I'm losing weight. Where to start losing weight? Lose 10 kg by summer - personal experience

Today we’re kicking off our editorial special project. My name is Maya, and I will tell you about myself a little further on. Together with my colleague Dmitry, we organized a challenge for myself and my body. Its essence is to finally say goodbye to the kilograms that prevent us from living and feeling fully healthy until summer. But even if the summer comes, and before the long-awaited result will be a little puffing, we promise not to stop and continue to pedal, monitor the diet and share our honest insights. You can follow my story by the tag #Yahudeyu, and Dima ‘s stories can be read by the tag #Diary of a Fatty.

Table of Contents

What’s really important to us?

Initially, when we first started this story, it all sounded pretty fun: “Let’s lose weight by summer and tell everyone about it”. We gave ourselves a head start of 1.5 weeks before the first texts to see if it was a true desire and if we were ready to tackle the extra pounds and tell the readers of the section about it. Then the deadline came and it was time to write. I guess this is the moment I can call the real starting point, because we finally realized the message we want to broadcast with this experiment.

The point is not to get into “jeans from the past” in a record time, but to show how you can come to a result that will become irrecoverable, to cultivate new, useful habits and qualitatively change your life. You can always just lose weight, and you can “not just” lose weight, but for life, that’s how we plan.

Andrei Semeshov, wellness coach, columnist of “Championship”:“Remember that weight loss is a coveted goal for you. But for the body it is a stress. We are physiologically organized in such a way that we can accumulate fat reserves wonderfully and almost unlimitedly, but our body does not like to part with them. For the brain, fat is a guarantee of survival. Therefore, do not aggravate the situation, try to lose weight, especially without disturbing your nervous system. It is accepted to consider more or less adequate rate of weight loss no more than 1 kg per week. However, it should be understood that if you already weigh 55 kg, but certainly want to become even lighter, then for you this bar should be adjusted downwards.

Photo “Now” – “When I’ll be good”

Why I’m doing this.

I weigh not cosmically much, my weight at the beginning of the experiment is 69 kilograms (before it I have already managed to lose 2-3 kilograms after shocking winter feasts), height – 165 cm. I do NOT look fat if I dress according to my figure and not in a sweatshirt with a bundle in the fashionable style “oversize”, at any reunion with my classmates I have not heard the phrase “Oh, woman, here you are fat”. But since my move to Moscow, during my dashing student days with a lot of moves, KVN until I’m blue in the face, broken lifestyle and stress, I gained 15 extra pounds.

And this is where the failure begins. I am preparing for a triathlon or going out for a run, to the trivial simple – put on heels, and in these moments I feel every extra pound that prevents me from doing it faster, easier and simpler.

I meet powerful resistance from my body, which just screams that the extra weight is hindering me from the inside, not so much from the outside.

My attempt #5. How did I lose weight and why didn’t I lose weight?

An important aspect for all the gals who are going to lose weight for the summer, to understand the reason for their “gluts”. The problem is very acute and global, because no healthy person in a state of complete harmony and balance in his life does not need so much food, intuitive snacks and goodies at night to provoke a set of extra pounds. The first question I was asked by three doctors at the same time (while going through the study, which I’ll elaborate on a little further down) was: “What are you snacking on?”. The doctors did not agree, and it made me shake and tear, because it was necessary to dig deep into myself and find the very reason that constantly takes me out of the state of stability.

After all, I was trying to lose weight and, like many people, I responsibly shopped in stores for carrots, celery, chicken breasts and sugar substitute. In the end, my 21 Day No Sugar Challenge failed after a week at some Chocolatier. Laying out this path step by step, I would trace the following relationship: around us there are problems (stressful situations at home, at work, self-love) – these problems knock us out of the rut and destabilize the hormonal background (can, by the way, be the opposite situation in these two points) – we (girls) begin to throw from one extreme to another (losing weight – eating cake – sitting on a three-day detox). As a result, the kilograms then go away, then come, and it develops an unstable hormonal background even more – a vicious circle.

It all reminds me of a child’s swing. Imagine that you have swung them in full force, and then you jumped off them and stand on the spot, thinking that everything will be normal from now on. But it’s pretty silly to assume they won’t fly into your head, right?

Where do you start?

You don’t need to run anywhere, you should go to a good result with a calm head and confidence that your motivation is enough to overpower all the stages of weight loss. This is the first time I’m honestly going into this process with the clear realization that I need this. Not the public or anyone in particular who doesn’t like you at this weight, but myself, my health, my future. It’s silly to look like a woman who gave birth to triplets at 24 and can’t get in shape if you haven’t even had a baby yet.

Endocrinologist consultation

The first item on my checklist to prepare for the experiment was “Visit an endocrinologist”. I set myself a goal of “minus 10 kg”, and it was important to get advice from a specialist on this issue, to understand whether it is real and how my body will react to it.

