Things That Actually Helped Me Lose 50 Pounds

I have finally forced myself to wrap up my findings after almost six months of my war with fat and write it all in single post.




First of all I would like to tell you that there is no magic trick, no work for all plan or pill. Everyone is different and everyone has to find they own way how to get fit. This is not my first try, I have tried to lose weight and to get to better shape. I have tried many times before, methods that worked for other people that just have not worked for me. That does not mean those methods were bad, it just mean that everyone is different and everyone needs something different. so even if this does not work for you, do not give up. I strongly believe that anyone can lose weight, you just need to find method that works for you.






These are the things that helped me the most:

1. Keeping in mind what my goal really is. Do you think its just losing weight? Wrong. You could lose 30 or even 40 pounds in a month, but that would be no victory. It would be quite opposite actually. You do not want to lose weight as your main goal, you want to live healthier life and eat better food. If you do that, you will lose weight as "side effect" and you will keep your new lower weight forever. If you lose 30 pounds in a month, you can be sure those pounds will come back.

2. Keeping in mind that I'm not on diet. Do you think anyone can be on diet their whole life? I do not think so. What we are doing here is lifestyle change, not a diet. Diet is something temporary and usually drastic. Lifestyle change is longer process, but process which results are permanent. Process which is difficult at start, but over time becomes your natural state - so easy that you will not even think about it anymore. Eating healthy food and adding reasonable amount of exercise in your life is normal state of things. It is not temporary state that ends when you lose 20, 30, 50 or whatever amount of pounds you have on your mind. No, it is permanent change that will become absolutely normal part of your life and you will even have problems in the end imagine it has not been always like that.

3. Eating high quality food. I want to keep this blog post as short as possible and quality of food is really huge topic, so we will take a look only at the very basics. So what is high quality food? Generally it is food that you prepare by yourself from high quality basic (not too much processed) ingredients. It should always be high in protein, that is very important because you want to lose fat, not muscles.
You should of course also eat plenty of vegetables, not only because of all the vitamins and minerals, but also because of the positive impact diet high in vegetables has on your bowel. Fruit is also not bad, but since many fruits contains big amounts of fructose, you should eat only limited amount of it. Great fruit for those who want to lose weight is pineapple.

You really do not want to eat: anything with unusual long shelf-life (its usually full of preservatives), anything with artificial flavoring or artificial sweeteners or anything with too much salt. Very dangerous is of course anything fried in cheap oils and foods full of nitrates and nitrites. These you can find usually in cured sandwich meat, bacon, sausages or salami. They prolong shelf life, but they also form nitrosamines which causes cancer.

Here is great book full of healthy recipes, the best one I have ever read on this topic.



4. No Sweet drinks. This point is really simple. No sweet drinks. No Coca-Cola, no Pepsi, no Fanta, No sweet coffee, no sweet fruit juices. just nothing. If you would have to pick just one point of all the points in this article, choose this one. Really. If you drink lot of  sugary drinks than just stopping drinking them alone will have HUGE impact on your weight and on your overall health. It is said that Americans are not fat because of hamburgers and french fries, but because of coke and it is true.
Do not drink diet coke as well. Most people does not know this, but diet coke will make you as fat as regular one. It's because how our brain works. When brain senses the sweet taste, it takes it as signal and your body expects wave of energy from sugar, but because you "lied" to your body with that drink with artificial sweeteners, no sugars are coming. What is your body's reaction? It will naturally start craving some real sugar and you will end up sooner or later snacking something full of sugar.

Learn to drink water, green tea, ginger or coffee without any sugar or sweeteners. Bonus: great positive impact on your teeth.

5. Proper breakfast with enough protein.




 I used to neglect breakfast. I would only eat like one piece of apple, banana or even not eat at all and only drink diet coke or coffee. That is really not good breakfast, because with breakfast like that you will be hungry very soon and end up snacking some junk food. So make proper breakfast - scrambled eggs, omelet, oats, Greek yogurt with fruit, toast with cottage cheese and avocado and egg etc..

6. Eating less. Eating quality food is really great step towards your new healthier life and slimmer body, but if you will eat huge amount of quality food, your weight will not go down. I have always been eating too much, so this was for me the hardest part of my way to healthier and happier life. I simply have great appetite and it is something what is not going to change unfortunately. I'm no fan of pills as you probably already noticed if you are reading my blog regularly, but in this case I really needed some help. over the years I have tried both prescription and natural appetite suppressants and except one, I have not been happy with the results. They simply either did not work or side effects were too severe for me (or even both in some cases).

Update 2022: I now use this and it works like crazy. You can read more about it in this 2022 post.

7. Workout.



You do not need any extreme workout really and if you have read my previous posts you know that I do not workout very hard. I started to walk few times a week and then moved to running really slowly also few times a week - and thats it. The worst part of workout is in fact the part before you start. When you are there, you have your running clothes and running shoes on, the actual run is the easy part.

And that is all actually. This transition to healthier life is really not easy, especially at the beginning, but it is something quite simple, you just need to follow it and you will achieve your goals. Just do not try to get there over night, remember that you will be like that for the rest of your life, so take your time.

 Hooray, its over, time for party :)



PS.: sorry for the cat gifs, but you know, everything is better with cats..