This is the ongoing story of how I went from star athlete in my teens and 20's to reasonably in shape guy, to guy who eats and drinks whatever he wants yet still magically has no fat, to a fat ass, and back to reasonably in shape guy. I'm quite happy with my physique now, especially considering my age. I think other people can do this too.
the transition over the years - I'm drinking beer in all of them
When I finally looked in the mirror and hated the person on the other end of it I decided to actually do something to change my life. This was right around the time that my friend asked me to participate in the swimming portion of a triathlon and I'll fast forward through that entire process.
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The Phuket Laguna Triathlon took place in November of 2017 and I had managed to get my time for 1.8km swim (in a pool) down to 50 minutes. You get 1 hour and 10 minutes until you are disqualified. Obviously swimming in the ocean is a bit more difficult than a pool but because of the adrenaline and the fact that I didn't want to let my team down, i finished it in 43 minutes. This is by no means a world-class time but I was proud of myself as were my teammates as I can running out of the water to hand over the timer to the bike rider.
So how did I manage this? Well, I don't want to say that it was easy because it wasn't. At that point I had only altered my diet for a couple months and i was still around 98kg (down from 106.) My journey began the same way that all dramatic weight shifts have to begin....
Diet
Most trainers will agree that weight loss is mostly diet. The idea that you can eat whatever you want and just exercise more is a myth unless you are in the military where the amount of exercise that you do is far more than a normal person would ever be able to motivate themselves to do on their own.
My diet prior to deciding to turn my life around consisted of "whatever" and the worst aspect was the 12-15 bottles of beer that I was consuming almost daily.
So i stopped drinking beer, right? NO! I simply transitioned from a full calorie and most importantly carb, beer to a very low carb beer such as San Miguel Light or Tiger Crystal (these are the only two available in Thailand.)
Also, and this is the part that is going to get most people... I cut out almost all carbohydrates in my life. At least at the start, I completely eliminated all bread, rice, and especially processed sugar and I tried to keep it below 50g of carbohydrates per day. Which leads to my next tip.
Write it down!
At least at the start, you are not gonna know diddly about how many carbs are in stuff so you gotta look it up. I was stunned to find out how many carbs were in things that I ate on a normal basis. If I wanted to keep my intake below 50g per day, i couldn't have any bread or rice (which is difficult in Asia.)
Mostly this meant that I had to find some things I like and cook them myself at home. I found this app that will track your diet and even has a barcode scanner on it that contains nutritional information for most products already in their database.
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It's called myfitness pal and it is free. I highly recommend it. It was a real eye opener to find out that a cup of yogurt has more carbs in it than a large bottle of lager. I had always presumed it was healthy but it is not. There are a ton of products out there that are health-food-in-disguise also.
You have to admit, once you are a fat-ass that you need some help. A free product like myfitnesspal is an excellent way to start, even if you don't want to change your diet.
In summary: These are the beginning steps that I took from returning from fat-ass land.
- Recognize that you have a problem, and that you can change it
- Record your bad behaviors with a free app such as myfitnesspal
- Choose small, manageable ways that you can change this for the better
- cut down on carbs, especially processed sugar
We'll get to the exercise stuff later because most people became a fat ass because of what they eat.
you can do it too!