I am sure that visiting an endocrinologist is an important stage in the beginning for all girls, girls and women. Hormones control our lives, it is from there and “dance” all the unexpected mood swings, problems with sleep, skin, appetite and further down the list. To say nothing of the fact that a systematic deficiency of the same hormone “melatonin” can provoke breast cancer.

Here are some tips that Ekaterina Ivannikova, an endocrinologist and nutritionist at the Osteopathy and Classical Medicine Osteo Poly Clinic, gave me after the consultation.

Take tests for microelements.
Align the sleep regime: fall asleep before 12 o’clock, in complete darkness.
Do not use gadgets and do not watch TV an hour before bedtime.
Drink chromium picolinate (as recommended by your doctor) to tame your addiction to sweets.
Turn off all pop-up push notifications on your phone.
Drink more pure water throughout the day.
Eliminate fruit after 4:00 pm.
Eliminate “dairy” after 6:00 pm.
Come for a follow-up examination within a month.

In addition, it was an endocrinologist-dietitologist helped me to adjust my diet, to analyze WHAT I eat and in what quantities.

Andrei Semeshov, wellness coach, columnist of “Championship”: “Women’s body is able to store fat faster than men’s. And it does not part with it so willingly. This is due to physiology and the function of reproduction. If you see fitness divas in magazines, which clearly visible all the cubes of the press, and on the body clearly protruding veins, in no case do not take it as a reference point. Believe me, you are simply not ready to pay such a price, sacrificing your health”.

Self-tracking: How I spent a week photographing all the food I ate

As an experiment, for a week I photographed every meal I ate, including the little things. Craving a cookie? Take a picture of it and only then eat it. How is that convenient? The doctor immediately understood not only what I was eating, but also in what quantities and at what time of day – because I could also use the photo to track the exact time.

It turned out that I had a lot of snacking and carbohydrates in my diet, and they all happened for several reasons: one, I didn’t have time to eat a full meal at lunch and instead replaced one normal meal with five spontaneous “carbohydrate bombs”.
I was drinking a lot of NOT water: morsels with pretensions to naturalness, juices with the fashionable prefix “Eco” and a huge amount of sugar. I had to teach myself to drink water and memorize the main rule: you want a natural morsel? Make it yourself.
I more or less kept myself within the limits if I had to eat at home, but there is no time to cook with myself, so on the way to work I had a natural croissant with coffee, and so on down the list.

Tip: if you don’t have the opportunity to photograph food, use the FatSecret app or write down all your meals in notes on your phone. I’m sure you’ll be surprised at how much you actually eat in a day!

Bioempidance: 5 interesting insights

The second step was to attend an advanced professional fitness testing at Crocus Fitness Kuntsevo, as a result of which Dima and I were told about our body’s capabilities and body composition. I’ll be honest, the result really upset me, but the study was worth it. In total, for an hour without leaving the fitness room, you can learn a lot of insights about yourself and your body, get recommendations and see the growth points that can be pumped. Below you can see the results of my personal body analysis, at the end of the experiment we will do similar testing to see progress.

The body analysis helped me to break myself down to the smallest detail and realize that it’s not “bone wide”, but the body fat content – 26.1 kg, with the norm from 11.3 to 18.1. Other parameters (amount of water, microelements, etc.) were relatively normal.
Further in-depth analysis helped to identify the very areas where the number of fat cells significantly exceeds the norm, as well as to understand where and by how much.
A separate parameter that I would like to pay attention to is the level of visceral fat. Here not only obese people are at risk, you can be thin with obesity of internal organs. With a normal range of 1 to 9, my number is 12.

The most dangerous type of fat to your health. Visceral fat is the white fat that is found in the abdomen around the organs, liver, pancreas, heart, intestines. Researchers found that visceral fat releases retinol-binding protein 4, which increases insulin resistance. This in turn leads to glucose intolerance and type 2 diabetes.

In addition to the body study, we also underwent a whole body endurance study, determining peak heart rate and tracking the time it takes to get back to normal. This was important in order to determine the training format that would help to maximize your results as quickly as possible without compromising your health. My recommendations are: long duration cardio at a leisurely pace – more even walking than stepping, Pilates, yoga and swimming.
The age of my lungs is 100 years old. And this is perhaps one of the most shocking study results for me. Now I finally understand why my “breathing” sometimes fails me and why crawling is difficult.

The result of the body analysis and recommendations are here.

Anyway, now all that’s left is to set a plan and follow it. The most difficult thing for me is to organize my nutrition. But I will tell you about it and about my new love – Pilates – at the end of the first official week of our experiment, along the whole way with me and Dmitry will be our columnist, wellness coach Andrei Semeshov and my Pilates trainer in the fitness boutique Crocus Fitness Zemlyanoy Val Ravilya Chubarkaeva.