Weight loss

Losing 18 pounds in 3 months! My journey, my truth.

Today (April 26, 2022) is the day when I finally saw the weighing scales show me my weight, starting with ‘6’ instead of ‘7’.

Who says numbers can’t make you happy?

I weighed 77 kilograms or around 170 pounds back in December 2021. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and PCOS, which makes weight loss even tougher.

I consulted many doctors, was put on medication, and finally, I came face to face with the fact that I can undo these diseases if I change my lifestyle.

My lifestyle included long hours of sitting. I’m a product designer by profession, and that requires almost 8 hours of a stagnant sitting job with endless meetings, review sessions, designing on digital tools, writing product documentation, and so on.

Moreover, I ate mindlessly. I snacked on chips and high sodium snacks. My water intake was too low for the day.

Fruits? What are they! I never bought them in the supermarket, and would only consume them if they were in ice cream!

Vegetables were scarcely a part of my diet, and majorly I consumed carbs, slices of bread, and sweet stuff like muffins and cakes. Thankfully I was not hooked up on soda or coca-cola, but I liked juices. I gulped glasses of packaged fruit juices thinking that at least they were healthy.

There was no way that I could ‘avoid’ gaining weight with this stationary lifestyle and junky habits. Trust me, not just me, anyone in this setting would gain weight.

When we moved the house last year (August 2021) I weighed 77 kilograms (170 pounds). Here’s a picture of me painting a wall in our new home —

I wore 34 waist jeans and all my old clothes were embarrassingly too tight to fit anymore.

My husband gifted me a smartwatch on my birthday in December, which motivated me a little to at least start walking every day, as that would show me my activity throughout the day and the calories I burned.

I was seriously hating the way I looked and I was motivated to work towards fixing this, but more than that, I wanted to fix the ‘laziness’ first.

The continuous demotivation that forced me to stay where I was, was more of a mental struggle than a physical one.

Physically I was fine and healthy enough to start working out again, start eating healthy and do everything to reverse these changes. But mentally I was too tired, lazy, and lethargic.

Solving the problem at its core

One day I was discussing this with my doctor friend, who told me to get my vitamin D tested. And that was the turning point in my weight loss journey.

When I got it tested, I was severely deficient. It was common and normal. I came from India to the Netherlands, and the Netherlands is a cold country, that receives scarce sunlight during the winter months.

Vitamin D deficiency is more than enough to make you lazy and lethargic. I was advised to take one D3 pill a day, and surprisingly I noticed positive changes in my energy levels. I felt more energetic and even happy throughout the day.

When they say that weather has the potential to make you gloomy — that’s the truth! Don’t ever underestimate the importance of sunlight for your health.

After I started taking vitamin D, I was motivated to start the weight loss. But before I embarked upon this journey, I told myself that —

Weight loss is not a goal or a destination — it’s a continuous ongoing journey.

I started with everything in mid of January 2022. Partially my new year’s resolution motivated me to start doing something about the rising weight, and I started calculating the calories I consumed on a health app.

I used the HealthifyMe app, which is an Indian health-tech company, and soon became a paid subscriber for them. I was assigned a diet coach and a workout coach.

The diet coach created a custom diet chart for me. There I could see what I needed to eat and in how much quantity. My dietician helped me understand the foods that were to be avoided for thyroid and PCOS conditions and the foods that would help me reverse these problems.

I was completely put off soy-based products, cruciferous and leafy vegetables like spinach, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, etc.

My workout coach was a yoga coach who made a custom yoga plan for me to follow. It was a simple one. Just some beginner’s poses and twenty minutes of light workouts.

I told her the truth that I can’t do yoga every day. If I force myself to do that, I will soon be demotivated and will skip doing it altogether.

She understood my problem and asked me to start with only 2 times a week. It was easy to follow, and soon I started 3 times a week and stuck to that for a month.

I noticed drastic results with a calorie deficient diet, and three times yoga in a week. I started seeing the weight going down.

From 77 kilograms in January, I came down to 74 in February. It was remarkable and astonishing, as I never believed that I could lose 3 kilos, that too with hypothyroidism and PCOS.

But I was motivated even more and started following the diet and workout religiously. The weight loss was consistent, and I dropped to 69 kilos (152 pounds) in April. A few weeks ago. This is how I look now —

I’ve never been this happy in my life because I can go back to wearing my old clothes and feeling my old self again.

My thyroid levels have normalized. PCOS is also under regulation, and as I will get more tests done, I will get complete details about the change that happened so far.

The weight gain had demotivated me to an extent that I even stopped wearing lipstick because of the way I looked.

No, I’m not body-shaming anyone here. I’m just sharing what I felt and how losing weight made me healthier, more confident and happy on the inside.

Again, weight loss is not a destination or a goal, but a journey of continuous, ongoing hard work, efforts, and even ups and downs. There will be days that you will feel like eating whatever you want — give yourself that liberty too! Just not everyday 😅

For every day, you should only be focused on eating healthy, and working out a bit so that when you go to bed at night, you should feel happy about having taken care of your body for one day.

It is always up to you to decide — one day, or day one…

If this story motivated you today, consider supporting my work by signing up to be a Medium member. It will cost you only the price of your one coffee, for a month-long subscription and you will get unlimited access to some of the best-written work on the internet!