A few kilos off

Hard to get them off; even harder to keep them away...

I have been wanting to write this post since March, but I waited until now to make sure the kilos would stay away. During January and February this winter I made a serious effort and lost 6 kilos. Several friends have asked for the recipe and I promised that it would come. You might remember that I have a history of overweight, and I have to constantly watch what I eat, although i train several hours per day, in average.

At the time I lost the big weight all those years ago, I was told that it would take the body a couple of years to get used to the new weight. During this time the body would all the time try to get back to the same high weight again, so one had to be extra careful. Unfortunately, new research indicates that this period is much longer than two years. In fact, if the overweight lasted over a longer time, the body might try to get back to that weigh for many years, perhaps the rest of its life... Many of my friends keep telling me that I could eat all I want since my training volume is quite high. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way.

Although I found this pretty unfair in the beginning, I am now used to it. I know that I need to eat well to recover and to be able to train efficiently. I do actually eat a lot, but mainly vegetables, lean meats and whole grains. My one weakness is wine. I enjoy so much taking a glass of wine every now and then, but its effect on my weight is not good. It seems to block my system and make more trouble than the number of calories it contains. Still I manage to balance all these things with training, and for longer periods it all works pretty well. But a few hundred grams here and there might sneak in unnoticed every now and then, and suddenly in December discovered that I was about four kilos more than I was at the same time two years ago. Desperate that things would get worse during Christmas, and motivated by the fact that it was a low intensity time with respect to training and upcoming races, I decided to lose those four kilos and two more. And it worked! My goal was to lose 6 kilos until the end of February, and I made it just in time.

Losing a few kilos, when you are actually normal weight, is in some sense harder than to lose a lot of weigh when you are really overweight. First of all, you don't really need to lose that weight, so the motivation is naturally lower. For me, it was to be able to race faster. For others it might be to fit into some clothes that have become a bit too tight. Secondly, the first couple of kilos go pretty fast, and then you feel happy about yourself and relax and then everything goes back to start. Here are a few steps that helped me reach my goal:

 1. Do it with a friend. Both when I lost all that weight many years ago, and also this time, I did it together with friends in a similar situation. This time, one of my best friends who is also a runner, wanted to lose exactly the same number of kilos, and we were a great support for each other throughout the period. She also reached her goal at the same time, but on the way both of us would have down periods with lacking motivation. It was wonderful to be able to write to the other "I want to stop, I want to eat chocolate, I am hungry, I am fed up" etc, and get an uplifting, motivating feedback. Every Monday morning we would text each other with the weight of that day, and give each other kudos. We would also text many times during the week, especially when we were up to challenging situations.

In fact, for some reason most of us like to keep to ourselves about wanting to lose weight. But when you are open about it, you discover that you have many friends in the same situation, even surprisingly many men. I found out that a group of my male running friends also had a similar support group during the same time to lose approximately the same number of kilos. I exchanged with them experiences and challenges every time we met, and this helped me a lot to stay focused and motivated.

2. Write down everything you put into your mouth. This is actually the most important point. In my experience there is no other way to make it work. Since I was used to Grete Roede from my previous experience, I used their tools also this time. It works perfectly in Norway. They have almost everything that is available in the supermarkets in their web tool, you can choose from an easy menu, the calories come up automatically. The page also suggests a daily calorie intake for you, distributed to various meals, and calculates for you how well you are doing in different food categories. I know that there are many other similar pages. Many of them are free of charge and work perfectly. Just choose whatever works well for you.

3. Report your weight to some 'authority'. This works magics for me! During a Grete Roede course, you go on a scale once a week while the course instructor watches you. This time, I made a deal with Ketil, my dear friend and world's best personal trainer, that I would go on the Barry's Bootcamp scale every Tuesday morning at 8 am, just before our PT session. I made clear my goal for him, and the fact that I did not want to disappoint him made me more rigorous in my efforts, I think.

4. Be prepared that it will take time. Even if it's a few kilos, don't try to get them off quickly. If they go off quickly, then they will for sure come back soon enough. You don't need a quick diet and then you can go on on as before. You need to either change your habits, or remind yourself of your old good habits and get back into them. There are a few boosters that you might want to try, though. Like fasting (juicing). This is so healthy in so many other ways than just to lose weight, that I think it can be recommended. I did it twice during these 9-10 weeks, and both times it helped a lot both for motivation and to get things going again. It also teaches you to deal with hunger, and you realize after a couple of days that you can actually endure going a bit hungry every now an then.

5. Do regular strength training when you are losing weight so that you don't lose muscles, just fat.

So what about the end of the story? Did the 6 kilos stay away? Well most of them did. Two of them came back, so now I am back to where I was at the end of 2014 when I was pretty happy about my weight. After the holidays, though, I might still make an effort to get rid off those two again. In the end:

No matter what my weight is, there are always two kilos that I want to lose :-D