First of all, even if the title suggests so, this is not a guide to weight loss, and I personally believe that there is no easy step-by-step program to accomplishing what I've done. Therefore this is merely reflections, suggestions and thoughts as to how I started my personal journey from being heavily overweight to fairly fit.
When giving it deeper thought there are always a lot of variables to account for when trying to dissect what really drives someone to lose half their body weight or even just a large percentage of it. But I think that many of these variables are similar and can be categorized into 6 main attributes (which all will be delved deeper into):
- Will
- Social support
- Enjoyment
- Long-term thinking
- Control/planning
- Knowledge
Will - It's something you often hear about. Whenever you take on a life-changing task you have to want to do so, and therefore have the will to do so. For example, if you're going to quit smoking, you have to want to quit smoking. If you're losing weight, you have to want to lose weight.
I personally think that there's a lot to be said about this. I sometimes say when someone deviates from their diet or even gives up completely that they don't want it badly enough. For me there was always the goal of the better and perfect body, and I wanted it badly. Whenever the choice of eating junk food came to mind I weighed that option against the option of reaching my dream body. The long-term reward of having a better body was always greater than the short-term reward of getting to eat whatever I wanted. This is where patience comes in, which I will be discussing more thoroughly further ahead.
It's important to understand that will is not an attribute by itself. Will is simply a product of a lot of factors. The will to lose weight is not something that either is there or not there. It derives from various things such as past experiences and encounters that all help to mold you into the person that you are today. For example - seeing a relative die from heart failure due to obesity may aid your will into losing weight, while having no such experience might make your attitude towards losing weight a lot more negative.
Social support - If will is a product of various factors, then social support is definitely one of those factors. You may take pride in being a loner and doing things all by yourself - I know I have in the past. But when you think about it there's a lot of help at your side, even help that you might not notice. It can come from a girlfriend who makes your lunch box when you don't have time. It can come from a friendly person at the gym who compliments your weight loss. It can come from a lot of places. There are many social factors to account for. The reward of knowing that what you do is of value is important and we often gain that value from the eyes of others.
There is also an economical part of social support. If you're down on cash it might be harder to get a gym card or to eat healthy. Therefore, financial help from others can definitely help you get more motivated to do physical exercise. Before too many of you start thinking: "well, those are just poor excuses for not working out”, I just want to say that they do matter. If you do not do what you enjoy doing, then you are much less likely to continue. I always say that the best workout is the one that gets done, and if you hate walking but love going to the gym, you are much less likely to do any physical exercise if you can't afford going to the gym. Which brings us to the next attribute.
Enjoyment - It might sound trivial but having fun is definitely a factor to add to a successful journey. While there might be optimal ways of doing things, the fun way is usually what stands victorious, and as I just stated, the best exercise is the one that gets done. This however needs to be weighed against being more effective. If walking 10 minutes a day takes you a year longer to achieve your goal than 45 minutes a day does, you might want to reconsider. But all in all, walking those 10 minutes is better than doing nothing at all.
This also comes into the food bit. I always ate food that I enjoyed eating. I did my research, found out what I could eat and still lose weight and I stuck with it no matter if it was optimal or not. The closer I got to having lower body fat the more careful I was with what I ate because I felt that I could sacrifice some of the enjoyment for the sake of being optimal, and thereby making haste with the process.
Long-term thinking - Consistency and patience are two attributes that well enters into long-term thinking. If you can't see beyond a month at a time it's hard reach results. For me it was a lot of trial and error. I remember during a period (about 3-4 months) I had the luxury of doing measurements such as fat/muscle/water percentage of the body. I recall one month where I had been working very hard and I was dead sure that my results would be incredible. I went to get them done and the results came in: "fat percentage up, muscle percentage down". Instead of being devastated I just re-thought my plan and I added morning walks to my daily routine. I came back one month later with the exact opposite results. I know now that these measurements are at best dodgy, and that my results might not even have been worse than the prior month, but that's beside the point.
The point of this is: stick with the plan! If you're evaluating something, give it a few weeks, and maybe even a few months. It might be a bad plan, but if you're constantly dropping out from what you've set down to do it's both devastating for your plan and for your self-conscience. You also always need to look at the big picture. In the end, do you really care if you gained 6 pounds one month if you lost 60 throughout the year?
Control/planning - Having a goal is important, something to strive for and to compare your will against. If your goal is to lose 30 pounds in six months you can always weigh your decisions against reaching that goal. For example: If you eat pizza 3 times a week, it might take you 9 months instead of 6 (and I'm just making up numbers here) - is it worth it?
But in order to have a goal you have to do some planning. You need to figure out how you will reach your goals and how likely is it that you reach them. If you set your goals too high you might lose your will to reach them and if you set them too low you might stop and be satisfied with less result than you could potentially achieve.
When you do have your goal, it's important to have or feel some control of your situation. For me, planning was my control. I always had my lunch box with me. I never needed to buy and eat junk food because I had no excuse for it. The food I needed to sustain the day was with me. And sure, you might have to settle for less yummy food than you normally eat if it’s going to be east to prepare. But, there is a lot to choose from if you're just willing to take some time and experiment. Which brings us to the last attribute.
Knowledge - You don't have to know everything about supplements, nor what proteins do or what carbohydrates do and so on, but it does help. Somewhere along the line you might want to haste your result, and having some kind of knowledge about what kind of food is better and - more importantly - makes you less hungry does help out. In the beginning I knew nothing about food other than some tasted better than other. Throughout the years I've learned what keeps me satisfied and keeps me going. This part is highly personal and should most likely be evaluated through trial and error due to the fact that different people enjoy eating different things. I may write down a list of things that will keep me (and maybe you as well) satisfied throughout the day, but the question is: would you enjoy eating it? If you do not enjoy it, you won't eat it, and then things will go downhill from there.
Conclusion - There is a lot to be said about losing weight and what will help you succeed in your quest to do so. There are a lot of tips out there, motivational speakers and personal trainers who all claim to have the key to success. I think that many of them might have the solution for you, but what you need to keep in mind is that we're all different. What works for you might work for 10 other people as well, but for that 11th person (who you might not ever know about) it might just not work. Instead of just having that person give up, he or she needs to find out what works specifically for him or her - and I don't think anyone can really tell that right of the bat.
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