I originally published this on my medium blog. Creating an archive here
Photo by Grzegorz Rakowski on Unsplash
About 6 years ago, I had let myself get fat. I had always maintained an active lifestyle but I had gotten lazy due to some reasons and let myself have horrible eating habits. I was 15 then. I decided that now I wanted to be fit and healthy and not be an unfit overweight guy. The intention was good, but the way I did it was absolutely stupid.
How I did it
It was quite simple. I played football for 90 mins in the morning and 90 mins in the evening. We used to play matches in both mornings and evenings and they were intense, hard matches. I was sprinting the whole time. I also cut my food intake drastically. Cut out all the junk and soft drinks and even the healthy food I took was quite limited. So, within 2 months I had shed about 10 kilograms of weight.
Retrospect
Looking back, it was a bad decision to lose weight like this. You feel bad all day because you are not eating enough food and pushing yourself to the limit. It is an unhealthy way to lose so much weight so quickly. You develop stretch marks over all your body and get skinny and weak. It is also not possible for most people to do cardio like I did. I had the right age and previously was an active person, something that is not true for most people. I was used to the hard physical activity already and even then it was very hard to run 3 hours in total in a day. It is not a sustainable way to get fitter. You cannot maintain this.
What would I advise my 15 year old self?
Looking back, I wish I had done somethings differently. If I were to train myself today for a weight loss or somebody else, starving would not be the way. Just cut out the unhealthy food and stay in a caloric deficit eating healthy. I would put myself under a barbell at the gym and train weights along with cardio. Weight training is underrated and I wish someone had knocked some sense into me. I wouldn’t go as hard as I did playing football, probably only once a day or once every two days. Weight loss shouldn’t be a short term goal for 2–3 months. Staying fit should be a life-time goal. It takes years to build a solid physique (15 year old me wouldn’t listen to this advice though. I loved football. I was impatient to get in shape). It was not wise to go all-in. Go slow. Be consistent. Keep improving.
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