January Weight loss update!! - 104 kilos!

Happy New Year Everybody!!!!

January has been quite a difficult month for me.  Personally I had a lot of issues that I needed to handle and professionally there were a whole lot of other problems at work.  Now, I am a person who has a major guilt and comfort eating problem.  So my cheat days escalated from One meal on a cheat day to 3 or 4 cheat meals through the week.  I ended up drinking beer more than my usual quota of 2 per month.  After 2 weeks of doing this, I now have gotten back in control.  But because of this the weight loss this month was not as great as it was in the past 2 months.  I am now at 104 kilos and my I fit into size 38 pants!! Woo Hoo!!!.  Hopefully by the end of March, with a lot more determination and much less guilt binging, I am hoping to leave the 100 Kilo club and get down into the 90 Kilo range.

Thanks to the people who read my last blog post and encouraged me to go on.  I was asked to post my exercise and diet plan, and since I am seeing a lot of good results with my current plan, I am posting the same.  I have been reading a lot about this, and have also consulted with both the trainers at my gym and other friends and have now setup a diet and exercise plan which I feel benefits me quite well.

I will first post photos of me currently and I hope people can see some difference from where I was last month.

Workout schedule:

As part of my workout schedule, I have increased the amount of cardio I do and have also added on a lot of weight training.  My cardio follows the HIIT method and I feel that this yields much better results than the normal methods.

For example on the tread mill instead of constantly running at a certain speed and then topping of at your maximum speed, I start with a 30 second sprint of what ever is the top speed I can manage.  In the beginning it was 10 KM/hr, and I can now get up to 13KM/hr.  I then take a break (meaning I walk at around 5 to 6 KM/Hr speed) for 1 - 4 minutes and then sprint again, but this time for around 45 secs, take a break and then sprint again for 1 minute and finally sprint until I am exhausted and can't run at all.  I do the same for the other cardio machines as well.  I came up with this since I feel this best suited me and I could see better results with this schedule.  I had a lot of assistance and solid scientific information handed down to me by my friend Deepak, who has had an amazing body transformation and is now into the whole body building scenario full time.

I also made sure that on any cardio machine, I set the resistance quite high.  The reason I do this is to simulate natural conditions.  For example within the gym you are never going to face wind resistance, so on the treadmill you can set the incline to somewhere between 2 to 4.  On alternate days, I sometimes simulate jogging up a mountain track by setting the incline at around 12, where the max incline is 15.

As far as weight training goes, I am currently following only the bulking mode and not cutting as of now.  So I keep increasing my weights every week.  I make the weight I use for the second set this week as the first set for the next week.  This helps me increase the amounts of weights over a period of time.  Muscle building is as necessary as cardio to increase fat burning.  Muscles burn fat and calories when at rest, which is very important.  Below is the photo of my training sheet:

 

 As per my current reading, I have come to realize that you don't have to work all 6 days, but have to make sure that you work real hard for all the days you go.  Even if you cannot make it to the gym 6 days a week, try to make it to the gym for at least 2 days, but make sure you do a full body workout on those days.  I am currently working out a few more details for what I am calling my "Busy common man" workout.  I will post details about that soon.

Diet:

This is currently the diet I am following, and I can honestly tell you that I do cheat a lot on this.  I am trying my best not to, but it is so difficult to do this... So hard!!!

As soon as I wake up I have the time tried and tested Lime warm water and Honey.

Breakfast (within 2 hours of waking up) - I change the breakfast schedule every alternate day - 4 egg whites and a large glass of skimmed milk (no sugar) / 4 idlis and black coffee with sugar.

Pre lunch snack - high fiber diet biscuits with small glass of skimmed milk/black coffee

Lunch - I change my lunch schedule every alternate day. 5 chappatis with water, no side dish one day and a small bowl of rice with boiled veggies and dhal curry on the next day. (Grilled chicken whenever I can get my hands on it and the time to eat)

Pre workout snack (3 hours min before workout) - 3 egg whites/Boiled chicken breast with pepper and salt and 1 hour before I hit the gym a large glass of skimmed milk, no sugar. 

