Success and consistency in Diet and weight loss

Some thoughts on my personal experience and comparisons of weight loss and diet. I have at various points in last say 8 years have been on diet to shed off excess poundage. I have maintained a steady weight of in the range of 176 to 179 (around 80Kg) or so and when I have deviated from my comfort weight I have adopted a routine of diet and exercise to shed off pounds.

So I have tried all sorts of things, common among all those attempts was to get off fast food and saturated fats and regular cola deserts etc. Which is common sense and needless to say that should be part of anyone's weight loss routine. However what I have experimented with is the kinds of foods, number of meals per day, weekly exercise routine and so forth.

Early part of the last 8 years, I would resort to 45 mins of cardio on the treadmill, followed by 40 mins of weight lifting, combined with eating light dinners and consuming more vegetables. I did not in particular pay attention to caloric intake and burn rate but since I had the time as a student and my goals were to loose 5 or 6lbs tops within 2 months I would find my way to nice comfort weight of 177 lbs and often plateauing at that point. As i grew older and crossed into the 30's those diets took longer to succeed but I still was able to manage the 177lb magic weight.

In late 2009 I was ultra busy with dissertation and job hunt and schedule was topsy turvy and I gained weight going from 177lbs to almost 193 lbs the highest weight of my life. When i settled in a new city and job, summer of 2010 I started on a weight loss journey with regular diet of fruits vegetable and stopping all fast food deserts. My job permitted me to stick to 3x cardio 3x weight lifting and i threw in 2x swimming. But it took me around 8 months to come to a weight of around 184 lbs, and it was frustrating, the past diet plan did not work as I expected to. Then in Jan 2011 I trained for half marathons and i dropped my weight to 180lbs but I plateaued there and ran half marathons in March and April. I was able to maintain a stable weight of 180 or so with 2x to 3x short 30 mins runs, and 2x to 3x wight lifting per week. That was until Aug 2011 when life got in the by December i was hovering around 190 lbs.

So in Xmas of 2011 was vacation time and I took those holidays to get back into running, just getting out there and run no pressure of time speed distance, simplicity was key, run 15 to 20 mins away from your house, and spend the next 15 to 20 mins running back. Xmas holidays were spent with all sorts of weird pains aches etc, but in spite of holiday food and new years at Las vegas, I maintained a weight of 189 lb actually i dropped a pound by start of 2012. This prompted me to try something different, why not run like that:- 30 - 40 mins 5x per weekday (M-F) and maybe 60 - 80 mins on sat, no pressure just the joy of running. Add to that I also did one additional different thing, I went to runs during my lunch break at work, and gym for 30 mins or so before work in the morning. That has worked remarkably well. In the first two week i may have lost 1.5 lbs. Thats when it hit me that my diet was not working, I should be loosing more weight and my diet was the weakest link, surely my cardio burn was sufficient. First change was to go to 3 meals (breakfast, lunch,dinner) 3 snacsk (mid morning snack, afternoon snack, early evening snack). That made me feel less hungry and resulted in weight loss of a pound a week. Next up was to regulate the calories and becoming mindful, and thats when I read that an adult should not consume more that 10 tbs of sugar and 10 tbs of salt, these are in addition in what appears naturally in nature in vegetables and fruits. That means every processed food from your healthy slice of bread to juice to vitamin water, they all contribute salt and sugar. Excess salt is bad for blood pressure and excess sugar has high probability of getting converted to fat. So even if my caloric intake is less than 2000 calories, the normal requirement for an adult male, excess salt and sugar can reduce the effectiveness of a diet plan !

So what we have been doing the past two weeks is instead of buying flavored cereal we buy unflavored ones and add sugar by hand, similarly we now eat more fresh oranges and use our juicer to get fresh juice. The logic behind that is would I add two spoons of sugar to my glass of juice, surely not, but that's what even the most premium OJ bottles serve up. So by replacing processed food I can control how much sugar and salt to add and be mindful of those calories. Also beware any sugar free beverage is just replacing sugar with some chemical. The chemical additive is 180 times more sweet than natural sugar, that's bad in many ways, first it does not help me kick my sugar addiction in fact it increases it and second how can any man made chemical be safe than what nature has evolved our bodies over millions of years to consume ? Same thing can be said about fat free snacks, for example fat free potato chips, that itself should raise flags, but those fat free potato chips replace natural fat with a chemical additive, that additive does not get absorbed by our body and gets ejected out. So that's great correct, I think not, along with it, this chemical will also block other nutrients from getting absorbed and that's never a good thing. Always go for the most natural option and instead of eating more of the fatty stuff eat less of it, but eat whats natural, I don't think I can ever go wrong with that.

SO I have tasted success, I have been loosing at a rate of 1.5 lbs per week, and I am right now tipping the scale around 184 lbs. Still a very long way to go, and I plan to just focus on one day at a time. Of course my big grand goal is to go down to 170lbs and % body fat between 15% to 20% range, the recommended values for an adult my age. Once I have reached that goal i have not thought what next, I may actually try to shoot for a full marathon and/or drop another 10lbs of fat add some muscle mass :) But the key is to go one day at a time, and on a given day just do one task at a time, after all its the daily triumphs that lead to big victories!