Essential components.

In order to lose weigh successfully you need at least the following:

• A good electronic scale.
• Depending on the activity that you will perform as your exercise component, you will need the necessary equipment and importantly safety equipment.
• A means to document your goal and progress towards the goal.

Recommendations.

Although this is not essential, it is really recommended:

• A heart rate monitor and/or activity tracker.

Cautions.

When you start your weight loss journey you are at risk that you can harm yourself by exerting yourself beyond your capabilities. It is very important that you don’t push yourself beyond your recommended limits. When you exercise and experience lightheadedness, or any other form of abnormal manifestations, you should stop the activity. It is highly recommended that you consult with your physician in any such event. Rather be safe than sorry.

Taboos.

The only taboos are sugar, bread and by implication cold drinks (what the Americans call soda). Fruit juices, unless it is pure should be avoided too and in my case I decided to stick with water or coffee. Here you should experiment and if your results don’t echo mine I would recommend you back of anything that contains sugar, even fruit juices.

The reason we exercise as part of the weight loss journey.

It is true that you can lose weight without exercise, but you are going to find it hard and at times you might stagnate and it could lead to your motivation waning and finally you will just quit.

When we exercise two things happen:

1. Our bodies produce “feel good” hormones. This lifts our spirit and make us deal with difficulties much easier and relieves stress and importantly keeps us motivated.
2. Our bodies produce growth hormone, which helps our bodies to react to the changes that we are experiencing. With extreme weight loss comes the so-called loose skins and growth hormone helps our bodies to shrink this wrinkly skin. People who exercise generally look good and younger than inactive people. With my combined exercise and weight loss program, I have received many compliments and a lot of those complements were about how good and young I look.

What is the best exercise for me.

If you are more than 10% over your recommended Body Mass Index (BMI), I would caution against jogging as it is very hard on the joints and will harm you in the long run. I also do not recommend that any person with a heavy build or who are bigger than the norm should jog because jogging is very hard on your knees especially. You don’t want knee replacements at an early age and you don’t want to end up in a situation where you have to stop exercising due to a body that fails you as a result of abuse.

Cycling is an excellent sport and has been wonderful for me in achieving my goals. It is light on your joints and has an automatic interval training component because you work hard up hill and then recover going downhill. Many success stories regarding weight loss are based on people combining changed eating habits with cycling.

Some people struggle with cycling initially due to a number of issues and sometimes you are just scared you are going to fall. It is recommended that you get some assistance from somebody who can help with basic riding skills. Most bicycle outlets will be able to assist with that and there are some excellent videos produced on YouTube by Global Mountain Biking Network and Global Cycling Network. Here are some links that you can follow:

Top 10 Essential MTB Skills – Ten Mountain Bike Handling … – YouTube

5 Basic Skills Every Mountain Biker Should Know – YouTube

5 Cycling Skills Every Bike Rider Needs – YouTube

These channels are free to watch and you can subscribe to them with some wonderful information that will make your cycling a safe and enjoyable activity.

Power walking is a better alternative to running if you are very heavy and could be very effective in becoming fit and losing weight.

Swimming is another good exercise but it is very difficult to gauge your progress when you use aids like heart rate monitors as they don’t work under water.

If you want to jog, I therefore suggest that you start with an activity other than jogging until you reach a weight where the stress on your joints will be less harmful – recommendation no more than 10% over your BMI.

Most important is that you can perform the activity that you elect as your means to exercise, in a safe environment. I am not going to expand on that here as I need to focus on the weight loss activity for now. If you want to know more about safety tips and how to get groups together, please leave a comment and we can address it in a future blog.

Starting the weight loss process.

First things first.

So now we are motivated and all ready to go, but first things first.

1. First you must put your electronic scale in a place where it wouldn’t be disturbed too much. Make sure it is in a place where the floor is solid and straight. You don’t want the scale to move because you want your results to be consistent. I suggest you check your reading a number of times just to make sure you don’t get different readings. There is nothing so demoralising as a scale that tells a different story every time you get on it.
2. Secondly if you don’t have an app or spreadsheet to use as a means to document and manage your weight goal and progress, put a chart against the wall right there where your scale is. Put your target weight on this piece of paper, big and bold and underneath record the date and current weight. You can do a lot with this and I suggest you become a bit creative. If you document your daily weight recordings in a graph it will be a wonderful way of showing the downward trend in your weight loss and will be a great motivating factor. Of course when you purchase something like a Tomtom Spark 3 cardio, you get the added bonus of a free app that does a lot of this for you and then some extra information like activity tracking that will provide you with information like how many hours sleep you get per night, your resting heart beat which gives you an indication of health and fitness and a host of other useful things like exercise plans, heart rate zones and maximum heart rate that will hugely benefit you and the efficiency of your weight loss journey.

Weigh in.

