Please note that this is based on my personal experience and knowledge and that you should see a doctor before making any changes to your diet and/or exercise.
I created this the help others with their lifestyle change, yes I said lifestyle not diet, you’ll see what I mean a little later, So go ahead and scroll down to see my story :)
Well let’s get right into it, losing weight should be about lifestyle change not a diet or fade. When I here the word diet it makes me feel uneasy. Dieting is only good for the short term, the fact of the matter is that the classic diet programme is designed to lose weigh in a short period of time. The vast majority of people that lose weight in a short period of time gain their weight back on, usually with interest, by interest I mean more weight than you had before the diet.
I found that a healthier lifestyle change is what works for the LONG term. Yes you need to eat healthier, but I would not call it a diet. For example Instead of eating and chocolate bar from the vending machine at work when I get the afternoon munchies I’ll have an apple instead. Ow and I’ll have a proper full size meal. I use what I call the 20min rule. I thought it up after I saw on TV that it can take up to 20min after eating for your brain to realise that its belly is actually full. (don’t quote me on it, I’m not a scientist or any think).
So basically when I first started I’d eat my lunch/dinner and then I’d wait 20min before eating any more food eg. dessert etc... And then I tried eat a very light snack (healthy snack) about 15-20min before eating a meal, yes that right the classic “don’t spoil your dinner” from mum lol.
Any way back to it, I’d then mix it up a little sometimes I would do the 15-20 before OR 20min after, and sometimes I’d do both.
I found that If I was really hungry before a meal I’d end up eating alot. So by having light snack before dinner I found that I would not be as hungry when It came to the main meal, and there for I ate less (and also slower). The times I did not Have a light healthy snack before dinner, I just ate the main meal and then if I was still hungry, I would wait 20min before eating anything else. I found that by the time I waited 20min, most of the time I was not hungry anymore or if I was still hungry after the 20min I would not be any were as near as hungry as I was when I finished my meal.
To be honest I don’t really exercise that much, actually I never really took notice of how much exercise I do until I started writing this. I work on a high floor, what I do most days (when I’m not late for work) is that I take the elevator about half way to my floor and then walk the rest of the floors via the stairs. I lead a busy life and I don’t really set aside time for a gym of any think like that. Mind you I do a lot of these commons sense sort of stuff. Well you know how when you go to a mall and all the car spaces near the door are always full, well I park on the other side away from the door so I do more walking. Personally that running and getting really tired is not some think I would do for the rest of my life and there for I only do light excise, I guess I could do more, and if you wanted to you could probably do a more but for me this light exercise and healthier diet is right for me. I don’t follow any solid rules for exercise, just what suits me on the day. I even tried the 3-4days gym thing but in the end, I found that just making extra walking eg use the stairs etc... part of my daily life gives me a long term solution because the gym is not some think I would want to do for the rest of my life.
I think of it as a lifestyle or as a friend called it “endurance” race. What I mean is that say there are two people call bob and john.
Say bob is on a some new diet and is guaranteed to lose x kilos in x weeks
And john has just made a life style change eg. eat healther and just a little bit of exercise and commonsense.
Although bob would most likely lose weight faster than john, statistically he would also be more likely to put it back on as dieting is generally not a long term thing, nobody can diet for the rest of their life or be hungry for the rest of their life.
John would win the race slow and steady, by that I mean healthier lifestyle (just eating healthier and doing light exercise and maybe the little 20min eating before/after dinner thing I do), this would be some think john can easily maintain for the rest his life.
Like the story of the tortes and the rabbit, that rabbit can run rally fast but gets tired really fast. But the turtle can just keep at it.
The most important thing from what I call the lifestyle change and that you should take away from reading this is that it about doing very SMALL lifestyle changes, like eat an apples instead of a chocolate bar, or take the stairs instead the elevator etc... The fact that you are doing somethink SMALL to change your lifestyle for the better is some think that you can easily keep on doing.
It does not really matter what you eat/drink as long as 90% of it is healthy. I never do this silly thing were they tell you to eat this of not eat that etc... just simple commonsense. I also eat 2-4 pieces of chocolate every 2nd day and drink full cream milk. I’d eat a cake or icecream once a week. But that would be after a whole week of healthy eating lifestyle I’d much rather lose weight slowly over time as a result of a healthy lifestyle because . A life style change is much easier to maintain for you whole life.
I hope that my experience can give you some insight into how the slow, steady and maintainable, long term approach has worked for me and I hope that my story can help you on your journey to a healthier lifestyle.
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