Let me remind you of my experiment. I don’t want to lose weight by following a specific diet, I wanted to lose weight with the minimal amount of change in my life.
With that being said,
I will split my process into 3 stages.
Stage 1: No Gym only light workouts at the house. (-35 kgs)
Stage 2: Light Workout at the Gym (-9 kgs)
Stage 3: Real/intensive Workout at Gym (-22 kgs)
Stage 1: No Gym only light workouts at the house. (-35 kgs)
The Duration of the first stage was 9 months from December 2015 to August 2016.I lost in them 35 kgs. I can summarize it in 5 steps:
Step 1: Check how many calories I needed per day to maintain my current weight.
This can be done easily from this calculator:
So back then, weight 162.5 kgs, age 24 years, height 190 cm, with 0 daily activity.
I got 3237 Kcal per day to maintain my weight.
To gain 1 kgs of pure fat you need to eat 7000 calories over your daily intake.
So for example if your TDEE is 3000 Kcal, to gain 1 kgs you need to eat 10000 kcal.
What usually happens is that people eat over their intake and then they accumulate the extra as body fat.
To lose 1 kgs of pure fat, guess what ?! :D You need to create a deficit of 7000 kcal.
And this can be done by eating under the maintenance caloric intake.
Basically, I wanted to eat less than this number to achieve a caloric deficit.
Step 2: Cut from my calories.
So, I made something really stupid in this step I cut 1737 kcal from 3237. :)
I was eating 1500 kcal per day.
Well, it worked but it was a bit harsh on my body for the first 2~3 weeks till I got adapted to it.
If can go back to this step I would have removed 500 ~ 1000 from my daily intake.
These numbers are for the morbidly obese people otherwise it should be much much less than that.
Step 3: Check what I was eating... and count…
At 162.5 kgs any attempt on correcting your weight should be within your daily food. Meaning, you will not move from cheap bad food to super healthy in 1 day. I started counting everything I eat. And then I decided to fulfill my 1500 kcal I will split them into 3 meals. I hated breakfast, I never wanted to have breakfast so I decided 100 kcal goes in to breakfast and this will be a banana (usually around 8~10 am). Lunch, my main meal, I was eating at a greek place everyday. After doing my calculations, I discovered that instead eating 2 wraps, I should eat 1.
Just to give you an idea what is lunch exactly: Half chicken breast, grilled, wrapped in a white bread (Pita bread), with yogurt and garlic sauce (tzatziki sauce), tomatoes, onions and as a side dish french fries (yes french fries :D ) and in addition to that I was drinking apple juice with soda (apfelschorle). I estimated this meal to be 1000 kcal. (usually at 2~3 pm) As for the dinner I was eating half pizza from the supermarket 400 kcal. (usually at 8 pm). So, you can see I didn’t deprive myself from anything. I just started with what I have. And btw it didn’t change a lot over time.
Step 4: Let’s do some activity…
When you are not doing anything for long time your body burning rate goes down. To wake up my body I need to tell it, Hey !! I am doing more activity now than before so please provide me with energy from what you have. I decided that I will walk everyday 2~3km around my house and I will try everyday to optimize my 2km in terms of duration. So I remember that I started at 24~25 mins and I ended with 17~18 mins. I needed to push myself.
Everyday, no matter what...
I usually did my walks after dinner.
Advice, do not run when you weight 140 kgs it will screw your knees :)
Step 5: Weightlifting
I read that increasing your muscles mass increase your daily caloric need. Actually, almost every pound of muscle burn 50 calories more. I didn’t want to go to a gym and my knee is not in a good shape at all. So I decided to do only upper body lifting, mainly arms, biceps, triceps and shoulders using a pair of dumbbells.
Everyday, no matter what...
Before walking.
Be consistent with what you are doing and you will see results right away.
Stage 2: Light Workout at the Gym (-9 kgs)
With the same amount of food I decided to hit the gym.The duration of the second stage was 7 months from September 2016 to March 2017. I lost in them 9 kgs.
I started with a day for each muscles group in addition to (almost) the same amount of cardio.
Maybe I will not delve into the details of the workout in this post but mainly I had a triceps day, a chest day, a biceps day, a back day, legs day and a shoulders day. As for cardio I switched to 3 km on the elliptical moderate speed (8 km/h).
Stage 3: Real/intensive Workout at Gym (-22 kgs)
I needed to increase the amount of food because at the end of stage 2 I hit a plateau. My body can’t lose weight with the low amount of food I am giving to it compared to the amount of the exercise I am doing. So I needed to increase my food portions and increase my workout intensity. The duration of the third stage was 5 months from April 2017 to August 2017. I lost in them 22 kgs.The workout itself was the same but more intense in terms of speed, time of rest and weights. The whole workout session took from me 45 mins. As for the food I wanted to optimize my way of fat burning. And I hated breakfast. So I discovered a scheduling way called “Intermittent fasting”. Basically, I fasted for 16-20 hrs per day (I can only drink water) and I eat all my portions/calories in 8-4 hours. There is lots of debates about intermittent fasting is it effective or not? do you lose muscle mass or not? In my opinion it was really efficient in my case and actually I gained muscles too while doing it. If you want to hear more about intermittent fasting please let me know.
At stage 3, I can eat daily from Mcdonalds a meal while doing intermittent fasting and exercising:
1 Big Tasty 900 kcal
1 Fries large 440 kcal
1 Cola Light 1 kcal
1 Cheese Burger 330 kcal
1 McFlurry Caramel 500 kcal
Total of ~2200 Kcal
And still I lost weight everyday….
I ate this meal for a week, this week was the same week when I broke my obesity weight at 108.2 kgs on the 17th of July.
Now because I have more muscles and I am exercising hard my maintenance calories is 3200 kcal, yes exactly the same as if I was a guy weighing 162 kgs and want to maintain them.
My point is you can eat whatever you want as long as you count and exercise enough. Mcdonald's is not what you want in your body to be healthy but for the sake of the experiment it worked.
Conclusions:
-Don’t start from the end. Start step by step, always from what you have.
-No Magic, No cheating, You need to do it by yourself day by day and find a way to enjoy it.
-Putting muscles is the only cheat that you can do to lose weight fast.
-Don’t make all the changes together, always keep a next card to play, your body is very adaptive to changes, every change is enough to make a difference. So don’t do them together.
-If you love food, you can eat more or at least the same amount while being healthy, just put on more muscles, exercise moderately and be smart about what you eat.
There is lots of information inside this post. If you need in depth post about specific parts of the process please tell me.
There is not magic pills, there is not magic drink, there is no shortcuts for loosing weights.
Yes, it will take time. Yes, you will have bad days. Yes, it sounds really hard. Yes, your goal is far away
But you can start now, step by step, and be surprised when you you reach you goal :)
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