A Year Long Conversation With My Weight!

To all the people who are trying to lose weight, I have tried something different on me. Communication with your weight.

Well I have been in many relationships and the break-ups were always painful. So anyone who is close to you, understanding that its not working anymore and you want to part ways with him/her, you have to talk through it. It will be painful, it will take time to recover, but the best way to part is to talk it through with responsibility. Same is the case with the weight. It has been with you since forever and then you want to part ways with your weight so you start exercising/dieting; without communicating with it, how is it supposed to know? J

I will reveal how to talk to your weight but just some history before that.

I have been a cute child (read “obese”) since my birth. You never feel the need to get in shape until you cross puberty and need to impress those girls studying with you. But somehow during that phase, it worked for me - being chubby & bold ;) and I did not feel the need to reduce. Anyways, I was a studious lad and always paid more attention to studies than girls.

Then came the college life and my weight was, you can say “good”, because it was just below “overweight”. Maybe at that time my hormones were talking to my weight. Then I started working and this is where my weight started feeling comfortable. I was close to 65-70 kgs when I joined Amdocs. All work, all food and no exercise became the mantra as Amdocs served “FREE FOOD”. In a year and a half I was grossing 80-85 kilos. Until this moment, I had not done any kind of workout in my entire life with the objective of reducing my weight.

Now it was time for me to get married, yes just after a year and a half of work, I got married, I am a “Gujarati”.  I started cycling. Amdocs had an in-house gym, I started going to gym. I did a good workout each day. I wanted to look good in my own wedding. But one thing I did wrong there was, I had no control on my food intake. I did not know that food also plays an important role. I regained all the weight which I had lost, just in a meal or two, each day. Ultimately I ended up looking “fat” in my wedding. I regret this.

Almost 98% of men gain weight after marriage and the same thing happened to me. I started expanding. I had reached 92 kilos!

Then I started getting issues like backache (to carry this big tummy), lethargy etc. and then came a time when I felt from inside that I should take care of my weight. Discipline it. I started running every morning 5k. I also reduced my food intake. I did not change my diet, I just reduced the servings that I took. There was a clear difference. Within six months I came back to 86-87. After that, I relaxed. I felt now my weight will keep reducing and will attain an equilibrium. I decreased my exercises. Slowly and gradually no control on food. I was back to 90. Still I was exercising but not hard enough.

I had switched to a different company by then (Enovate-IT). My employer issued a fitness scheme and got all the employees a gym membership. I was not too keen to join because I felt that I would have no time for it. I had a wife & a 5-year-old to look after and it was not possible to squeeze out time for myself, so I thought I would not be able to continue a regular regime in the gym. Also, I kept on running that 5K whenever I had time. But I was not regular. That’s where my wife pitched in. She suggested how to manage my time, created my time table and forced me to join the gym. Till date, she gets up before me in the morning, prepares tiffin for me before I hit the gym, so that I don’t have to eat outside. Love you sweetheart!

I think my history got a bit long. If you are still with me, I think you are definitely trying hard to lose your weight. JK!

I started gymming again on 25^th April, 2016 and I did not see any visible difference in me even after a month. Maybe I was not trying hard enough... Then I thought, my employer is paying to get me in shape, my wife is supporting me with all her heart, then it becomes my responsibility to show them some results. I started motivating myself. I started searching web about how to lose weight, I asked gym instructors, I gained some knowledge from my gym mates. After doing all this, I came to the conclusion that only reducing food intake and no workout OR only doing workouts without controlling food intake is a total waste of time, money, energy and sweat. I have to do a rigorous workout and also change my diet and the ratio is 70-30. Your 70% of body weight is affected by your food intake and 30% by your workouts.

After this “gyaan”, I saw around in the gym, I asked instructors. I see so many people trying to reduce weight, all of them know this ratio, they could point out only 1 case where they saw considerable amount of weight loss in past year. Try this out, if you go to a gym, just look around the people. Did you find any considerable weight shift in past six months? I thought there must be something else which these people are not doing, else they would have achieved their goals. That’s when I started talking to my weight.

This is what I did. Every morning I used to measure my weight. When it was lesser than yesterday, I used to praise it a lot and when it was more, I punished it by not giving any food for half a day. People said you should not do that. You should eat something at least. But I know my body better than others and I did what I felt right.

I did not follow any diet plan. I stopped all aerated drinks. I just talked to my weight daily. If it was not as per my expectations, I just did not have any food post lunch & that day’s workout was at least half an hour more.

I was determined to follow this, every morning & continue this till I am 75 (in weight).

Eventually these morning conversations proved fruitful. I got my weight disciplined a bit. In July-August I was 85 and was very happy with myself. But, there were moments when weight used to be stagnant for 2 weeks even though I did 6 workouts per week. It was very irritating & frustrating at times. I thought of giving up at some point of time, but I tried to overcome that feeling and kept going. At such instances, if you see an ad in the newspaper or television "reduce 20 kgs in a month" etc etc.., you just feel like tearing away the newspaper or just file a case against such people ☺. 
Also, there were times, when I saw a drop on the scale, it used to give me a boost and a will to try harder, so its not just physical, I went through a roller-coaster ride emotionally as well. 

Then came the festive season. My daily conversations got softer. Diwali sweets, dinner with family and relatives, outstation trips, all this added up. I was talking to my weight but not punishing. During October-November, I was back to 87. But I am quite self-motivated. I regained focus after November and started punishing myself as I did earlier. 

I did not pay attention to those highly exaggerated words like metabolism, BMI, BMR, etc. These are just a guideline and not specific to any individual. Even there were diet charts issued by the gym. I did not follow them. I did not have time & resources or the will to follow that. Maybe that would have helped but I wanted to stick to basics. Because I was skeptical about what would happen when I don't get such diet.

Currently its April 2017, a year after I started my gym and I am weighing 79 right now. That is 8 kgs in past 6 months.

I want to reach 75 kilos and that does not seem far enough now. I do have sweets, pizzas, burgers even today but within a limit.

No one can understand your body & its processes better than yourself. The things which I did was specific to my body, so its not necessary that if you follow this, you will be benefitted. Try to find out your own unique method to get back in shape. If you were successful, please drop in your messages