality cheat code for me. I’m still using them.
One doesn’t have to stop at a goal when the target is achieved. In the working world, many companies work on movable goalposts. You reach a target, they move it further, and you work towards reaching that new target. Can’t we apply that to our own personal goals too? I’m not intending to bounce back to 115 kg any time soon, for health reasons of course.
Consistency is key!
In essence, consistency is key. The problem is that most people see it in one direction — to be consistent in losing weight and staying healthy, I must exercise consistently and eat healthy.
The reverse is also true — if I were consistently bingeing on unhealthy snacks and not exercising enough, the weight gain would come down on me inevitably like a ton of bricks!
Do feel free to browse what products I used at this link during my weight loss run or an assortment of low gastric index (GI) snack options at this link. Disclaimer: These links are affiliate links and I may receive commissions for any purchases made via those links.