More than 20 kg were eliminated in four months, without doing crazy exercises
I was always an overweight person and I never really cared about it. At 1.61 meters tall, he weighed between 70 and 75 kg during adolescence, a condition known as overweight. But, in the last few years, with the routine more strained at work and in college, the situation has worsened a lot: some clothes have stopped serving, my reflection in the glasses did not please me and my food was terrible.
In June 2015, when the scale hit 83 kg and threatened to show larger numbers in the future, the yellow light came on. At that time, I was already with grade I obesity, a disease that, as you are tired of knowing, is one of the main (preventable) causes of death in the world and is related to several health problems. I decided that I needed to do something before the situation got worse.
Today, at 57 kg, I have been at normal weight and stabilized for four months. To lose the extra pounds and gain health, I had a little help from technology. In the next few paragraphs, I’ll tell you what I did (and continue to do) to keep my new shape.
Before you start
The Tecnoblog is not a doctor, so everything I say here do not have recommendation character – I’m just reporting what I did, based on what I studied in recent months. It is good to see a professional before radically changing your diet or starting a physical exercise routine.
Some of the changes I made do not follow the guidelines taken as true by most doctors, nutritionists and health officials. In addition, they go against the common sense of diet and nutrition that has formed in recent decades.
By following the tips, you understand that you will go against the current nutrition recommendations and that you may suffer resistance from friends and family. However, there is a scientific basis behind the changes, and I was careful to link the references throughout the text so that you can read them yourself.
You have been warned!
What are you eating?
Yes, I know you were expecting a huge list of exercise apps, but the biggest responsible for weight loss is food. You may be able to lose weight if you start running, jumping, swimming and somersaulting without changing your food, but a 25-year meta-analysis (!) Of scientific studies shows that the reverse way, that is, changing your diet without changing your physical activity, is much more efficient.
Putting it in numbers, the group that just started doing aerobic exercises lost a measly 2.9 kg, on average. Those who just changed their food were left with a relevant 10.7 kg less on the scale. And the people who combined the two changes (diet and exercise) eliminated 11 kg.
Exercises? Change the diet first.
With that in mind, a good way to start is to record what you are eating. I used MyFitnessPal , but there are other options, like FatSecret (which has a more organized food database) and the Brazilian Diet and Health . Choose what you think is best, since they all have versions for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone (but I will focus on the first one).
The first time you open MyFitnessPal, the application asks for some data (age, height, weight and sex) and then suggests goals for daily calories and nutrient consumption. Don’t be so concerned about being within those numbers: use the app just to record what you eat, at least at the beginning.
If you’re like me, you’ll notice how much crap you’ve been eating during the day: I usually consumed somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 calories a day and more than 300 grams of carbohydrates, a lot of bread, pasta, sweets and soft drinks. After recording everything, it is easier to find out what is going wrong with food.
It may seem difficult to register everything you eat, but over time MyFitnessPal puts the most consumed foods at the top of the search, so this task gets faster. After two weeks, registering my meals became very natural. Tip: if you don’t have time to immediately write down what you ate, take a picture of the dish and do it until the end of the day. MyFitnessPal encourages you to use the app daily (my record was 97 consecutive days!).
Changing the power
The problem with just trying to stay within the nutritional goal (in my case, MyFitnessPal suggested 1,570 calories daily) is that this is very difficult in the long run. By simply reducing food portions, I felt very hungry during the day, felt very unwell and wanted to eat even more goodies. This is the main reason why many diets do not work: it is almost impossible to endure the negative effects for more than a few days.
Therefore, it is not enough to reduce the feeding, it is necessary to make some substitutions. And realistic substitutions, because, quite frankly, I can’t exchange a juicy piece of rump steak for a portion of asparagus (if the asparagus were extinct on the planet, it wouldn’t be missed), let alone a beautiful salmon for some eggplant made with eggplant. , yam or jiló (who can eat that?).
The main culprit for the fact that we get fat is insulin. As you learned in biology classes, she is responsible for controlling blood glucose (sugar) levels. But it also has other functions , and I highlight two: storing fat in fat cells and encouraging the use of glucose as an energy source instead of fat (which is now stored in the body).
With that in mind, think about this cycle:
- A high level of insulin causes obesity because it stimulates the fat supply.
- The carbohydrates you consume are transformed into blood sugar and stored as fat in the adipose tissue.
- Excessive blood sugar is toxic.
- The body releases insulin to lower blood sugar.
- Go back to item 1.
What did I do? I drastically reduced the consumption of foods rich in carbohydrates (breads, pasta, sweets and soft drinks) and started to eat foods rich in proteins and fats (meat, poultry, fish and eggs).
It was difficult to get rid of French bread for breakfast and desserts in the night at the fridge, but the rapid advance on the scale was a great incentive for me to remain focused on my goal: in two weeks, I went from 82.8 kg 78.1 kg. Almost 5 kg less, in 15 days, with no complicated rules.
The results of the changes
The best part is that both body weight and fat percentage have decreased significantly. Here are my numbers, every 15 days:
- 06/07/2015: 82.8 kg and 29.1% fat;
- 06/22/2015: 78.1 kg and 27.9% fat;
- 07/07/2015: 74.6 kg and 26.1% fat;
- 07/21/2015: 71.3 kg and 24.3% fat;
- 07/08/2015: 67.4 kg and 22% fat;
- 08/21/2015: 64.9 kg and 20.8% fat;
- 08/09/2015: 63 kg and 19.1% fat;
- 09/22/2015: 62.4 kg and 18.7% fat;
- 10/7/2015: 59.3 kg and 16.2% fat.
That is, in four months, I managed to eliminate 23 kg and reduce body fat to a healthy level. As I write this text, in January 2016, I am 56.8 kg and 14% fat (these numbers were slightly higher after the goodies at the end of the year, but it was possible to reverse the situation in a few days).
To make the measurements, I used an Omron HBF – 214 scale, which measures the fat index and other body parameters using bioimpedance. I bought this scale in a good promotion for 70 reais; you can find similar models for between 100 and 200 reais.
But you don’t have to spend the tubes on this: the important thing is to record your weight regularly, a few times a week, right when you wake up, with the scale you have at home. Thus, you can tell whether you are getting it right or not and be stimulated by the numbers decreasing every day.
Of course you can record these numbers on paper, but the MyFitnessPal, FatSecret and Diet and Health apps, which I recommended earlier, have the function of weight monitoring and generate a graph for you to get a sense of how many pounds you lost. I’m kind of addicted to numbers and graphs, so I ended up weighing myself every day, except Saturdays and Sundays, to see my weight evolution curve.
