4 Rules to lose 40 Pounds (18Kg) in 4 Month
Have you ever struggled with your weight, thought you are not really going to make it ever. How about weight loss made simple. Sounds tempting ha, this is not one of those articles this is my true story, of losing around 40 pounds (18kg) in 4 months. It didn’t seem achievable when I started, nor it was my goal to lose this much weight, but it happened. Before we start and pressed with the thoughts and practices in this article, I just have to tell you this, I’m not a professional nutritionist or expert on healthy diet. Moreover, I’m not a strong believer in diet programs, in the first place or the weekly visit to a food and nutrition clinic to tell me what to eat and what not to eat. It never worked with me permanently.
It all started last May, the summer is pushing, the weather is heating up, preparing for a family vacation, and as a Middle Eastern household, a family vacation means lots of work through the winter season to save enough for the trip. Did I mention that I work as marketing and strategy consultant, and a professional management & leadership trainer. Almost for the past 12 years or so, work for me means conducting presentation in multiple locations cross city for about 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, sometimes 7, with very limited time for even a short break. In brief, the exact lifestyle you need to have all excuses to eat junk, no exercise, sleep less, drink lots of coffee, tea, and soda, what’s more is grabbing some snacks during the day while working, or what i call the killing C’s, Chocolate, Candy, Cupcakes!).
Part of my recurring routine is to run a postgraduate evening program to develop marketing managers. By the end of April a new round for this marketing diploma emerged, with around 25 marketing professionals. During the introductory session, one of the participants introduced himself as the marketing director for one of the most well recognized pharmacy and drug distribution companies in the country. At this night and exactly during the break around 8:30 in the evening when I was standing by the buffet having my first meal of the day, lots and lots of bakeries, sweets and coffee, just the right formula to keep me attentive and alert all night long. The young marketing professional came to me and reintroduced himself and we started chatting about market conditions and marketing tricks to deal with tough competition and demanding customers. During the talk he started noticing that I was more busy eating, how couldn’t I, when that was my first meal ever throughout the day. Ever thought like, “why am I gaining this much weight while I don’t eat that much anyways?!” Well, it’s true! On that day I learned all about the starvation response, or starvation mode, which refers to the set of adaptive biochemical and physiological changes that reduce metabolism in response to a lack of food or low energy levels due to lack of proper eating habits and intervals. So the challenge remains, how can such a busy schedule of my lifestyle and profession be adapted to fit the perfect like diet system, which I already didn’t believe in at the first place. The young marketer explained all about, starvation mode and started talking about food alternatives, that may help the so called diet. Yet nothing new to mention that what every article or book about diet mentions, until our disputation reached the fact that no system is a perfect one anyways. So a substitute for the impractical, temporary, and inefficient dietary system, instead how about try to adapt to some rules that should guide your lifestyle and eating habits for good. Here I try to sum them up in just 4 key rules that I found very beneficial.
Rule 1: Never Say Diet:
It all starts in the mind, and your friends and family likes you the way you are, and they will like the new you too. Just remember that, thinking about a diet means a temporary fight with over weight that will end up in a while, and you will deserve a treat for the achievement, if you really make it through the tough time. The part-time attitude towards the disciplined food habits will influence your subconscious, and hence your commitment. Most medical programs recommend enjoying one free day, this free day thing, didn’t work with me at all. For me a decision is a decision, and a free day every week is just a workaround for the disciplined healthy food behavior. Treats are okay only if they are occasional, or else these treats will prevail and lead to weight gaining again. What you should think instead is a full lifestyle change, and new food and feeding habits.
