Weight Loss Motivation

Here's some weight loss motivation for you people! Amazing body transformation with nothing more than body weight exercises. It takes effort but the results are nothing short of brilliant!

What 2000 calories look like

The generally accepted value for how many calories we should consume per day is 2000. But have you ever wondered what that is? How many bagels can you eat before hitting that limit?

 

BuzzFeed created this video that shows showing exactly that. I find it quite interesting. I expected I would have to eat more carrots than that to get to 2000 calories. At the same time, I would expect that just a few strips of bacon would be enough to hit that amount.

But watch the video. And also take a look at the article that inspired it, What Does 200 Calories Look Like?, which is probably even more interesting.

The three secrets to weight loss

Pssst... I'll let you in on a secret: there are no secrets to weight loss!

That's right, you can leave now. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Still here? So you don't believe me, huh? That's OK, a lot of people don't but I still let them live.

Seriously now, despite the title of this post, the truth is there are no big secrets for losing weight. The basic formula for losing weight is as simple as ingesting less calories and exercising. Of course there's more to it but my point is that all the techniques, diets, formulas and magic pills you see publicised everywhere are just the result of the market demand for miracles that have no need to exist.

One of the most negative aspects of our consumerist society is that we got used to paying for something and having it instantly, so our little primitive minds forgot what it is to actually work for something - like losing weight. We want to get back to our ideal weight, without having to work for it, and we want it now! But given the crappy sedentary lifestyle most of us have nowadays, that's easier said than done. Well, sort of. We think it's a hard thing to accomplish (how could we think something else given the amount of diet pills ads, support groups, research, and so on?) and that thought prevents us from even trying. I don't mean trying by swallowing some pills that cost a fortune, I mean really trying - by eating right, exercising and getting away from unhealthy lifestyles as much as possible.

So there you go, two of the three "secrets" are nothing more than eating right and exercising. As I said before, there's more to it, like what type of calories you should cut down on - you can't just stop eating; you have to cut down on the bad foods and replace them with healthier ones.

But the title does mention three secrets and so far I have only "revealed" two, so what's the third one?

Simple: will power. And I'm afraid that this is the tough one, because not only will it control how successful you are at the other two, but it also depends entirely on you. Sure, there are lots of things that could be of help, like support groups, weight loss programs that you can follow, and a lot of other things - but in the end it's entirely up to you to push yourself to change.

In future posts I will go over these three things but the main point for now is: there are no shortcuts and no miracles, just these three simple things: a healthy diet, exercise and will power.

First words

So I’m writing a book. It’s a book about being fat and getting back into shape - not the round one, preferably. It’s a journey through fatland and back, something I personally have lots of experience with, as I have been there and back again several times.

The book will share my experiences, what I did - both wrong and right - and what were the consequences of it, and I hope it serves as an inspiration for others to take care of themselves and lose their extra weight as well.

This is also not the typical “self-help” book that will teach you “x steps to losing weight” or how to “get ripped in y days”. Those books have their place. They are meant for the poor souls that are so unhappy about themselves and so desperate to lose weight that they lose touch with reality and fall into the trap of the people who write those books to take advantage of them. I say “take advantage” because I think that 90% of those books are crap. Not just the weight-loss ones but pretty much every self help book out there. They are money-making machines with so little useful content in them, and what little useful content they have, it is spread so thin that you could probably condense it into half a dozen pages. Hopefully I will do better than that.

One of the things that differentiates my book from all those other books is that most of its content, if not all, will be freely available online, right here on this blog. I will isolate specific subjects and adapt them to a blog format. The full book will be available as a PDF, probably published via lulu.com or maybe even here. I haven’t decided if the PDF will be totally free or if I’ll ask some money for it. If I do, it will be something like $5/4€/£3 and it will be completely DRM free - I hate DRM. I might even go for a “pay what you like” scheme. I may also put up a donations box via Paypal or Skrill (ex-Moneybookers).

We will see. For now, the first stone is laid. The rest will come with time.