As someone who has been overweight for almost three decades, I’ve happily indulged in food and drinks all along, with the flag of weight loss raised and fallen every year.
Recently, as I embarked on the next phase of my life, I made up my mind to truly lose weight. It was only then that I realized that only a painless weight loss journey can be effective and lasting.
In four months, I happily lost 20 pounds.
How did I make it painless? Here are a few tips that might be useful.
1.Have a Clear, Specific, and Motivating Goal
For more than 20 years, although I always talked about wanting to lose weight, deep down, I felt healthy and didn’t want to diet to please anyone. That’s why I never truly succeeded in losing weight.
This year, I found a partner who loves taking photos and videos. In the past, being overweight, I didn’t enjoy being filmed. Now, constantly being the main character in vlogs, I couldn’t stand looking at my bulky figure anymore. Additionally, with plans for the next phase of my life, I was highly motivated to lose weight and seriously stuck to it for four months, shedding 20 pounds.
2. Find a Fitness Buddy
My partner is also an overweight guy. Sharing the same goal, we film vlogs to document our life and our upcoming wedding. So, we have aligned objectives. Although we argue and joke around, trying to be each other’s obstacles, we end up spending more time together at the gym.
During strength training, we can protect each other, avoiding the embarrassment of going to the gym alone.
Making fitness plans together and motivating each other, we can go further and last longer.
3. Haste Makes Waste; Healthy Fitness and Weight Loss
Fitness and weight loss are long-term endeavors. Results are not visible in a week or a month, nor is it a one-time effort with lifelong benefits.
Especially for women, if weight loss happens too quickly, their menstrual cycle might protest. A reasonable goal is to lose 0.5-1 kg per week.
Therefore, have realistic expectations and embrace fitness as a lifestyle.
4. Adjust Your Diet, But Avoid Extreme Dieting and Restriction
Since starting fitness, we’ve done a lot of preparation and watched many instructional videos.
We changed our mindset from dieting and surviving on plain cabbage soup.
We still eat meals, enjoy meat, and haven’t removed hot pots, barbecues, and skewers from our menu. However, we’re stricter with portion control, planned intake of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. The frequency of dining out has decreased, and we rinse off oily food, but we don’t completely deprive ourselves of these sources of joy.
Temptations aside, we haven’t stopped enjoying these during our weight loss journey.
