Loss is typically a bad thing. There's various types of it too. You got the loss of a beloved one, blood loss etc., but today I just feel like writing about the good kind, at least for me: weight loss.

It'll be rather brief, as I'm short on time these days.

History

In 2008 or so, when I was 6 years old, I was pretty standard and slim, something I absolutely cannot imagine today. I recall being able to do 10 to 20 push-ups at age 8, and I felt agile in all kinds of ways. I was perfectly alright.

In 2012/2013, I must've been about 160cm tall. But I also clearly remember weighing about 70kg. Every day, I'd eat a couple bags of chips, drink a can of Coke, and certainly a whole lot of fast food. Hot dogs, fries, pizza... I also ate considerably a lot. As a result of all that, I felt like a Pentium 4-630 trying to perform basic tasks in this day and age - very sluggish. It was somewhat difficult to stand up, let alone move.

It didn't get all that much better by 2016, either. I was probably 170cm tall, weighing almost 80kg. I felt a little better though, somehow I got stronger.
2017 and 2018 saw me reach 85kg or so, and I was around 175cm tall. My height hasn't changed much since, I'm 176cm now, so we can stop mentioning height.

Now let me tell you something. In 2017, I started walking A LOT more, because I had to walk from the bus station to high school and back every day. This amounted to about 30 minutes of walking each day, 2.5 hours of walking every week. In 2019, I was extremely relieved to see my weight hit its ceiling, or at least it seemed to. I also ate significantly less than in 2015, so that helped.

Then, 2020 happened, and so did the pandemic, and online classes started. I was no longer walking, in fact I stayed at home way more than I ever did in life. Within a year, my weight skyrocketed to 91, maybe 92kg at some point. I think I felt destroyed when I realised that. It all contributed to me feeling not so good that year.

2021 finally arrived and I soon realised some things after I finished high school that year. I didn't have P.E. class IRL whatsoever, it was all online. Most classes were IRL, but P.E. was online, among two others. Thing is, there was no P.E. at all any more. So that made me think about some things rather critically.

Change

I realised I could change some key things:

• Lack of exercise -> light exercise, walking outside regularly. Later I realised I primarily wanna focus on cardio stuff and secondarily some strength training - don't have any resources for the latter though. Still, exercising is good.
• Eating a lot -> eating enough. This one has been the MOST CRUCIAL to me. Just eat less. It's SO simple, it was in front of my nose the entire time, yet I failed to stick to it for so long. Thankfully I now finally have the ability to resist the taste and only eat to satisfy my hunger, no matter how loud my taste buds scream for more.
• No more chips and snacks like that. Just no. Pure unhealth. So much salt. I'd only eat one of these as a last resort thing.
• No more Coke - only once every New Year's Eve. The amount of sugar in that thing is absolutely gargantuan.
• Reduce chocolate by 80%. Sugar. I have enough of it in fruit I eat.
• Reduce other carbonated drinks by 50%. Sugar again.
• Drink more water. I noticed I rarely ever drank water, and ever since I started doing it regularly, I've felt less bloated.
• Eat far less generic white bread, and try healthier kinds of bread (e.g. whole-grain bread). Whole-grain bread doesn't taste as well as white bread to me, and it isn't so soft to chew, and honestly? That's a good thing, means I won't be able to eat too much of it! Hell yeah.

It wasn't too easy. I clearly remember the first couple weeks I was just CRAVING for chips, chocolate, some juices etc., but I managed to resist the urge. I haven't eaten chips in over 6 months now, and I eat chocolate on some occasions. Once you realise that the food industry wants you to be addicted to foods like those, it becomes a bit easier to fight the addiction, at least it was for me.

Anyway, from early 2021 to the start of 2023, without me even noticing it, I went from 90-ish kg down to 84kg. It is absolutely unfathomable to me that, after nearly 20 years of non-stop gaining weight, I somehow started losing it. You have no idea how relieved and happy I felt when I measured that, and I hadn't measured it in a loong time.

In retrospect

While I was growing up, I honestly believed it's all about exercise. Gotta do them push-ups, gotta do them sit-ups, planking, weight lifting and lots of running. But honestly, that's just part of the story, and you don't need to be that devoted to exercising in particular if you just wanna lose some weight. Unless you'd like to build some muscle, of course. But no, what I realised was, all I really needed was to just eat less.

It was that simple. It was in front of my nose the entire time. Just. Eat. Less. It helped a tremendous lot that I had experience fasting during Ramazan/Ramadan, so I was able to really easily not feel hunger at all, let alone ignore it. I guess it's one of the few good things religion gave me.

What made me realise I lost weight is ultimately a couple photos: one from late 2020, and one from a few months ago. I can CLEARLY tell the difference on both my face and the rest of my body. But what really fascinated me is just how much of a difference those 6 or 7 kilos made. It's striking. It's not so much about the numbers, but rather how seemingly very small changes in habits led to such a damn positive long-term effect.

Recently, my cousin suggested me to go to the gym with him. And honestly I think that'll do me some good.

TL;DR? I decided to identify and cut the bad food, eat less overall, and take walks. I lost about 6 or 7 kg in a year as a result, and I'm feeling good about myself for the first time in years.