For those looking for some help with weight loss (Just my two cents)

I see a lot of chat on here about trying to lose weight so as someone who has lost 35kg in the last 3 years I thought I’d throw out a few thoughts:

1. Diet is so much more important than excercise, not a glamorous take but it’s true. Excercise helps, mentally as well as physically, but you cannot excercise your way out of a bad diet. Use an app like myfitnesspal to track calories, it’s a pain in the ass to set up but once you’ve got most of your regular meals in there it becomes pretty easy. Eventually you’ll intuitively know where the calories come from. Above all be honest with yourself. The only one who is effected by your calorie intake is you. Over the years I’ve built up about 12-15 different meals that range from 400- 600 calories that I can easily whip up. I always cook for 3 nights worth of food, eat the same thing twice and then freeze a portion for my wife and I to have another night when I dont want to cook. Good food planning is essential so you have access to the right food all the time. Also have a few healthy snacks in the house, I have bags of popcorn and mini frozen mars bars in the freezer, delicious, dirty enough, but small in size.

2. Eat shit loads of chicken breast / white fish and non starchy veg. If you’re not using oil its nearly impossible to eat so much of it that you’re not in a calorie deficit. Seasoning is your biggest ally, when you have to dry fry and sautee with water you lose the fat flavour so make up for it with lots of herbs/spices/hot sauces etc.

3. You will have lapses, but if you contain them to a weekend the damage is minimal, the hardest battle is get back to it right away. You can only undo so much hard work in a day or two. Its when you tell yourself next week / next month etc you’ll get back to it that you start to properly undo hard work

4. Don’t continually buy clothes that are too small for yourself in the hopes that you will fit into them eventually. Just buy clothes that fit you properly, it looks way better and then when you’ve lost the weight buy new clothes.

5. Having a measurement system for progress is important for accountability, weight is obviously the normal one, but taking measurements with a tape measure is also helpful, especially if you’re excercising, your weight may not go down super fast if you’re generating muscle. Measurement is important for accountability to yourself. I’ve also done progress pics every few months and it is amazing to see your body change.

6. Don’t be embarrased about dieting, dont try and hide it from people in work, people are nearly always supportive of someone else trying to better themselves, and if you try to hide your dieting you’ll be forced to compromise on eating choices in public situations like work and parties etc.

Progress pic from behind for a bit of motivation for all those struggling with weight. The above was done with the odd bit of jogging and tennis but no weights at all.

Loving yourself and wanting to improve yourself are not mutually exclusive so it’s OK to try and be a bit hard on yourself to focus but don’t ever hate yourself. Keep it up and if you want to chat any more hit me up.