My weight loss journey

Calling it my weight loss journey sounds weird but the title is still catchy, I think I would like to call it my health journey but a health journey is more of a long-term goal and it's honestly never-ending, so, this blog touches upon my relationship with my body, how I transitioned my mindset to a more positive place, and more!

---

Recap (2001-2022)

Throughout my life I have gone through multiple rounds of gaining weight and then losing weight, let's do a recap! When I was born, I was a big baby, weighing around 3.8 kgs :) Well, with time I started losing weight as I grew up a bit. The moment I started watching a lot more TV and playing lesser, I naturally gained weight and was quite overweight when I was 10 y/o, around the same time I battled typhoid and was also asked to go on a strict diet, leading to no junk food for a year (that meant no Maggi or ketchup as well, imagine a 10 y/o being devoid of the simple pleasures in life :/ )Well, when I was a teenager, I started playing basketball and started running a lot more, leading to losing weight, well, I relapsed in my 11th grade again, while I was prepping for the dreadful engineering college entrance exams; I stopped dance class, basketball, just any basic physical activity required to maintain a healthy body. I didn't have to but I was just so focused on one aspect of my life that everything else took a backseat, a quality that I try very hard to not bring back into my life.

Well, as you might have figured it out by now, I joined the gym, lost weight, and sustained it until covid hit, and it was back. I got physically inactive, we were all figuring out this very unknown phase in our lives back in 2020, and everything in the world just stopped for a good minute. Through the second wave I was back again, healthy eating, and working out regularly, it was easy to do because I was at home and controlling my diet was fairly simple, I was following a strict keto diet. That didn't last long :) I relapsed as soon as I moved out of my house into a flat with my 2 friends, it was one of the best times of my life but not the best for my health as the cook didn't really care much for the oil and sugar she put into the food, and my metabolism didn't help, I gained all that weight again. It was hard going through the same journey time and again, it takes a toll on you.

If you were too lazy to read up till now

Beginning of a more sustainable health journey

I never had a negative relationship with my body in my childhood, but as I went into my teenage years, the way people perceived me because of my weight became quite evident and that affected the way I thought of myself as well. When someone calls you fatty, it sticks with you and maybe my peers back in 8th grade didn't recognize the repercussions of it back then. Anyways, as I grew older how social media showed what the perfect body looked like also affected the way I thought of myself in a lot of ways. I started eating lesser, felt extremely guilty every time I ate anything remotely unhealthy, and gave too much importance to the weighing scale changes, my clothing sizes and so much more, all of this did take away a lot from my self-confidence, so much so that even when I was quite fit & healthy (good BMI, not overweight, ate healthy, and had an active lifestyle) I thought I was fat and ugly. 

In the last 4-5 years I have invested a lot into consuming content which is more body-positive, some of my favourite creators were https://www.instagram.com/stylemeupwithsakshi/, https://www.instagram.com/missremiashten/, https://www.instagram.com/mostlysane/, https://www.instagram.com/komalpandeyofficial/, https://www.instagram.com/dollysingh/ https://www.instagram.com/laurdiy/, https://www.instagram.com/alisha/, https://www.instagram.com/best.dressed/, https://www.instagram.com/bhumipednekar/,and so many more. Along with this, I think the group of friends I have right now are also the bunch who have never looked at me differently because of the way I look, or how much I weigh. All of this combined and some work on myself I had reached a stage where I had started to become quite confident with the way I looked, and it had started to show in the way I had put myself out there! I was in a place mentally where I was quite happy, then why did I want to lose weight?

I had gotten a full body check-up done in May 2022 and the results were not the best, my sugar level was dicey, my heart rate was higher than normal, I was overweight, and some other stuff which had started to show its effects on my life, my periods were irregular, my energy used to be low, my skin was dull, etc. So this time around the changes I was starting to bring were not because I wanted to reach a number on the scale which was desirable, but I just wanted to inculcate habits which would essentially mean leading a fairly healthy lifestyle. My mindset shifted, I wanted to be a healthy person. 

Habits are not about having something/reaching a goal, they are about becoming someone. A goal oriented mindset can create a yo-yo effect, once achieved it is easy to fall back, therefore build identity based habits and not goal based habits ~ From the book Atomic Habits by James Clear

My health journey in phases

Please read through it completely as one phase differs from the other in a lot of aspects and it also depends on the time in my life.

Here's a small comparison picture from Feb 2019 to September 2023

Phase 1: Aggressive self control

I had started researching about how to get rid of the high-fat percentage in a sustainable manner, I had started to do intermittent fasting and a calorie-deficit diet. I had stopped consuming sugar altogether (this is awful as it really affects your mood swings) but it's worth it. I joined the gym, and started with https://www.cult.fit/ group classes because I did not like going to the gym, I liked activity-based workouts, and the group classes were quite motivating as you met more like-minded people, it forced you to go during a slot you had booked, there were multiple choices like dance class, body conditioning, burn etc. I went to the gym at least 5-6 days a week unless I was on my periods and I skipped a few days. My meals were mainly sautéed or boiled veggies along with some chicken or fish, one roti or a little rice, oatmeal pancakes/smoothie/overnight pudding and some snacks along the day like dry fruits, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, etc. All the meals were portion controlled and I used https://www.healthifyme.com/ to track my calories. This was the hardest phase because if I am being honest I used to get extremely hungry and it took almost 3-4 weeks for my body to get used to eating around 1200 calories, that was almost a 1000-calorie deficit as my body required around 2000 calories as I weighed almost 83 kgs. 

Phase 2: Increase calorie intake & start consuming outside food 

After 4 months I had lost almost 12-13 kgs, It was a rapid loss but I had to sustain this therefore I started slowly increasing my calorie intake, it was the same meals but larger portions. I continued gym at the same pace as before, and I had become much stronger than before, my stamina had increased significantly. I also started eating out, around 1-2 meals a week, portion-controlled and still chose healthier options. This was mainly for two reasons, the first one being I did not want my body to get used to one type of food, I needed my metabolism to become better in varied conditions. And second I just wanted to be able to eat dishes I liked, because I truly love food! 

Phase 3: Reach my body's required calorie intake + workout shift 

By now I weighed 66 kgs, as you can see I did not lose a lot of weight in phase 2 but I truly worked on my metabolism and started to work towards a lifestyle I could sustain in the long run. You cannot eat extremely healthy all your life, and if you are always on a calorie deficit, you will start to lose energy in the long run, you will see more negatives than positives, as your body won't get adequate nutrition. In the next phase I continued my food escapades over the weekends, but 5 days a week I was on a strict diet of mainly just home food which had lots of veggies and healthy carbs, lots of fruits, dates, smoothies, etc. As I had started working now, my workout goal was 3-4 days a week instead of 5-6 as that was more realistic and easy to sustain. I started lifting more weight and by the end of June 2023, I weighed the lowest around 58 kgs with a good body composition. But that weight again was not sustainable, life takes over at times, but I have maintained a range of 60-62 kgs at the moment.

This brings me to the end of this blog, I feel healthier than I ever did before, if you follow me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/figuringitoutwanisha/ you will see how much I truly love food but at the same time, I have tried to maintain habits like working out regularly and eating healthy 5-6 days a week. There are weeks and months where I have skipped the gym for over a week or maybe even 2 weeks or been inconsistent with my workouts over a month where I had too many other things on my plate, but what matters is that I was able to jump back and get back to the regime. I have gone through multiple iterations of updating my schedule, and my workouts, because you need to do what works for you and the results will show automatically!