GAINING WEIGHT
All throughout my third year in architecture school, the only form of ‘exercise’ I did regularly was my commute to and fro from where I was living in Manchester to where I needed to be by bicycle. And to make matters worse; most of my days, if not all of them, were spent sat on my desk and I only ever get up for toilet visits and accepting takeouts.
So the combination of an almost intense level of inactivity, inhaling an unhealthy amount of egg cress sandwiches, fried chicken and pizza and a severe lack of exercise – I gained weight.
But because I was incredibly busy throughout the year (and also because I’m notorious for making up excuses not to) I wasn’t able to put in any serious effort into getting myself back in shape. Along the way, I had also rather successfully convinced myself that it was enough for me to just be doing 100 squats and a number of half-assed weight training a day. Quite possibly the only real effort I’ve put into being active, was my foray into running.
PURE DETERMINATION
However, when I returned home to Malaysia I was determined to make a change. My parents agreed to pay for a secondhand road bicycle, and I cycled (on the trainer) almost everyday, day and night all throughout the fasting month, and results began to show. I began to lose the pounds I gained, and lost a lot of fat on my upper body and that in itself was sufficient enough to motivate me into working harder and harder to get into shape.
I’ve never been the type to be concerned about my weight; because I believe that as long as I personally feel that I look good and actually feel good – I’m a happy camper. So instead, I judge my progress by monitoring my body’s fat and muscle percentage.
FALTERING
I’ve continued to exercise nearly every single day (I can’t go a day without doing any exercise, despite it being a rest day) but unfortunately I’ve not been having much progress for over a month. My weight remained the same, my fat and muscle percentage were stagnant, and I was running out of ideas as to why there were no changes to my body. I wasn’t even losing inches… anywhere.
Thus I decided to go back to basics.
The rule of thumb towards weight loss (which I feel come hand in hand with fat loss, even though not directly related) is that its 70% influenced by your diet and only 30% by the exercise you do.
Only thing is, was that, I was already eating rather healthily – I don’t eat junk food and have strayed away from any form of sweet drinks. At the same time, I had also developed the habit of drinking warm lemon water and taking a spoonful of apple cider vinegar in the morning and drank about 3-4 cups of green tea a day. To put it shortly; I was already doing what I understood to be what I needed to do to achieve my goals… but I still didn’t see any results.
PESCETARIAN BEGINNINGS
And so I decided to take it up a notch, and adopt a pescetarian diet (since a vegetarian diet I attempted a month before failed on its second day). But what motivated that decision was not only because I felt it would help me with losing weight, but also because I had lost my appetite for meat.
Now, I’ve always been educated in the matter of pink slime and the likes, and even though it scares me, I’ve always managed to keep it at the back of my mind whenever I had meat served in front of me. Then one day, while I was making my way through a plateful of spaghetti bolognaise, I just became increasingly aware (with every single bite) that I could very well be feeding myself random parts of a cow (its eyes, fat, etc) … and I felt sick to my stomach.
I threw away that plate of spaghetti.
And from that moment onwards, I just couldn’t look at beef the same way anymore. And it so happens that I was never a big fan of chicken to begin with, so a pescetarian I became.
If I am being absolutely honest, I will admit that at the beginning I didn’t have any plans on making the decision permanent. I was certain then that I was going to crave a thick slab of steak and fried chicken anytime soon. However, I’ve surprised myself, and as the days go by I no longer had the desire to eat chicken and beef (and every other land animal meat). Two weeks into what was meant to be my temporary pescetarian diet, I began to seriously consider turning pescetarian full time… and give up meat entirely… for the rest of my life. That thought didn’t scare me, and I was confident I could do it.
So I did.
And thus I am… a pescetarian.
I’ve gone over a month now without meat, although to be honest, I still haven’t completely cut them out of my diet as it still exists in the form of broths and stock cubes. Even though it is admittedly cheating, I am trying my best and I am still so very new so I’ll be taking steps towards this change one tiny step at a time.
ALAS, RESULTS!
I’ve had a number of family and friends tell me I look slimmer recently and I am certain its because I’ve cut out meat (aside from regular exercise, obviously) and I cannot be happier!
Cheers to change xx
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