There are tons of exercise and diet plans around. So many, that it’s hard to find the right one for you. However, there are a few truths within all of the information available. First, they all work. If you commit to the plan and see it through, you will see results. That leads me onto the second truth; most people will fail. They will be unable to commit to the plan for whatever reason, and give up.
My issue with food has always been the consumption outside of meals. Mid-morning snacks and evening treats, with the latter being the bigger issue. I’d often have various sweets, treats, crisps and biscuits after 7pm. In addition to eating surplus food from the evening meal, this lead to eating too much. I also drank full calorie fizzy drinks most days, with Coca Cola being my preferred choice.
Rather than follow a plan of eating things I don’t enjoy, or having to weigh out food, or measure every piece of intake, I decided to suit myself with my food and drink choices. I wanted to make a change that would last me forever, rather than for a short term weight loss. Kale shakes would not be a forever change for me. My choice was simple – keep the stuff I like and remove the crap and excess. I would eat my same meals each day, making sure I didn’t go for seconds. I’d make a choice about what snacks, if any, I would have, and keep these to a very low quantity. I’d know roughly in advance what was good and bad in volume and choices, and therefore stick to this rough idea, making sure I don’t give in to temptation and whim. I’d also remove full fat fizzy drinks, moving to diet versions when I had them, but also largely removing them entirely. With a bit of willpower, it’s actually not that difficult a change to make, and something that I can continue to live with. I don’t go without the odd treat, and eat pretty much the same meals as I did before.
Diet is only one part of the work I’ve done. I’ve also been working out 4-5 times a week. I’m lucky to have a decent weights setup in my garage, along with an exercise bike. I head out for each workout session, work out for between 30 minutes and an hour, then come back into the house and put another number on the board. Simple as that. I just make sure I earn that number by working in the gym, rather than messing around and killing time with easy exercises. I’ll go into what I do in the gym in another post, as it may be useful to some. I’ve refined some things over the weeks, added some elements and increased the weight across the board, focused on making life difficult to make the progress.
Ultimately, what I’ve done so far is as simple as making body changes gets. I’ve eaten less and moved more. That is the fundamental way you make a change, and though there are tons of variants on the specific methods, if you cover both of the elements, you can make progress too.
