If I Had To Lose 56 Pounds All Over Again, I Would Do These Things Sooner.
I could’ve shed the weight in a fraction of the time
At 35, I was a clinically obese office worker weighing 101 kg.
One day, everything changed for me.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a breaking news announcement interrupting every television broadcast in the U.K.
“from this evening, I must give the British people a very simple instruction — you must stay at home!”
The government enforced countrywide lockdowns because of a bat virus outbreak, and the only people allowed out of their houses were “key workers.”
I worked in sales for a logistics company, but somehow, they managed to Harry Houdini around the rules.
There I was, sitting in that “fast-paced and exciting environment” with divider shields between me and anyone with a pulse and a one-way system around the building to make me feel like I belonged on a conveyor belt.
It nuked my anxiety and turned me into a walking vegetable that couldn’t string a sentence together.
In a bizarre twist, it triggered a lunch walking habit that I used as a tactic to ease that tightening vice gripping my chest.
I transformed into a walking addict.
All I thought about was going for a walk for the mental benefit of some fresh air and made no association with it being exercise.
Or the fact that I was sewing the seeds of a habit that would lead to a life-changing transformation.
I melted 56 pounds of fat permanently, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing, and there was a sea of trial and error I could have avoided.
I could have cut my learning curve in half and accelerated my progress more rapidly. You can, too.
Let’s dive in.
First, you have to escape from your self-destructive loop.
When I was shaped like a soup sandwich, I got high as a kite on the dopamine buzz of planning my fitness goals.
Scheming and mapping out what I intended to do made me feel good, but I never even started.
I enjoyed the promise I’d make to myself and committing my future intentions to paper while simultaneously sliding back into my short-term self-destructive and never-ending loop of lousy habits.
I was waiting for a new Monday, a new month, or even a new year to get started.
Research shows my plans were a lie and a delay tactic to make me feel good about some fake progress. The psychological reason is called“temporal discounting” or “hyperbolic discounting.”
It’s where people (commonly) prefer smaller immediate rewards instead of the distant promise of becoming healthier.
It makes perfect sense.
As soon as I stepped foot in that gym, I could almost picture the letters to my goals hopelessly falling off a page.
I prioritised immediate rewards, like drinks with friends or that box of Krispy Kremes, my KitKat addiction, the chicken chow mein when I got home, or skipping the gym because I had a busy work week.
All those short-term things were more enticing than the distant promise of getting healthy.
It’s a loop you need to break out of, first and foremost, by actually starting.
Here’s how.
Unleash significant results with the most minor step first.
You’ll finish with significant results if you start “tiny” and keep adding.
I started with a lunchtime walk, which then turned into a morning stroll, which meant I was out pounding the pavement in the evening.
Then, I decided to do my first run, which was borderline pathetic — I don’t think I made it to the end of the road. But I tried again and got a little further.
My running routine resembled a beat-up Toyota — some days, I’d rev up, slam the gas, hit the brakes, take a detour, and even U-turn back home.
But it grew slowly to 5km runs three times a week, which then snowballed into a gym membership when Boris told us it was okay to exercise again, lol.
I was acutely aware I was losing weight, but I never thought while walking or running — yay, I’m losing weight here.
It made me realise I had been doing this entire fitness thing wrong. I was doing it back-to-front.
I had this idea of a Goggins gym routine planned in my head with a diet of a lettuce-eating rabbit.
It was a major stumbling block.
My progress accelerated once I flipped this round to leaning into less intimidating stuff.
Momentum became a savage.
My brainwashed expectations, presumably from Hollywood lies, created overwhelm, which crippled me.
It stops you from starting as it did for me.
Stop thinking you’re in a Rocky film, and to defeat your Ivan Drago, you must train at the equivalent level of a Russian training camp.
Start small.
If that’s too intimidating, think even more minuscule.
Just start.
Get help sooner.
I talk a lot about accountability only because it was the most significant unlock in my fitness journey.
I literally had to look at myself in the mirror and ask —
“Do you think you can get rid of this flab when you’re addicted to chocolate, inconsistent with your exercise, love beer and deep down you don’t actually know how to lose the weight?”
