How I Rebounded After Regaining Unwanted Weight (Twice!)
It’s damn frustrating.
You workout for an hour in the gym five to six times a week, your body is sore after each workout, you sweat buckets, you track what you eat (sometimes even eliminating your favorite carbs from your diet), you even try get seven to eight hours of sleep daily to help your body recover.
You hard work pays off and you lose five kgs in a year while putting on significant muscle. Then, as things start to look up and your pants start to loosen, life happens. You sustain an injury, you get pregnant, you get a job that requires a lot of traveling, or you simply lose motivation and stop working out.
Slowly but surely, the weight starts creeping back up. First it was one kg. Then it was two. Then three. And soon enough, you regain five kgs in half the time it took you to lose it. Frustrated, you resort to regularly eating ice cream and chips while binge watching on Netflix to make you feel better.
Yikes. All that hard work down the drain. This is exactly what happened to me when I moved to Europe.
Regaining unwanted weight is common. It happened to me (at least twice), it could happen to you, and it happened to thousands of people. It’s easy to lose motivation because you might not want to go through the same gruelling process to lose weight again.
But there’s hope. There are also thousands of people that lost weight, and successfully kept it off for good.
How did I motivate myself again to get fit again after regaining unwanted weight?
Here’s what I did…
I identified my core values
Losing weight is not about finding the motivation but it’s about finding the right motivation. A core value is a belief that guides every decision we make in our lives. It’s like a lighthouse that guides a ship in a storm safely into shore.
If the “why” is what motivates a person, then the core value is the reason why that’s important. It’s a part of who you are.
How did this help me lose weight? It’s simple. I wrote down five of my most important values and made the connection to losing weight and living a healthier life.
Here are my top core values:
- Family first
- Persistence
- Faithfulness
- World class
- Passion
How does losing weight relate to my core values?
Family first — I take care of my health because by doing so my family doesn’t have to bear the burden of taking care or worrying constantly about a sickly father/husband/son/brother. I also want to serve as a good role model to my wife and young kids.
Persistence — I achieved my goal weight a couple of times and each time, I regained my weight and had to start all over again. I was determined to continue trying until I maintain my goal weight because giving up is not part of my values.
Passion — working out is fun and games for me so I’ll do it over and over because it makes me happy.
Because of these reasons, it was easy for me to find the motivation to get moving again.
If you need motivation, get a pen and paper and write down what your core values are. The more you connect weight loss to your values, the stronger your motivation will be, and the more you will stick to it.
I took it slowly
Doing too much, too soon was not going to do it. It was a sure way for me to get confused and lose motivation.
I remember getting back in the gym in January 2011 thinking I had to spend three hours in the gym each time I work out. I didn’t know why it had to be three hours, it was just a magic number I had to reach. I did that for about three months, saw minimal improvement, and after I hit a plateau, I lost motivation and started skipping the gym again.
What was worse, I started jogging a lot, running uphill often, and strained my right calf muscle. After a brief rest period to heal my injury, I started jogging again and strained my left calf muscle. Sustaining an injury is the last thing you want if you’re trying to get back in shape.
I beat my body up real good and had little to show for my troubles.
Then, my focus changed. I concentrated on finishing a 90 day program that I bought. I focused on short, intense workouts which were a total opposite of what I was used to doing. It was uncomfortable because it was my first time to follow a real structure and 90 days felt like forever. But I was determined to follow through.
After I completed that, I shifted my attention to improving my nutrition by eating more whole foods and reducing junk food. I loved the results of the program but I believed that getting my nutrition right, or at least improving it, was going to take it to the next level.
Once I improved my workouts and started eating better, that was the only time I started taking pre workout and protein supplements to boost my workouts.
By taking things one at a time, I learned what worked for me and what didn’t.
I tried anything that would have helped
If I didn’t try anything different, then I would’ve been stuck in the same place for sure.
In 2011, I went back to the gym but the first nine or ten months didn’t really do much. But at least I learned that what I used to do in 2005 didn’t work anymore in 2011. I realized I had to do something different to get different results.
The adjustments in my workouts had fantastic results. I was in the best shape of my life at the age of 30, when I thought that I should be on the decline physically.
Fast forward to 2014, I regained some of the weight I lost and even though I wasn’t terribly out of shape, I was faced with a different challenge: I had no access to a gym. I was unemployed and I couldn’t afford a gym membership. I knew that if I didn’t do something, it would only be a matter of time before I gained weight given how delicious the muffins are in Norway.
So I turned to something which I never thought I’d do in my lifetime: yoga.
Thanks to my wife, who bought the program with her own money, I was able to start working out again. I was surprised that yoga actually helped me lose unwanted weight and helped build muscle definition that I could see my abs again. My pants started to loosen up again.
The positive results motivated me to try other things that might help me lose even more weight.
I started biking to school.
I started playing basketball occasionally.
I started fasting for 16 hours.
I even cut out sugar and cream from my coffee and started drinking it black.
One thing led to another and luckily, it worked beautifully. And that just made me more motivated to push myself to my limits, to experiment with weights at home, and see how far I could go.
I seeked help from the pros
Losing weight is hard, especially as I got older. Getting help from professional trainers definitely made it a lot easier and got me to where I wanted to be.
Was it possible to get great results by trying to figure things out myself and by listening to my bros in the gym? I won’t discount the possibility, but based on my past results, I’m pretty sure it would’ve taken me ten times longer to achieve the results that I got by working with professionals.
It could be troublesome to work with personal trainers sometimes. I had bad experiences with trainers who were more interested in selling me their service than actually helping me reach my goals.
Fortunately, I found the right trainers, those that genuinely wanted to help me lose weight. That was when my results skyrocketed. Personal trainers took a lot of guess work out of my program. They even taught me how to eat better. It was one of the best investment I made.
And because of the internet, I didn’t have to pay as much compared to hiring a personal trainer in a local gym.
I finally kept the weight off
I’m turning 40 in September but I feel like my best shape is yet to come! I overcame regaining unwanted weight several times and glad to say I’ve maintained my ideal weight for the past seven years and there are no signs of slowing down.
I know what I want and what my priorities are.
I know what works for me.
I know what I need to do in order for me to keep off unwanted weight (even if I don’t workout in a gym) because of the experts that are helping me stay in tremendous shape.
It was a roller coaster ride but somehow, it has come to an end. Right now, I’m cruising down the highway on the way to my preferred destination: a strong and healthy physique which I can sustain as long as I want.
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