Rule 2: You are Your Own Boss
One of the things that I truly remember was a challenging question, that this young marketer dropped on me was, “it’s your own decision to make, either you manage your body or you will allow your body to manage you”. I don’t know why I found this body management thought really inspiring. I know Management! After all I do teach it for my university students, and we always highlight the simplest practices of Management is all about planning, organizing, leading, & controlling, which was exactly what I needed to manage my daily food habits. Management means considering what to eat, when, and how much. Try to picture this, if you’re managing a group of people, to achieve a given goal or objective, and you found that a member of your team is not willing to participate efficiently, playing lazy, and always giving excuses, how will you handle this attitude of mediocrity, that may be affecting the rest of the team, and leading to missing deadlines and jeopardizing the delivery of the whole initiative! Just before you answer, consider also one more fact, you can’t get rid of this individual. So firing is not an option, also picture this as well, this lazy person is all the team you’ve got. In other words your job is to become a leader and push this individual to start working. How about if this lazy individual is your own body! It will resist, play tricks, and push back. So you need to motivate, push back, lead through, and be patient with the new lifestyle you’re trying to take. Now, will you start managing your body, or will you let your body manage you?
Rule 3: Think Before You Eat.
Most of us think about food, but my experience with applying this rule helped me think about food differently! Instead of thinking WHAT to eat, I learned to think WHY am eating this or that. To tell you the truth, I discovered that most of the time I use to eat snacks just because it was a habit! When I watch TV, or work on my computer, checking my mail, while reading a book, talking with kids, or just surfing the Internet. Some other times I discovered that eating is an act of boring mood, so I eat when I had nothing else to do. Simply just eat when you’re hungry, then think again about the WHAT, to eat, and eat only what is good for you. Reading through nutrition sites it mentioned that for males we should eat higher dose of protein than we do of complex carbohydrates. The ratio should be 2:1, or simply eat half of your protein intake of complex carbohydrates. After all, this type of carbohydrates is required to digest protein and transform it into muscle mass. So in your next main meal, if you are going to have 250gm of a medium well made steak, try eating with it only 125gm of mashed potatoes OR rice. Also try to substitute junk food and snacks with healthy fruits and vegetables, and never drop the small magic bottle of water. In fact it has to stay handy most of the time, try to set a target of drinking at least 3 small bottles of water a day. A small bottle of water is around 600ml that makes you around 1.8litters of water a day. Try to cut on the coffee, instead try tea, it’s better for your health, reduce water retention, and keeps your breath smelling better in the morning. Nevertheless, natural caffeine is needed to stay active and metabolized. I also learned from my nutritionist friend that apples contains a better dose of caffeine than coffee. If you consider 2-3 apples in the morning will increase your metabolism and keep you attentive enough for the rest of the day. Last tip for WHAT to eat, is to stay away from the three white poisoning ingredients of food; Salt, Sugar, & Flour. Other than that eat whatever you want, but watch out for the quantities.
Rule 4: Time Management is as Important
Have you ever felt like, “I’m not eating much anyways, why am I gaining weight”. Well guess what! after thinking deep about WHY, & WHAT to eat, it’s also as important to consider WHEN to eat. A good three meals a day, is really required to avoid subconscious starvation. Then we start blaming it on age, which will definitely increasing your anxiety. This leads to physiological depression and you will start giving up. Instead believe its under your control, and a simple time management for your food intakes and meal timing may change this totally. Just stick to a three meals a day, provided eating mostly healthy food and drop on the bad habits and quality of food, and your body will adapt. Try to schedule, an early lunch, in order to mange an early dinner. The main rule is to stop all meal eating after 7:00pm. Of-course you still may eat some healthy snacks such as fresh fruits, and vegetables, maybe some yogurt, and remember, a sandwich is a meal.
In my case I found that living by rules is much easier and made lots of since than trying a temporary diet system that may not fit my lifestyle, or demands. Instead we live by rules to guide our thinking and hence our decisions and actions. Then every thing becomes natural, and you don’t need to adapt your lifestyle to achieve your weight goals, instead your diet is adapted to your lifestyle, which I found much easier and may become consistent, in addition it was also easier to commit to. Enjoy a healthier lifestyle
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