On the first day that you start this weight loss journey, you will get on your scale first thing in the morning. Weigh yourself once a day. Don’t be compulsive and don’t come back every 5 minutes to see if there is a change. Now record this weight with the date. If you are heavier tomorrow, don’t record it but only when your weight comes down again below the last recording that you put on the wall. If your weight continues to rise above your last recording, there is reason for concern and then you should look at what you eat and how you exercise. I don’t see that happening however if you follow my instructions exactly.

So your daily weigh-in is complete. Depending on your circumstances, you will now either drive to work and go past a gym on your way there or you are going to jump into your activity.

Start exercising.

When you start your exercise activity there are two things to consider:

1. How much time do you have.
2. Your physical condition.

I do not recommend training for more than an hour. Anything between 45 minutes and an hour would work for you. At this time the intensity of the exercise needs to be fairly easy as you are not yet fit and you do not want to harm yourself.

Under recommendations above, I said a heart rate monitor is strongly advised. The reason is quite simple. With a heart rate monitor, you are able to see exactly what is happening with your heart as you put on the pressure and you can also control the level of intensity of the exercise. If you exercise without a heart rate monitor you are effectively training blind and although you can and I have achieved great results this way, it is not an easy path and in my experience the chance that you are going to over train is very high. In my case I started experiencing heart palpitations and I got the flue for no reason at all. These are signs of over training. So once again I recommend very highly that you look at a heart rate monitor. Please indicate in the comments if you need some advise on this.

A second reason why I recommend a heart rate monitor is because they provide you with the heart rate zones for your age. There are zones for fat burn, speed, stamina and power. This is an enormous help in gauging where you should restrict your heart rate and on top of that some devices provide you with interval training exercises that focus on these areas, namely fat burn, speed power etc.

And of course you will know what your recovery rate is (an indication of fitness) and you will have much improved results for the amount of time you spend exercising. Here specifically you will benefit from interval training which will give you an after burn effect that will let your body burn calories for between 10 and 72 hours after exercise. If you consider this benefit alone it effectively means you don’t have to exercise every day and you will still see amazing results in losing weight and gaining fitness and improved health. I will do a blog on interval training soon.

When do you eat breakfast?

Personally I like exercising first thing in the morning and having breakfast as soon as possible after that. My experience is that exercise has the effect on me that I lose my appetite and therefore I have to almost force myself to eat. It is also good to eat as soon as you can after exercise to restore your glycogen. This is my experience and recommendation, but you may have specific challenges in this regard and therefore not be able to follow this guideline. Let’s hear some comments if you need this addressed in a future blog.

As said before, make your breakfast a protein affair. You can eat eggs, cream, cheese, meat (I like patties – beef or ostrich, beef or pork sausages or mince). Be creative and consume this either on its own or in combinations to your liking. There is really no big deal about this. Just experiment with what you like and be creative. If you don’t like experiments, just fry some eggs and sprinkle some grated cheese and cream over it and if you want to add some fried mince. If you want to be fancy, go ahead. This is not a diet, it is a guideline but the fact that you eat protein in the morning will benefit you by giving your body the right start and you will not be hungry in the next hour or so like when you eat oats or cereal.

Lunch.

Eat whatever you want but do it before you get hungry, so I found about 12:00 to 12:30 worked out well for me. Don’t eat too much but include some fat in your diet. This will give you energy and will tell your body it’s had enough food. Wait a little bit of time before you drink anything and then have your favourite beverage. If you want it sweet use artificial sweeteners, but if you can go without it. In my case I like strong filtered coffee with cream. You decide what you like and see how it works out for you.

Supper.

For most people supper is the greatest challenge. Many people get home too late to adhere to my instruction to not eat after 17:00 (5 pm) in the afternoon. The guideline here is either before 17:00 or 5 hours before you go to bed. So if you can’t prepare your evening meal before 5, you will need to make some changes.

My personal experience worked as follows:

If you have to prepare your meals in the afternoon after work, pack it up and take it to work the next day and eat it at lunch.

If you are too late to make something to eat before 5 in the afternoon, take some Future Life with you and prepare it as a shake with water or a combination of water and milk and/or cream. This shake becomes a meal replacement shake. You can also make a shake with whey powder if you have access to a basic kitchen or any open space where you won’t bother people. The whey powder shake consists of the following ingredients:

• 500 ml milk
• 1 table spoon peanut butter
• 3 table spoons whey powder (Get it from Dischem)
• 3 table spoons skimmed milk
• Vanilla essence (not essential but tastes nice)

Optional

• Add a teaspoon honey if you want it sweeter
• Add a bit of future life if you need energy to exercise the next day but first see if it is necessary as many people don’t need that extra energy
• If you are not going to exercise the next day you could add an egg or two for more protein

Mix this well in a shake bottle or with an electric whisk.

Summary.

This pretty much sums up your day and if you follow these basic instructions you will lose weight at a rate of approximately a kilogram a week.

Please let me know in the comments what I have missed an I will come back with answers on that.

Enjoy the journey.