How I Lost 12kg in 12 Weeks and How You Can Do It Too

A guide to losing weight without the yo-yo effect.

Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to be more fit and healthy? Then keep reading on.

In this article, I want to share with you my no-bullshit story of losing weight and helping you improve your fitness and health. If you are an average Joe (or Jane) like me, or even fairly overweight, this article is for you.

My Story

As I said, I am an average Joe. Not someone who lost 200kg and changed his life by only eating bananas for 12 months. Just someone who worked out an easy and down-to-earth way to lose weight while improving his fitness and body shape.

So what’s my story?

A few months ago I went into the bathroom, stepped onto the scale and I was shocked. It showed 102,7kg. Do not get me wrong, I was not fat by any means. I’m 200cm (about 6'6") tall, so even at about 103kg, I looked fairly normal.

Coming from a skinny past I did not like my weight development at all. I always had the predisposition of being skinny-fat. Looking slim but with a bit of a belly and no muscles at all.

Now, weighing over 100kg my belly started looking as if I was 7 months pregnant. I felt uncomfortable and knew I needed to change that if I ever wanted to be happy with my body again.

Fun Fact: One day, when I was not even on my weight maximum, a friend of mine posted a story on Instagram showing her baby belly…and I made a collage standing in the same pose just for fun. You know what? My belly was bigger than hers. And that was not even the time when my belly was the biggest.

I know some people would like to have a body like mine that’s just a bit “chubby”. Some would probably even shake their head and wonder what my problem is, but that is not the matter. We all have our own goals. And what counts is that we are happy with ourselves. I was not, so I decided to change it. And if you are not happy with yourself, you should get going and change it too. Because the sad truth is: someone else will not do it for you.

Status Quo

Weight: 102,7kg
Height: 200cm
Body Fat Percentage (BFP) about 27%
Fitness: Nearly non-existent. I was an absolute couch potato.

My Goals

Getting rid of my oversized belly
Gain some muscles and improve my overall fitness level
BFP of 20% or lower

So, like the average Joe I am, I did not want to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. I just wanted to feel happy with my body again. Your Status Quo and goals may differ, but the method I used will most likely also help you reach your weight loss goals.

The Method

The following is no rocket science. Most likely you heard that stuff already somewhere else. It is not even hard to do, you just got to do it.

The method I used consisted of two principles:

First Principle: If you want to lose weight, you got to take in fewer calories than your body burns.

What does that mean? If you have a caloric deficit your body will start to burn fat to keep on going. Which makes you lose weight in the long term. The higher your deficit, the faster you lose weight.

Roughly speaking: About 7000 calories are equal to 1kg of body fat.

The problem is: if we have a caloric deficit our body not only burns fat but also precious muscle mass. This takes us to the next principle.

Second Principle: If you want to build or at least conserve your muscles you got to start working out.

What Are AMR And BMR?

My first task for you is: Find out your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and your Active Metabolic Rate (AMR)!

How? Go google “BMR Calculator” and “AMR Calculator” and fill in your numbers. There are dozens of calculators out there and they might differ a bit in their results. It does not need to be super accurate, it is just important that you get a rough estimate of what your daily caloric need is so you can work with it.

But what is it? BMR pretty much is your “I do nothing but breathe and lay in bed” energy consumption. While AMR is your normal daily energy consumption, depending on what activities you do. If you just sit in the office all day it won’t be much more than your BMR. If you have a physically demanding job and work out every day it will be much higher than your BMR. So to lose weight your caloric intake needs to be lower than your AMR.

What Did That Mean For Me?

In many things, I am very patient. But this time I wanted fast results. Doing simple math I knew I needed a deficit of 1000 calories a day (to my AMR) to lose 1kg of weight in a week.

This is not what you should do! Why? Because these are my numbers. And with my body measurements, it is possible to have a 1000 calories deficit and still feel good. If you are female, 1.50m and 60kg you will struggle big time to have such a big deficit over a few weeks. Not even mentioning that it would be unhealthy. There is a difference between losing weight and starving yourself. So if a deficit of 300 or 500 calories feels good for yourself, do it!

My BMR is about 2200 calories a day. While my AMR varies from about 2600 to 3400. Depending on what activities I do. So my idea was to eat 1600 to 2200 calories a day (also depending on my activities, but never more than my BMR) and I would easily lose weight. And so I did.

Counting Calories

What helped me big time was starting to count calories. It not only helped me educate myself about the food I ate but also that most of my excess calories came from fast food or junk food like crisps or chocolate. Counting my calories I was able to track how much and what kind of food I could eat over a day. I even started to eat a bit more healthily. And because I usually only eat two meals a day I sometimes even “needed” to eat crisps to reach my caloric goal for that day.

Truth be told, I could have eaten healthier food instead of eating crisps, but I think losing weight should not be chastising yourself. It should still feel good, even if it means it takes a bit longer to reach your goal.