Post workout snack - I try to have some low sugar high caffeine energy drink.  I am planning on a post workout protein shake and am looking at some brands.

Dinner - One egg with the yolk, salad if possible or else 4 chappatis with no raw onions and pickles.  Large glass of warm water boiled with Jeera to assist bowel moment in the morning.

Sunday is my cheat day, and I try to make sure that It does not become a cheat day, but I have a cheat meal - Lunch.  I have also just started calorie counting, so mostly by the time of my next post, I will be adding more scientific details and will be a bit more professional in my way of writing or expressing my ideas, but will still stick to my aim of making weight loss and body building steps and procedures easy for everyone.

I have not started using any fat burner or protein shakes as of now and hopefully I stay strong and loose weight and build muscle naturally.

Any suggestions or corrections to my workout and my diet are more than welcome. If any one needs any more information please comment here and I will provide whatever info I have.

Here is to working hard, sticking to the diet, resisting temptation and a better, healthier body!! Work on!!!

Pain is temporary, Pride is forever!

Every new year for the past 5 years, I have made a resolution to go to the gym and reduce my weight and sculpt my body into the mean machine I have dreamt it to be.  Never happened.  This year, I went ahead and took the resolution 2 months ahead of time and started working out towards the end of November. 

When I checked my weight and showed up at 114 kilos (which is 36 kilos above my ideal weight and 34 kilos above what I weighed a year back.) it scared the crap out of me.  Thus began this transformation journey.  I am a bit late in blogging this, and thus at the end of one month, despite the holiday foods, I have been able to loose 4 kilos and now weigh in at 110 Kilos.  Pic of me below:

I realized that there will never be a point in your life were it will be the perfect time to do a great thing.  If you keep waiting for that perfect time, that perfect opportunity, it is never going to happen. You have to create that perfect time, that perfect moment, that perfect opportunity, and bring about that perfect situation.  A lot of people become comfortable.  They stop growing, they stop wanting, in short they become satisfied.  People getting ready to go to jobs they don't like, jobs that make them sick.  You see when you are not trying to achieve your goal, you are literally committing spiritual suicide.

When you try to reach a goal, and it has you stretching out, reaching out and then eventually moving out of your comfort zone, you are going to discover some talents and skills you though you never had.  There are things that you think you never need to know, but sometimes knowing them can make the difference between life and death, someday you maybe saved by that knowledge.   Unless you attempt to do something beyond what you have already mastered you will never grow.  Each person has something in our lives that we looked at and talked ourselves out of it.  You cannot expect your family or friends or events around you to cultivate in you an attitude to be phenomenal and then achieve the thing you wrote off.  When you try to achieve what you wrote off, you become phenomenal in the eyes of the other average human beings.  If it was easy everybody would do it.  There are people right now working who don't want to work, they hate their jobs, but they keep getting up to do it.  Why??  Cause they are addicted to the monthly salary, the short term gain.  If any result takes a long time and some patience to reach, we all just crumble so easily.

Most people take their greatness, their ideas to the graveyard with them.  If you ask me, the wealthiest places in this world are the graveyards.  In there you will find inventions you were never exposed to, ideas, dreams that never became a reality.  Hopes and aspirations that were never acted upon.  Greatness is not one big thing done in a day, but a million small things done day after day after day.  You will never ever succeed in life if you succumb to your pain.  Instead learn to turn your pain into greatness, use your pain to push you from who you are and where you are to who who and where you want to be....no, rather need to be!  Learn to embrace your pain, your pain is a part of you now, a part of the transformation.  Pain is temporary, but pride...is forever!

I have decided that it is time to make my dream a reality.  Professionally I am spending 8 hours everyday making someone else dream a reality, maybe 2 hours a day is not too much to set aside to achieve mine. 

I am going to challenge myself.  I am going to push myself since I am tired of sitting down and accepting that I can't.  The biggest enemy I have to deal with is myself, and I have to overcome the enemy within.

I will keep updating this space every month regarding my progress, my workout routine and my diet.

Wish me luck!!