The first of a 4 part article on weight-loss for Malaysians.
So you’d like to lose weight? Just a few kilos perhaps? Or maybe a lot of kilos. This is no easy task. Let me tell you why.
You see, the principles of weight loss are easy. All the information you’ll ever need is out there. They’re spread wide all over social media, magazines, books, newspapers and TV. Correct or not, even your best friend, your relatives and colleagues will tell you what you should to do to lose weight. So what excuse do we have in not shedding those kilos if all the info is already at our fingertips?
Yet so many of us are overweight in spite of all that information we already have. The reason is simple. It’s the motivation and determination that’s difficult. For some of us, losing weight is confrontational. It might even challenge us psychologically. This is what makes weight loss so hard. So in order to get healthier, you need so much more that information. You need determination, conviction and perseverance. You may even need to get over your psychological issues too. There’s the saying, fall down three times, get up four times. But when it comes to weight-loss, it feels more like fall time ten times, get up eleven times. Weight-loss is tough.
Many of us just have the general idea that we should do something about our weight. Sometimes we’re careful about what we eat and at other times we’re not. Sometimes we exercise. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we actually do lose weight but often the weight is just put back on.
We might eat that ice-cream sundae, chocolate bar or creamy cheese cake, feel guilty about it and promise ourselves that we’ll go the gym the next day. But we don’t. We weigh ourselves or feel that pair of jeans getting too tight and tell ourselves that we’ll eat less today, and we even manage to do so but it makes little difference. This is what having a general idea of losing weight is about. It’s ad hoc. It’s about guilt and feeling miserable because there is so little to show for our efforts.
So what do many of us do? We give up. We no longer want that daily struggle. We can’t be bothered anymore. We’ll just accept that we’re overweight. For what is the point of trying? The only result is failure and frustration.
To lose weight, we have to get rid of the idea of a general desire of losing weight. We need to start a journey. A weight-loss journey. We need to realise that the journey is going to be a tough one, a challenging and long one. There will be failures and successes along the way. There’ll be pain and effort and you might even occasionally get lost but, nonetheless, you’ll carry on with your journey.
You’ll need determination and perhaps even courage. But, believe me, it’s going to be worth it.
This is the first of four articles that will prepare you for this journey. You should read all four articles before you start. You’ll not only have all the information you’ll need, but the motivation too. But if you just can’t wait or need to get a more detailed understand of how it all works you can pick up my book So Fat Lah! 30 Perfect Ways to a Slimmer You. What’s more, there’s also The “So Fat Lah!” Cookbook which is filled with recipes that will help you shed the kilos.
Losing weight, you’ll soon discover, is all about our daily habits, including our eating habits. It’s not about diets. That’s because diets don’t work. Diets, by their very definition, have a start and an end date. Once the diet ends, the weight is put back on. Diets involve reducing the amount of calories we consume. When we do this, our brain goes into starvation mode, thinking that there is not much food out there and therefore must plan for our survival. It responds by reducing our metabolic rate so that our body needs less energy to survive. The trouble is that when our diet ends and we start eating normally again our weight shoots back up. That’s because our body, because of its low metabolic rate, is not using up all those extra calories as it did before. So all those extra calories are turned into fat.
On our weight-loss journey we will choose one or more new habits, which will replace our old ones. But changing our daily habits is no easy task. That’s why I recommend starting a journal. You can start off by writing down your current weight and BMI. Your BMI will tell you if you’re overweight, underweight or of average weight. The easiest way to calculate it is to go online and use a BMI calculator. The BMI may not a perfect measurement but it’s the best and most scientific method available. Next, you might wish to write down your goal. How many kilos would you like to be in a month’s time. I don’t suggest a shorter time scale. That’s because it’s likely that the faster you lose weight, the faster you’ll put it back on. If you lose weight slowly, then the new habits you’ve developed will be strongly established and you’re unlikely to return to your old ones. So it’s a good idea to go and find yourself a journal now. You can write lots of other stuff in it too, so that it’s not just about losing weight. Your journal will be your friend. You can write about your thoughts and feelings. Your journal will be the only thing you’ll need in your weight-loss journey. The rest will come from your own determination, conviction and perseverance.
We’ll meet again next time, for the second in this series called “Perfect Weight Loss Habits”.
By Tunku Halim
