How I became a Loser !

Are you the kind who is struggling to lose weight? Are you constantly concerned about the excess fat on the body? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you are a lot like me. I came to the USA about 5 1/2 years ago. The first year was exciting. The new lifestyle, the independence; life in general was quite overwhelming. The year passed and little did I realise that I was heading towards a weight issue. Well, I had to react, and fast. Luckily for me, I have had an active life. Although I was never an athlete, I always tried to play a lot of games and be involved with sports, while in school and college. At home, there were always several chores to do, and that helped me sweat it out. So the body was ready for the physical work. It was the mind that needed to be cajoled. Not merely at exercising but also at following an appropriate diet. I had to lose the weight, but also in the right way. I could never starve myself to shed some pounds. That just wasn't me. I had to up my metabolic rate and balance it out with a healthy meal plan.

The first couple of years, involved me just doing a lot of cardio-vascular exercises. Working out on the stepper and the elliptical were not that hard. Initially I tried to completely cut out the high calorie foods. But that didn't work out. All I did was just build up the craving, and then pig out. So, I decided to give into temptation but do it via portion control. It seemed to work. So, I was eating proper meals everyday, doing a lot of exercise, and trying to exercise portion control with the bad foods. Still, things were not satisfactory. There needed to be a change in the plan. As a reader, you are bound to think that I should have probably enrolled myself in one of those weight loss schemes or just hired a personal trainer to help me out. Well, being a grad student on a meagre salary, that just wasn't possible. And also, I preferred learning this the hard way. I felt it would provide me with some important experiences for life. Anyways, I needed to change my exercise routine. Several websites will tell you that doing the same activity daily would make the body just get used to it and eventually you wouldn't be burning that many calories as you initially did. Hence I decided to start running. In the beginning running half a mile at 5 mph was an ordeal. I just wasn't enjoying running since I couldn't do it very well. I yearned to be like some of those people who could run for miles on the treadmill. I knew my stamina needed to be built up. So I joined the group fitness sessions at the K-State Recreation Center, popularly known as 'The Rec'. The kickboxing classes, the step aerobics classes. They all helped. They were tough, but I had made up my mind to push myself. Slowly I could notice an increase in stamina. Soon running a mile at 6mph was not that hard.

I also figured out that other than just good ol ' cardio, I had to get some strength training into my schedule. Strength training is said to help increase the Basal Metabolic Rate, so you burn more calories even while resting. With respect to my meals, I almost always skipped breakfast. Lunch and dinner were my big meals. One day, while browsing the web, I encountered this phrase; "Eat breakfast like a King, lunch like a Queen and dinner like a Pauper". There was a ton of truth to this. My diet need some major overhauling. I began to eat fruit and drink a smoothie/eat yogurt for breakfast. I made sure I ate a fairly big lunch. Dinner was reduced to cereal. This worked like a charm. Losing the fat, finally happened. My running still didn't satisfy me. I wanted to run more. So I decided to reduce my speed and pushed myself to run atleast 2 miles. Slowly I graduated to running 2.5 miles and then finally could run a 5K. The speed needed some improvement. 6 mph has been my maximum so far. That is when I made a decision to train myself to run a 10K. My training has been quite intermittent. The most I have run is 4 miles. But I am certain I will reach my target fairly soon. My diet is also undergoing a small change. The aim is small meals, several times a day, with each meal being less than 500 calories. I haven't been that successful at implementing it so far. There is still more weight to lose, but I am somewhat happy with the progress I have made. I have set my sights on getting into shape to be able to run a marathon. But that is sometime in the future. I will encounter some plateaus in my exercise routines for sure, but I know that I can overcome them. For now I just want to revel in the present!