I would be so happy if I told you that it was a pill or a drink or a detox to lose weight. Obviously if it were that easy wouldn't we all be slim-blim. When I met Karthik for 3rd time in 2019 even he noticed that I was gaining weight quite fast. He asked me to get on the scale. I was so scared because obviously i avoided the scales. It hit 104kgs!!
I was mortified but my man he was like, "okay we will be going to gym". No reaction, no giggle, no dismay. No expression of disgust. It was just a number for him and he was already planning how we will work to lose it.
I know you ladies have your lifepartners who have no issues with your weight. Embrace them. These men are rare. Although I personally wanted to give my partner the gift of having a healthy partner. I did not want to impose my unhealthy eating and lifestyle on him because that is common among couples. Gaining weight in love shows your comfort in the relationship. It may not always show you are happy because people binge-eat when depressed as well. Anyway it's easy to have your partner get used to your habits if done over many months or years. In my case, Karthik never had likness for KFC but when I went to meet him in the US and we had KFC every now and then. When I came back to Fiji, he said few times that he wanted to eat KFC. I was full of guilt because i knew i had imposed my habit on him. That too in just 2 months!!!
Well fastforward to our 3rd meeting, I started going to gym. My focus was cardio! I did not do any heavy weight lift, no body workout. All I did was use the machines- treadmill, bicycle and elliptical. I spent one hour in the gym and with 10-15 minutes on treadmill, I never ran because I used to get too tired therefore I walked briskly-basically walking really fast with few seconds of jogging(I couldn't even run for a minute).
I will be sharing my insight of the machines I used in my next blog.
Having a supportive partner is unbelievably helpful because we are humans. We need help and support of people we love. If you have no one then help and support your ownself. Yes, its helpful to have someone else but it's not an absolute necessity. Although I am always a message away to anyone who needs support because I believe if I can help just 1 person it is a win for me.
I thought to myself after the KFC incident, well if i imposed my bad habit on my lifepartner then that meant i can also impose good habits. That meant that I had to firstly have good habits to impose it on my partner.
Hence my first dietary change I made was that I stopped eating rice(it is massively helpful because eating roti and drinking 3 liters of water helped me be full for longer hours then only eating rice. Also roti has lesser carbs/grams compared to rice). I left rice altogether at once but that may be hard for some people as some people have weaker self control than others. Although that does not mean you can give yourself the liberty to eat mindlessly while using the excuse of poor self control. That would just mean you don't want to try and if that's you then I suggest you stop reading this blog right now. For the rest, you can start by doing portion control- increase dhal intake and reduce rice by half of your initial intake, avoid refilling your plate and eat in a bowl if possible.
Eating in small bowls helped me immensely because I had less space to take more food. Also drink water before, during and after eating. Drinking water does NOT dilute your stomach acids or whatsoever, it actually aids in digestion and helps you get full. So keep gulping- you'll pee alot though. Also I had to stop eating I restaurants, I know it's hard but restaurants specifically make their food fatty and delicious to get their customers back. It's their business strategy while we get delicious food we have zero control of salt, sauce, oil, cream and every component that is added to the dish. If I did eat McDonalds- once a month- I ordered 2-3 pieces of hot and spicy thigh only and water. Its delicious and you're full. I replaced burgers by using chicken patties, salad and roti to make wraps.
Few weeks later Karthik told me that he also started to eat roti most of the time. Can you believe it??! I felt so good and accomplished because my bae was adapting my good habits while he was in America and I was in Fiji. I probably did impose my habits on him while being so far away. Heres a note, I never asked him to do that but I always encouraged him, told him how it was helping me. It was his decision to make that lifestyle change and that is important. If you force some changes on people, especially drastic changes, they may do it out of the love they have for you but they won't be able to keep up with this new imposed habit basically because they did not want it themselves in the first place.
In most household, ladies are the ones who cook, but even men if you handle the food in your house you can control what your family eats. Replace salt with lemon, add more vegetables, cut on sugar slowly. Your family's tastebuds wouldn't realize the small changes and soon it would be their habits without them realizing. It's hard because some family members are too uptight about their food but then again if not them then just do it for your ownself only.
Take charge of your relationship and start by eating healthy and exercising. Your wife or husband deserves the healthy version of you. Dont you want to be free of heart disease, blood pressure problems. People end up spending years of their lives taking care of their partners who have had strokes and we do not want to this to be our reality as well. Wouldnt you want to be able to wear lingerie and feel all sexy. Wouldnt you want to be able to hold and lift your wives and "show off" your strength(lovingly).
I know it's hard to lose weight, making dietary changes is hard but guess what- battling heart disease, stroke, paralysis, cancer, depression and broken marriage is harder. Choose which hard would you want to be part of your life.
It's high time to break that generational curse of unhealthy lifestyle.
