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How losing weight helped me find a hobby.

by | About Me, Fitness, Health, Personal Stuff

Right until I started college I was a really skinny boy. I have never been a sports guy but I did practice some martial arts; Taekwondo and Kuk Sool Won to be more precise. I would recommend practicing martial arts to anyone at any point in their lives (the sooner the better) as I think helps you to develop a very disciplined mindset. And that will help you well beyond the dojo. Just when I started college I was so overwhelmed by the whole experience (new mates, lots of homework and projects) that I put my Kuk Sool classes aside and never went back, something now I can say I regret.

Starting a new experience: College

Just after I started college I was so overwhelmed by the whole experience (new mates, lots of homework and projects) that I put my Kuk Sool classes aside and never went back, something now I can say I regret.

College has been without a doubt the most amazing part of my life so far. I met some great friend, I discovered secret passions I had like politics, marketing, and business. And I also met the woman who would become my wife years later.

All these experiences took a toll on my metabolism, I changed my eating habits and I also started to eat a lot of junk food (like a normal college guy would do, right?). Well, that behavior change made me go from a barely 53 Kg (117 lb) to almost 90 Kg (198 lb).

The extra weight didn’t bother me and now when I look at pictures from that time with friends and family everybody seem to agree to the fact they do not remember to perceive me as heavy as I look at the pictures.

Diet and excercise

It wasn’t food and diet the only thing that was not helping with my weight issue, I didn’t exercise at all and I started to smoke like there was no tomorrow. I think is safe to say that was a point in my life where I didn’t care much about my health. So, one day I decided to join a gym and to pay a trainer to see if I got rid of that extra weight I gained after so many years of enjoying life at its fullest with no regard to what I ate. I also started a diet, a really awful diet. One of those diets on which you have to take some natural pills, barely eat and practically die of starvation. I lost almost 21 Kg (46 lb) in just three months. Amazing, I was feeling like a new man, I still had 3-5 Kg (7-11 lb) more to go but I felt like I was over it already.

Fixing bad decision

I was not surprised about having a weight bounce though, and boy did I have one. I gained around 15 Kg (33 lb) just by stopping that wrecked diet and by starting to eat like a normal human being. So I decided to shift gears and to take a more scientific approach to the issue, I’m an engineer after all. I asked my trainer about the diet plan he had talked to me several times in the past and that I refused to follow as I was so convinced in the regime I was following at the time. He told me all about it and it was just simple math. I had to check on my macros and what I should be eating according to my age, height, weight and activity level. It’s really simpler than it sounds. I then started to follow a really permissible diet on which I just had to avoid saturated fats and check on my protein-carb intake. The results were quite slower with this diet but you could feel it was different. There was no shortcut feeling to it and I felt stronger, more energetic as I started to notice a notable change in my body composition.

A life change that boosted my self-confidence

I never had any issues with being overweight in the past, I didn’t suffer from self-esteem issues or being bullied or anything. But getting fitter not only boosted my energy level (I felt more vigorous and “healthy”) but I felt more confident about my physical condition. Scott Gallaway says something about this in his book “The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google”, he says: “Walking into a conference room and feeling that, if shit got real, you could kill and eat the others gives you an edge and confidence” and I second that. It may sound basic and hollow but do not forget we humans are just a different kind of animal, the most developed we like to think.
So that would be an advice I could give to anyone. Be active, find a hobby that makes you move and you’ll enjoy it even more. It didn’t take long for me to stop going to the gym because I wanted to lose weight and start going because I enjoyed it. I’ve developed a very disciplined mindset from my childhood and adolescence experiences with martial arts and that helped me but ultimately the thing that transformed lifting into a hobby for me was the fact that I entered a flow state of mind anytime I started to train, like any other hobby, I get into the zone every time, and that I think make a huge different into what you do to change your life (losing some weight) and what actually change the way you live. Have you had a similar experience? Are you going through this same situation? Leave a comment or share this post on social media so we can keep the conversation.