Weight-Loss
I just posted the achievement of my weightloss program and got tremendous response. Many people asked me about my diet and exercise plan and shown willingness to follow the same. So I decided to put it in a blog for everyone to read.
First things first, here is the disclaimer:
There is no shortcut to success. It took me 5 months to achieve the desired results and individual mileage may vary. Trying to cut the corners or do excessive strict diet and/or exercise can affect body adversely. So I suggest to keep patience.
Everyone's body is different. Body type, metabolism, genetics, diet, exercise, environment and many factors affect how you gain or loose weight. So what worked for me may not work for others the same way but it should be helpful to provide general guidelines.
If you don't want to read blog, you can directly jump to diet plan and workout plan. But you may not appreciate the plan without reading about the journey, read disclaimer 1. :)
My diet and workout plan is as per vegetarian diet with active lifestyle. It may require changes as per individual preferences and lifestyle.
Full blog has become very long so I've split it in parts and provided relevant links.
I was going to put my plans only but as some friends requested and shown interest in following, I tried to put some general guidelines as well where possible. I tell people not to blindly follow anything and this is no exception.
Background:
I've been doing weight training since over 10 years now. However most of the time it has been trial and error. I have gained 11 kg in 3 months(daily consumption of cheese-jam sandwich), lost 10 kg in 2 months(2 months foreign trip) and regain 10 kg in two months(back from trip). All these were totally unorganized changes and not healthy. First my goal was to bulk up but the approach was not much organized hence I gained significant weight(I was weighing 96 KG) and some extra fat around midsection. Standing 6'1” tall and having most of weight distributed in bones and muscles, weight has never been a major problem for me. However being concerned about physique, I noticed that the extra fat accumulated was giving me some discomfort. Apart from increased measurement of clothes and inflated tummy, discomfort in tying shoe laces, starting of snoring sometimes(the horror!) are some of the issues I noticed. So I decided to get rid of extra fat by cardio exercises like cycling and brisk walking. However I didn't notice much improvements. Throughout the training career, I've tried different methods like abs exercises, cardio, high intensity, etc. But none seemed to work independently. However one incident happened which changed the way I look at exercise, diet and nutrition.
Around 7 months ago I strained my lower back muscles while doing heavy deadlift exercise. This caused severe pain and discomfort, specially it was very painful to bend forward without support. I took more than one month break from gym and starting all exercises took almost 5 moths. I used this setback as an advantage though.
Beginning:
After over a month of rest, my friends at gym encouraged me to come to gym and do some basic exercises which don't put load on back. So I would go to gym everyday, do some exercises which are safer for back and then in rest of the time, I started doing cardio on treadmill and stepper. Yes I tried to do at least one hour of physical activity. Around same time, I came to know about this app MyFitnessPal. It seemed interesting to me. It asks some basic details about you like current weight, target weight, lifestyle(active, inactive, etc.) and weight loss goal per week. It shows how much calories per day you should consume in order to achieve the target weight. I thought of giving it a try. Initially it looked very awkward to enter everything I eat in the app but I decided not to worry about looking silly(yes many people would laugh about such activity). I initially tried setting 1 kg per week target but I figured out that was not practical for me so changed to 0.5 kg per week. Due to regular diet and cardio, I started seeing some results. However initial period was bit tough as I was having difficulty following the calories intake as per recommendation and it required constant adjustments with trial and errors. Weight used to go down and then bounce back. I often consumed more sugar and carbs and less protein compared to recommended values.
Persistence & discipline:
I got a bit frustrated and concerned due to such unpredictable weight changes in the beginning but I decided to continue with the plan and not to give up. I think body was trying to adjust to the changes. After 2 months of struggle, drastic ups and downs in weight stopped and it started reducing gradually as per plan. Also I got good grip on diet and nutrition to keep calories in check as well as have proper nutrition as per recommendation. So for all these 5 months, I was continuously monitoring calories intake through app, doing regular weight training and cardio exercises, monitoring weight changes daily and sharing milestones with friends who used to encourage me. In this period, my back also fully recovered and I started doing all exercises normally. So all these efforts paid off and I achieved the major milestone of over 11 kg weight loss within 5 months with the help of guidance, technology and discipline..
Exceptions:
There are always exceptions. Although I tried my best, I couldn't log food for 3-4 days in this period. It is okay if you miss couple of days due to various reasons but it is very important not to give up. Usually if you can do something for 3 weeks then it becomes habit.
Sometimes I couldn't go to gym or do cardio exercises due to various reasons. Once in a while exception is okay.
It is advisable to have a break from diet every 10-15 days so that body doesn't get adapted to diet and supports the program.
Results:
So after over 5 months of discipline and persistence, I lost over 11 kg weight and most of fat around midsection. These changes I consider more organized and healthy. I feel much fresh and flexible and snoring has totally gone. Everything comes at a price though. I did loose some of the hard gained muscle mass in the process. I think it is difficult for body to be in two states(at least for me); building muscles and loosing fat. But I had made a choice in the beginning, I can live with slim fit body frame but not with excess fat. Now I may start increasing calories intake on top of current daily recommendations with only protein sources to start gaining the muscle mass which I lost in the process.
Apps:
MyFitnessPal: It allows you to track your calorie intake and weight, and provides very good statistics on nutrition and weight. There are other apps also but the thing I liked the most is, it has most of Indian food in its database so entering food in diary is easier.
Endomondo: This is activity tracker app. I used it to track cardio exercises like walking and cycling. This app connects well with MyFitnessPal and posts the calories burned to that app so you know how many more calories you can consume in a day. I tried to keep it around original calories recommendation though.
Google Fit: Yet another activity tracker app from google but it tracks all automatic and has intuitive design. You just need to have this app installed and keep your phone with you. It automatically tracks activities like walking, running, cycling, etc. And provides stats for same. You can also track weight. Recently they added calories stats also in the app.
Diet Plan:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7DH_x5j4lyjcktPX1dYS2dPZ00/view?usp=sharing
Workout Plan:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7DH_x5j4lyjazhpdEU3bVYzdWc/view?usp=sharing
Conclusion:
Thank you for spending the time in reading such a long blog. I hope you enjoyed the reading and find this useful. Do let me know your feedback in comments.
