How to lose weight - First Stage

This is in continuation to my earlier Post on How to lose weight.

I have reached my first milestone date: 15th March 2010. Also I am pleased that I have achieved my first goal of X + 15 Kilos ( losing 3 kilos in a month). There were various paths to achieve it but nothing was more accurate than "Knowing Myself" which lead to success (by understanding facts about me)

Let me share how I reached the goal. I did following simple things :-

• Counting/measuring amount of food I eat during my meals. Though it sounds childish but it proved out to be really effective. Generally when a person is over-weight he does not realize that he is over-eating. This can be due to various reasons like watching television while eating or gossiping while eating or by doing things which gives one pleasure. So while doing these pleasurable things a person does not realize over-eating. Though, for sure, this realization comes after over-eating : )

I consciously observed how much I eat. Not thinking to control my eating but just making a conscious note on how much I eat. For example if I eat following for my lunch/dinner

* 3 chapatis (rotis) / Plateful of rice

* One sweat dish

* 2 vegetables

* Some fruit

* Others like : pickle

Now what I did was to make an effort to have my eating consistent. (Remember not reducing anything in my diet). So if my standard diet is 3 rotis (chapattis) then I make sure I don’t eat 4th or even a bite extra. This helped me control my over-eating.

• The second important thing I did was to say NO to following things

a. Fried Food

b. Sweets

Again for doing this I have to keep facts in mind. Specially keep in mind environment dependencies. So even if you are able to achieve 80% control; it is great effort.

• Walk where you can avoid luxuries. For example I stay on 4th Floor. And generally everyone is tired after work so I used to take an elevator rather than stairs. After 15/2/2010 for 95% of times I took stairs rather than elevator. After following this strictly I found I was covering at least 10 trips every day.

With following just three above simple things & "knowing myself" i was able to meet my first goal. I hope people who read it can actually feel that reducing weight is achievable.

Now my next target is reducing my weight to X+10 Kilos in next 2 months.

Things to focus on

• Keep following the above mentioned things.
• Don’t be complacent
• Be concentrated on the final goal
• Take step by step approach.

Will write again when I reach next milestone {X+12 kilos or 15/5/X whichever comes sooner :)}

How to reduce weight - Introduction

In last 10 years i have three times successfully increased my weight :-D and was twice able to reduce it. This time when i have kept a resolution to reduce it again, i really want to blog out my complete plan and various stages of execution.

This will help me to keep my weight in check. But as we all know it is a human tendency to incline towards what we like rather what is correct. So these posts of mine will help me in future to get back to proper shape.

First i will like to remind myself to couple of facts :

1. Weight reduction is must for me and i can't be relaxed about it.
2. I can't stress myself for weight reduction otherwise I will loose the charm of losing weight. ( I love such catch22 scenarios)
3. Weight reduction has to be step by step. With achievable steps first so that it gives me encouragement.
4. It is important to understand which task is achievable. Following is definition for achievable tasks : Tasks that can be performed with least effort in given conditions and produces maximum benefits.
5. Understanding environment dependencies. There are various factors which are not in our hands but are dependent on people around us. One can be strong willed and defy all local factors but one should consider cost involved in defying them. For example, I come from an Indian family so if i think of fasting and then reducing my weight then I might not succeed. There will be times when my mother/wife will convince me to eat that they have cooked with efforts. Hence effort involved to reduce weight by solving these complex scenarios will be tooo high. So never get involved in complex scenarios.

With above facts in mind i need to document my realistic (rather than idealistic) goals.

1. My main goal is to get my BMI to 25. (Say X kilos) {don't want to share my current weight as of now}
2. Current Weight is X + 18 Kilos.
3. Time frame to achieve this goal is 1 year. I want to keep it realistic ( I know am lenient with myself) but i think it is fair keeping Point #2 (from facts) in mind :).
4. My first month goal is to get to X + 15 kilos.

Will be writing about how to get to first goal in next post.

Till then keep blogging.