My meals looked something like this:

Late Breakfast (about 11 am): about 500 calories
Dinner (about 7 pm): about 1200 calories

I did not eat much in between meals, if at all. What is also important is that your number and quantity of meals may look different. It is important that you are happy with the way you eat. I can not tell you when, how much, and how often you should eat. You got to figure out for yourself what feels best for you. This might also be a good opportunity for you to get to know yourself and your body better.

So my second task for you is: find out how many calories your favorite food has and how much you eat every day. Get a feeling for it.

Diet

I do not want to talk much about the diet. I kept on eating the same stuff as before. From noodles with tomato sauce to rice with chicken. Just the meal itself might have been a bit smaller than usual. And as I already mentioned, I even ate some(!) junk food while I lost weight. Cheating is ok as long as your caloric count permits it.

Obviously, you should mainly eat healthily. Not only because it is good for you, but because your stomach will be full for a longer time. That way you won’t feel much hunger while you are on a caloric deficit.

One big point I want to stress is that you stop drinking soft drinks. Stop drinking anything that has calories (no problem having a bit of milk in your coffee though). Drink water, drink tea. But stay away from coke and comparable drinks. Not only is it unhealthy, but the sugar in it will make you more hungry. Also, regular consumption of alcohol is a big no-no.

Working Out

Having the caloric intake out of the way, we still need to heed the second principle of effective weight loss. Building/conserving muscle mass. If you are on a high caloric deficit it will be hard to gain much muscle mass (that is why bodybuilders have a “mass phase”). But you can conserve the muscles you have. What worked best for me are full-body exercises. These train many muscles in your body at once, burn many calories, and are very time effective.

Important: You absolutely need to work out! If you do not, your body will burn much muscle mass and you end up being skinny fat. The important thing about weight loss is not only losing weight but losing BFP (Body Fat Percentage). This not only makes your body much healthier but also look more fit.

I will share my workout plan here for you to get some inspiration. You will need some (kinda cheap) equipment for it if you want to train at home like me. Also, this plan is made to be done every 2–3 days. Do not work out the same muscle groups every day! Your body needs time to recover and for the muscles to grow. Also listen to your body, if you still have very sore muscles after 2 days then wait another day.

3 sets of 5 (negative-) Pullups (buy a pullup bar for your doorframe)
3 sets of Pushups until muscle exhaustion
3 sets of 8 Deadlifts (buy some dumbells)
3 sets of 8 Shoulder Press (buy some dumbells)
3 sets of Squats until muscle exhaustion

Choose the weight of the dumbells so that you can do 8–12 repetitions. That will maximize your muscle growth.

If you can not afford a pullup bar and dumbells, look around for stuff you can use instead (for example a tree in front of your house to pull up on?). If there is nothing you can use, go get a Freeletics app and do bodyweight exercises only. But do work your muscles! Not only does it make you stronger, but it also burns some extra calories!

But before you do, complete my third task for you: look up all the exercises and research how to do them correctly! There are so many people not knowing how to do a proper pushup. Do not be one of them.

“But I am a woman and do not want to gain muscles. I am afraid to look like a man!”.

Trust me, you will not. You will not do a few pushups and wake up on the next day suddenly looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Especially if you are female you should prioritize muscle growth over cardio exercise to get in shape. Just trust me on that.

My Results

As you already read in the title, I lost about 12kg in 12 weeks. Going from 102,7kg to 90kg. That was roughly 4 months ago and today my scale still shows 90.7kg.

To maintain my new weight I started to eat more and at first, it was even a bit hard to eat that much again because I got so used to the low intake. My BFP dropped from about 27% to 20% and my belly is much smaller today. It is still not flat, because my body loves storing fat there, but it is much better than running around looking pregnant.

I also feel much more confident and strong. Even though I had such a big caloric deficit my body built a bit of muscle mass and I can do 3 Pullups in a row now. Which might sound pathetic to some, but is a big improvement for me as I was not able to do a single one at the beginning of my journey.

Your results may differ from mine. Every one of us is different. You might choose to have a caloric deficit of about 300 calories per day, that is fine. Then it just takes a bit longer to reach your target weight. But as long as you build the right habits (like counting calories, healthy eating, and regular workouts) you will see progress. I wish you all the best and hope this article did help you.

Congratulations. That’s it. If you do the stuff that is written here you WILL lose weight. Losing weight is not rocket science, it just needs a bit of self-discipline. Which is a topic of its own.

The biggest thing that can permanently stop you from losing weight (or finding the discipline to do so) are unconscious issues that relate to your food consumption.

Maybe it is just bad eating habits learned in the past. Maybe it is a bad relationship to the food itself (e.g. connecting it to positive emotions like love). Maybe one eats to compensate for emotional issues. Then the first step should be resolving these issues or habits before the weight loss attempt is made. When these issues are resolved, eating habits often normalize automatically. Maybe I should write another article about that topic at a later time.

Thank you to everyone reading this, especially to everyone following me.

I do appreciate it.

Cheers!