How I lost 20 kilos by changing my eating habits

Sorry to disappoint you, but it is highly unlikely to lose fat by taking that one year gym membership. It might work for a few people, but most will fail and gain more kilos or just stay around the same weight. If you take a look at a gym, it’s a no brainer that 80% of the equipment is designed for building muscles not for losing fat. You will also see far more people with muscles than fat people in gyms and in most cases it is not because they were fat before and then they have built on muscles by lifting weights. Thus, you have maybe a 20% chance of succeeding in your fat loss plan by going to the gym, but only if you hit the right equipment and choose a good gym routine and stick to it. These odds seem quite small to me, so what could we do better to lose fat?

To lose weight do not go to the gym, but redefine your relation with food, period.

I always liked desserts and pizza was my favourite food. Each meal had to end with a dessert, and the unsweetened black coffee was going hand in hand with a chocolate bar. 4 years ago I was at the peak of my weight: 84kgs. For an average tall guy, at 178cm, that is overweight. Now I’m at 64kgs, and working on the last centimetres of stubborn fat. To get here, I went through bad news from the doctor and multiple moments of shame. The second worked best and I believe that shame is the key for persons struggling to keep their weight under control.

What worked for me might not work for you, but I am convinced that sharing my story has the power to motivate and inspire other persons that struggle with weight loss. Looking back, I think that understanding why I got fat is the key to getting fit again.

So, why do we get fat?

I believe that there are 3 things which contribute mostly to gaining weight: food abundance, role models, and lack of movement (different from exercise!). If you overlook only one of them, then there are high chances to easily get weight out of control. Let’s look a bit into each of them.

Food. If you read this, then you live in that part of the world where there is food abundance. Everywhere we go we see food that tries to seduce us and billboards designed to make you try that new chocolate, new burger or new sugary drink. Most of the products we find in stores are not in raw form and it is hard to guess more than a few of the ingredients without reading the labels. We eat at least 3 meals a day and many times we have snacks in between meals. If you count the time we spend for finding food, waiting for food to be served, eating and then cleaning you can easily count at least 3 hours spent daily interacting with food. Now, just imagine having one additional free hour each day.

Role models. There are studies which show that when you grow, the closest persons near you are the ones that have a strong influence on how you build evolve mentally as a person. If your role models — which can be teachers, parents or society leaders — are fat, then there is a high chance you would get fat over the years as well. By respecting and giving your fucks on what these people do and say, you change indirectly your “relationship” with fat and fat becomes one of your best friends. Your brain will start to accept the fatty look as a norm and you will ignore the layers of fat that start to pile up on your belly when you eat too much or unhealthy food.

Lack of movement. Last but not least, there is lack of movement which acts as a fat keeper. And yes, movement is different than exercise. When you exercise, your heart starts pumping, your heart rate increases and you start sweating. Movement is different, as it refers to not staying. It could be walking in the park or to work, doing dishes or laundry, or simply moving around the room while speaking on the phone. In the last decades, we got more and more sedentary and we spend little time moving: cars get us from door to door, machines are doing dishes and laundry for us, and we spend the rest of the day in front of the TV or computer. That, for sure, doesn’t help you burn the Oreo biscuit you ate a few hours ago — you have to jog for 6 minutes to burn just a single Oreo! 😮

Get and stay fit

I think the solution to staying fit relies hardly on the 3 things I described above as FIT and that is the easy part. Just pay attention to what you eat, what things you accept or ignore and how you take care of the calories you ate. If you do that, then probably you won’t get fat and you can keep your weight easily under control.

Shame will make you lose fat.

Now let’s get to the hard part of getting back on track after we gain some fat. Here you have to skip that dessert, walk the extra mile and change your models. But from all of these, food is what counts most when losing fat. For me it was a 4 years process and I am still working on it.

You cannot expect to get fat in 10 years and then back to good shape in a few months. Most people expect to lose 10 kilos in one month or to see a daily progress — they are so wrong. Losing fat is a long process and your body needs time to adapt to the new weight. For me, it happened in periods of 2–3 months of rapidly losing weight when there was a difference of around 6 kilos, and each time it was something different that pulled the trigger to keep me going. In the first case there were bad news from the doctor and in the other 3 cases there was a strong felling of shame. The shame that makes you wish you were alone and nobody sees you. Before I got to experience this shame, I’ve been struggling to lose weight and I was not able to move the scale down.

My fat loss story

Bad news — lost 7 kilos. Back to 4 years ago, during a routine medical check, my doctor told me that I had a fatty liver and it was not doing so well. This was the first trigger towards the weight I have today. To become healthier, I started to eat less sugar, move more and stop eating so much junk food. I also purchased a fitness tracker, a home stepper and I was running a few days per week. This worked and I was on the right path, but I got stuck at 77kgs. Looking back, I think I haven’t had the right motivation and since my liver got better, I paid less attention to what I ate and I returned to many of the previous bad habits: not sleeping at night and enjoying too many desserts.