The answer was no to all of the above.
Getting help should have been at the top of the totem pole because someone out there had already invented the weight loss wheel.
An old business partner always used to say to me, “Every problem has a solution, and someone out there has solved it — the trick is finding them”.
When I made the financial commitment and joined a friend’s programme, it was like a cheat code for weight loss.
I lost most of the 56 pounds in the space of 4 months.
You should re-think who you take advice from.
Absorbing bad advice is like driving a car with the handbrake on.
It’s more subtle than you might imagine.
I would sit in my office, and people my age (35 at the time) would say things like:
“Your metabolism slows down when you get to our age — it’s just how it is.”
“If you’re a man, that’s where you put weight on — around your belly.”
“Why would anyone want to look like that (chiselled abs)? I want to enjoy my life, not be stuck in a gym — thank you.”
I was surrounded by the “it’s just how it is” mentality.
They’re actual things people around me would say, which may seem pretty harmless, but they were a Trojan Horse because, over time, they erode at your self-belief.
Once I swapped one dumb opinion for an expert’s view, it changed my entire perspective on losing weight and sped up the process.
My friend AJ Ellison, a three-time world body champion, hopped on a call with me once, and we chatted about all things weight loss.
He spoke to me as if losing weight was a formality, and nothing could stop me apart from the torturous ‘hand me down’ story I absorbed from work colleagues.
When he spoke to me, all I heard were words of hope, not defeat.
Find your expert.
Start strong and stay ahead by doing this from the go.
I’ve been a full-time writer for two years, but only recently have I decided to time myself and record how much time I spend writing.
Before I started this exercise, it felt like I always did a full day of writing, but my little stop clock told me I was only doing around 4 hours in the actual weeds of writing.
The rest was fluff like my midday YouTube K-hole disguised as research.
Health experts say we do the same regarding our health and wellness. We overestimate our output when it’s not measured.
But a magical thing happens when we measure what we’re doing.
Research shows tracking becomes motivating because it exposes us. The awareness of where you are with your progress gives you a springboard to propel you to higher heights.
Looking back, I would have tracked more right from the start, including earlier progress pictures of me looking like a slob.
Surprisingly, studies have shown that you don’t always need to track all the time. Just dipping in and out and keeping tabs on your progress can make a significant difference.
Scientifically proven research shows:
“Specifically in this trial, we find that people only need to track around 30% of the days to lose more than 3% weight and 40% of the days to lose more than 5% weight, or almost 70% of days to lose more than 10% weight. The key point here is that you don’t need to track every day to lose a clinically significant amount of weight.”
When I turned my aimless walks into something I tracked, 10,000 steps soon became a thing I was obsessed with. I pegged my daily routine to hitting those steps and weighing myself.
Like my walking habit that snowballed into unshakable momentum, so did my tracking, which overflowed into other areas.
Soon, what started as steps and weighing myself turned into progress pictures and scanning and tracking my food intake, the final boss of being a monitoring Jedi.
If I had followed my food intake from week one, I’d have melted fat faster because the progress would have been self-perpetuating.
You can read more about starting small with tracking here — Small Steps To Enormous Progress.
Final Thoughts.
Everyone is on a different part of their journey, but there’s a lot here you’ll resonate with.
If you’re after speed and progress, it starts by putting the spade down, stopping the digging, and breaking out of whatever loop you’re in.
The only way I got out of that loop was by removing the roadblocks of intimidation and doing something small I could string together daily.
Being prepared to go slow was how I went fast.
Once I built up some momentum, I kept stacking new things on. Walks snowballed into runs, which then turned me into a gym junkie. It snowballed quicker by starting smaller.
Like a friend used to say to me, “When you have something, you have to protect it at all costs.”
I had to protect my progress by blocking uneducated opinions, but my actual shield was getting help from an expert to whom I could be accountable.
When I finally took the plunge and got help, it was like injecting Nitrous oxide into my engine.
I’m glad I have the experience to call on, but I could’ve saved myself half the time.
Put your phone down and start now.
What are you waiting for?
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Great achievement jayden keep going brother 💪💎