Recently I reached my goal, and my weight is 85 kg. It was a journey to get there, and since I started posting my progress on Twitter, I became more intrigued to write a post, reflect on the last couple of months and what it means for me to go through this change both for my body and mind.
At the end of January I decided that 2019 it’s going to be the year that I’m going to lose some weight and be more active. I like to keep my promises and I’m happy to report that I’m down 20 kg since then. 💪🏼
— Agis Tsaraboulidis (@agisilaosts) April 12, 2019
At the start of 2019, I felt that I needed to make a change. Back then, I wasn’t sure what kind of change. At the end of 2018, I was feeling tired and without much energy throughout the day. That was because I wasn’t so active, and my nutrition wasn’t either balanced or good for my body.
After much consideration, I decided to change my nutrition and be more active. I started at the end of January. From when I was a kid, I always remember two pieces of advice from my father; “Baby steps, you’re learning something new. Don’t rush it.” and “If you put your mind into it, you can do it.”
I follow his pieces of advice ever since. One of the first things I did was to visit a nutritionist. She helped me to change my mindset about food and nutrition. I started eating more times than before: 5 meals/day. It’s more balanced, full of veggies and fruits. That schedule helped my metabolism and me as a whole to have a more structured plan when it comes to food. One of the most significant changes I made was to cut white bread and sugar entirely out of my diet.
At the same time and after a couple of visits to my nutritionist, I observed my weight going down tremendously “fast.” It wasn’t only because of the change I made to my nutrition. I started being more active, as well. When I mention to people that my primary exercise is fast-paced walking, they either laugh or have a weird expression on their face. Either way, they don’t believe me at first. I don’t blame them; walking is an underrated exercise.
Believe it or not, fast-paced walking is my primary exercise. I walk every day for an hour to one hour and thirty minutes. Walking does wonders for my brain and body. While walking, I can relax or think of any engineering problem I’m dealing with at the time. Most of the time, I find a solution to the problem during my walks. Walking allows my brain to unwind. In addition to that, I hit the gym three times/week.
I can talk about walking and how much I love it for days, but that’s not the purpose of this post. If you want to know why walking is a superpower, I highly recommend reading “In Praise of Walking” by Shane O’Mara
As I look back, many other smaller things helped me to achieve my goal. It’s the small things that make a difference. One of those things is the Apple Watch and the relationship I developed with it. Another thing was that a couple of my friends were going through the same phase of losing weight and be more active. Many times I didn’t want to hit the trail, but afterward, I felt so much better by doing so.
In my experience, the workout app is one of the most well-designed apps on the watch. It’s the whole experience from timely notifications to let you know that you need to be more active, a tap on your wrist to inform you that you closed a ring to how easy it is to check what music or podcast is playing with just a swipe.
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| Move back and forth from and to the Now Playing screen with just a swipe |
My favorite feature of the workout app is the ability to change the focus between distance, km, calories, and pace using the digital crown during a workout. Every type of information uses a different color, so every time I look down to check the stats, my eyes are going to focus on the colored piece of information.
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| Screenshot with the colored piece of information in focus |
Most of the days, I close my move and exercise rings before 12 pm. I enjoy working out as soon as I wake up around 7:00 am and after my meditation session. Today isn’t one of those days. 🙈 It’s a great way to kick off the day. The morning isn’t the only time I get out for a walk. I use walking as a way to relax and unwind. I like to call them “creative walks.”
I use my Apple Watch daily to keep track of my steps, water intake, heart rate, and how many calories I burn, among other things. It’s a smart computer on my wrist. More specifically, I use Pedometer++ to keep track of my steps. I like its simple design and watch complications, but most importantly, I love the ability to export all of my information in a spreadsheet format. It’s a great way to check out my progress every week and to have all the data available to me at any point.
For my water intake, I created a shortcut and ran it every time I drink water to log it. It’s pretty simple but at the same time, such an elegant way to do it.
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| Shortcut for logging my water intake |
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| Shortcut for logging my water intake |
I want to keep the stack of the apps I use for my well being as simple as possible. For tracking the calories, I burn throughout the day; I use the activity app on my phone and watch. Since I don’t need anything more specific than just basic stats, the activity app works like a charm.
The Apple Watch played and still plays a huge role in my life. But it’s only part of the story. Another habit I changed and helped me tremendously in the last couple of months was to start drinking more water. Nowadays, I drink between 3 to 4L per day. Many people underestimate the importance of water intake. Personally, it helped me to lose weight and boost my performance during workouts, among other things. Don’t forget to stay hydrated friends.
Whenever I’m trying to change one of my habits, I always think of consistency as an essential part of the process. I feel consistency is hugely underrated among people. Thinking of making a change is one thing, but showing up every day to make progress towards your goal is a different one.
In my experience, I showed up every single day and walked for a 1h at least. It helped me form a new habit, and even though at the start, I couldn’t see any results, as I went through it, I was able to spot a lot of changes related to my body, mood, and overall energy.
Now I can’t even imagine my day without going for a walk. The same happened to me when I decided to change my nutrition and eating habits. I had to be consistent with it. I had to follow a specific schedule, no matter what. (at least at the start). Consistency and dedication are the most significant factors that helped me to lose weight.
Last but not least, I want to mention how important it is to have people around you that they’re going through the same process as you. In my case, these folks where Ben Lehnert and Cat Noone. It was pretty fun because we had the chance to talk about our struggles, share our tips, and make suggestions of what books we should read. Most importantly, we hold each other accountable.
As I’m looking back, it was the combination of all of these things that helped me through that period of my life. Going through that process, I was able to learn a lot of things about myself, what it means to be active in general, and taking care of myself. But that’s a topic for another post.
I hope I gave you a pretty good overview of what I did to become more active, among other things. It wasn’t a pleasant experience all the time, but in the end, it was worth it. I’m far from over. I have other ideas about what I want to focus on now. Are you into working out, or thinking of starting to become more active? Let’s talk shop at Twitter @agisilaosts