Ashamed of people around me — lost 6 kilos. Then, my first moment of shame came along. It was a hot summer day and I was on a beach in Sicily, Italy. I usually get bored on the beach so I either read, sleep or look around and observe. By looking around I had a eureka moment when I realised that I was the only fat person on an extremely busy beach. Everyone around me was fit no matter what age they were. I was purely shocked. Not only they were fit, but they were in very good shape. I was so embarrassed that I even put my T-shirt on, and layed only on my back, so that my belly was not that visible, until I left the beach that day. When I got to the hotel room, I did what society tells us to do we declare war on fat — take the gym membership. I got to my phone, I emailed the gym back home and asked for a membership. I got a personal trainer and I was hitting gym 3 days a week. Things started to move again, and combined with a low carb diet, I managed to get from 77 kilos to around 69 kilos in a few months. All good, only that the low carb diet is not recommended for long term, so I stopped it after 6 weeks. As soon as I removed the low carb diet, the weight started to build up again and it stopped at around 71kgs.

Shame of myself — lost 7 kilos. I stayed at 71kgs for more than 2 years. Then, my next moment of shame came. While I was watching a recording of me riding a bike, I saw my fatty love handles. I watched it again and again and I recall feeling the same shame as when I was the only fat person on the beach. I thought that I can solve it again by going more regularly to the gym so I started to go 4 times per week and stick to it. I was wrong, and surprise surprise, 2 months passed and I was still over 70kgs. I might have been lost some fat and built on some muscles in this whole process, but with no obvious difference when looking in the mirror, so I know I had to change something.

Thus, I started to research and I made a list with over 20 things I could do to lose fat. Pareto couldn’t be more right when he came with the 80/20 rule. From that entire list, the single one that made 80% of the difference was related food. In the next 6 weeks, I lost more than 6kgs without going to gym and only by switching to the 5:2 fasting diet. That means that 2 days per week I was eating under 800 calories and in the other 5 days just as usually. There are studies which show such diet would not only help you lose fat, but has strong impact over aging and overall health — if interested see more here.

Shame of spending money — on going. We work so hard for our money and many times we spend them wrongly. Ironically, we work for money to buy food, then we get fat and then we work more for money just to spend them on losing the fat we previously purchased. What if we’d not get fat in the first place and work less? Or buy better quality food instead of a lot of lower quality food with the same money?

My third moment of shame was a few days ago, while I was out for a dinner. I thought that I will just eat something light, but when I got to the restaurant they were having seafood buffet. If you are like me, then the curiosity to try different foods combined with being for the 2nd time in a thai restaurant would have rapidly convinced you to go for the buffet instead of the à la carte menu. That’s what I did and I ate far too much that evening. First, I got a plate with different starters, then another one with different grilled sea food and finally, of course, the dessert. My light meal turned into eating too much and feeling ashamed of it. I was feeling so bad for the money I spent that night on food because I didn’t actually need to eat that much. I am not and I have never been frugal. I’ve been thinking for hours about it asking how I could be that fool. I started to look back how many times I just purchased a dessert although I was full or ordered more dishes that I could normally eat. This moment made me be more conscious when I order food and think twice if I am actually that hungry. Somehow I know that this is the moment which will help me lose the last stubborn fat from my lower belly and help me win the war on fat.

By looking back at how I lost 20kgs, to me it is obvious that redefining the way I ate, how much I ate, and what I ate was the key point. The first time, I lost fat by reducing the junk food and sugar. Then, the low carb diet was the key, not the fact that I was working hard at the gym. And finally, restricting the calorie intake helped me lose 1kg per week.

Changing your diet is hard and it takes a lot of willpower to skip a single dessert, say no to a burger, pasta or pizza and choose a salad or drink just water instead of a fresh juice or Coke. Losing weight is not a simple process and until you get into the right state of mind you will fail a few times, but it is rewardful to step on the scale and see a nice number, get medium size clothes and walk on the beach with a flat abdomen. For me that is much better than that dessert.

To sum it up, I am making below a list with the top things that I changed in my diet and the way I treat food, which you could use as a starting point.

1. Write down for 2 weeks what you eat daily and then review it. If it looks good to you, ask a friend to check it. If it looks good to him too, keep asking.
2. Limit to one dessert per day and make sure it is small size.
3. Don’t snack between meals and limit to 3 meals per day.
4. Don’t drink calories. This includes alcohol, sweetened or milk coffee and fresh juices. Water, black coffee and tea are fine.
5. Eat vegetables instead of bread, pasta, rice or potatoes as often as possible.
6. When eating, put the cutlery down between bites.
7. Do intermittent fasting (5:2 or 16:8) from time to time.
8. When eating out, decide before opening the menu that you want a salad and look just at the salads section.
9. Don’t do something else while eating.
10. Eat in smaller plates.
11. Buy only as much food as it makes you not feel hungry anymore.
12. Once every few weeks (3 or more) treat yourself for the progress you made.

If my story helps you get to the weight you always wanted or you have a similar story, I would be happy to find out more so please share it below! 😃