How I lost 54 pounds in 7 months....

_{It's more than that.... It's about how I finally found the lifestyle that really suits me.}

Resonating with what I posted on personal development the other week about making things less complicated, I found out the other day, I was losing 54 pounds in about 7 months. It’s the highest amount that I could lose in a year and I wasn’t expecting that. Even at some point, I started forgetting the whole ordeal about losing weight and continuing to live my life the way it is. I still go to the gym, swim, and eat everything I want. I didn’t really restrict anything and just lived my life. The only difference was that I stopped obsessing about the scale and anything that has to do with diet or weight loss. I know that the moment I hit the scale, I would have been obsessed once again. So, it’s why I didn’t weigh myself for a while. Anyhow, I am also well-versed in nutrition by now and know my way around weight loss. After all, I was obsessed with it. You can read how obsessed I was with it here Some Misconceptions I have about Weight Loss and What I learned. In retrospect, I would have done all the things I am doing now had I known that sticking to the basics of weight loss was the answer to my problems.

I am not someone who hates working out, I love it but I hate the noise and crowds. To be fair, I don’t like seeing a lot of people and it’s why even the gym wasn’t that optimal. In some hours there were a lot of people, (By a lot, I mean more than 5 people in a small place) and I wasn’t feeling comfortable. Whereas with swimming, it’s quite rare that people swim where I live and only a few of them would, which was something I could tolerate. Gym became quite a chore at some point but I pushed through.

Being around people and in the crowd requires a lot of energy to me and safe to say, when I was wandering, I used a lot of my back up energy. This is why now, I am retreating and living my seclusive life again. But during my wandering, I became comfortable with something that I don’t normally do back home, which was walking and jogging.

Somehow, once I arrived home, I had many changes in my life. But what’s really important is that I became comfortable with a lot more things including my sleeping habit which is around 5 to 7 PM to 2 AM. My mom also wakes up around 2 AM and one day she just invited me for a walk as she would usually do that. Don’t know why but for some reason, I said yes and we would go out by 4 or 5 AM to do our morning walk or run. Perhaps because during those hours, there were only a few people and the noise pollution was a lot less. I felt calm and chill as opposed to when there were a lot of people and vehicles moving around. Even 6 AM to me is already too late as there would be people all around which is something I generally avoid. So if I wake up too late at 5 AM, I would simply skip walking and do a light home workout. Though I don’t walk everyday, I am doing it most days of the week for 60 minutes to 90 minutes ever since I got back home.

When it comes to food, what I ate was simply just less carbs and use portion control of everything. I no longer have any cravings for sweets or anything savory. The fact that I only drink filtered coffee most of the time without sugar, was also a game changer. All these thanks to the habit I picked up while wandering. In Laos, they don’t serve filtered coffee with sugar and I got used to it. Not to mention, since both countries were really hot, I used to drink a lot more water than I ever did. Here I am now, drinking more than 2 lt/day easily. I also rarely eat rice but my carb is mostly from noodles as it’s something I enjoy eating more than rice. Some days, I don’t even eat rice or noodles. I also eat a lot more fruits and vegetables. At the same time, my protein source comes from tofu, tempe, meat, eggs and they make up most of the things that I eat.

I know that a lot of people take a lot faster when they’re losing weight but I am proud that I am much closer to my ideal weight while building a lifestyle that fits my personality and what I want instead of following what others do and what worked for them 🙂. It doesn’t feel like a weight loss at all at this point, just a lifestyle that finally really suits me.