It’s sometime hard to believe that it’s been almost 10 months since I decided to change my life by putting down my weight. I still remembered the very night that I made my decision to lose weight ( 6th September 2016 ), I doubted myself because that’s not the first time I decided to do so, but yet it failed every single time, until last time.

Hi, my real name is Lee Choon How, I am from Malaysia and I’m about to share with you some tips of mine to help your life better, to make you feel confident and strive in your career, or whatever you want to do, because a fit and healthier body makes you better at everything, anything.

And no, I am not a nutritionist, nor a highly experience gym builder, or trying to sell or advertise any products in this post.

I am just an average joe, working as a Big Data Engineer, 40-50 hours per week sitting in front of the computer and trying to keep fit and healthier. So, this is how I look like roughly from 2013 until Mid September of 2016.

During Mid 2015 for my best buddy's graduation

During late 2015 Graduation Ceremony

Can't remember the exact month, but it was not long after Pokemon GO was out in South East Asia, me and my friend went to Petronas Twin Tower for Pokemon Hunting

Late May, 2016, at The King's Park, Australia, great country!! I would definitely go to Perth again in the future

To those who are interested on how I did it, but have no time to read my full story, here’s the Do’s and Dont’s. If you like what I share, please do give me an upvote, it mean a lot to me, thank you.

Do’s

• Exercise for a total of 225 minutes per week ( near 4 hours ).
• Drink more water
• Weigh yourself on the scale once every few days
• Record your exercise routine everyday
• Do it alone unless you have a partner that is as dedicated as you are
• Eat more vegetable/fibre and lean meat
• Estimate your sugar/carbohydrate intake
• It’s ok to skip meals once in a while
• Keep your focus on while exercising
• Stick to your exercise schedule at least 90% of the time

Dont’s

• Avoid eating bread, rice, noodle or anything high in carbohydrate
• Avoid sugar drinks ( seriously)
• Do not replace your water intake with coffee or etc

Ok, here comes the long story

I had trouble writing this post because I am not the kind of story typer guy, nor English is my first language, but I will try my best to keep it easy to understand, simple and interesting.

What number?

First thing first, forget about the numbers, but not entirely. What I mean is if you look up in the internet on how to put down weight, a lot of guides will mention the amount of calories for each meal needed and to burn during your exercise or etc. I somewhat ignore that kind of practice as it’s difficult for me to record each of the meals and calories.

What I did instead was I stick to the plan of estimating the size of the portion and the type of food I’m eating. For example, I avoid eating food high in carbohydrate such as rice, noodle, or bread because more likely it will turn into fat if I don’t exercise to burn it away. Instead I always opt for protein and fibre such as lean meat and vegetables. My typical lunch consist of 50% of lean chicken meat, and 50% of veggies, mostly broccoli. For my snacks I mostly eat peanuts, mostly mix of groundnuts, cashew and almonds ( I used to eat alot junk food, got rid most of them ) And for dinner, sometimes I eat noodle, most of the time I made steam chicken breast with salt, herbs and vegetables myself.

If you haven’t noticed that I did not mentioned about breakfast, well, that’s because I don’t take breakfast, simply because I wasn’t feeling hungry at all in the morning, all I need is a big gulp of water and I’ll be fine till lunch.

Cheat Day is not fine

I do sometimes reward myself with a cake, maybe once every 2 weeks or so, and I do go for food buffet maybe once every 3 months, but that’s not because I have to, it’s because I want to. I could bother you with math on why cheat day would not work or I could simply tell you now that cheat day is a no no, and you probably should not have a fixed one day in a week cheat day to eat whatever you want. Make it a habit in your diet, and you wouldn’t even need a single cheat day in your life to enjoy food. Eat to live, not live to eat, I know it make life a bit boring by saying that, but it’s true, the way you eat define yourself alot.

Move your body like you never did

I did alot of exercise, I really mean a lot. Whenever I talked to my colleague about my exercise routine, every one of them were surprised. I don’t know about you who are reading this but jogging 45 minutes per day isn’t easy, especially during that one week in each month that my working hours starts at 1pm and ends at 9pm, I have to jog after I work, or in late night.

Time to change tactics

If you wonder why I made such decision, well, have you ever been frustrated in not achieving something, and in the end decided to give it all in? Yeah, that was me that time. I decided to give it all in, jogging and running for 45 minutes for a week, and to my surprise, I lost around 1.1KG.

Well, it could be that I lost alot of water in my body in that week, or several other reasons, but who cares, that was the first sign of obvious result that I got my from my effort. Imagine a guy like me that tried to lose a kilogram but never succeeded in months, but suddenly made it in a week, it fires me up like a firework, I was looking at the weigh scale smiling on my own as if I had found a hundred dollar bill on the floor.

This continues on until the 3rd month, which is around the end of December where I lost an average of 3 KG per month, down from 94KG to 85KG. This is where I decided to change my exercise routine from cardio to weight lifting. This is mainly due to the declining in result that I wanted at the end of December because I believe I have hit the exercise plateau, which mean my body had already got used to the exercise and putting more cardio workout will no longer pump up the metabolism that is needed to burn fat. Hence, I barely lose any weight at all during the last week of December, and first week of January.

GET TO DA CHOPPER!!

Sorry, but who would not think of Arnold Schwarzenegger when it comes to bodybuilding. I ditched the cardio workout entirely and plan for muscle building routine, studying muscle workout through online, talked to the gym instructor. I would workout for 3-4 days in a week, targeting different parts of muscle each day. It was a painful experience in the beginning, mainly because I never hit the gym, and these intensive workouts that I did “activated” those muscle and I had if not days but weeks of sore muscle, kind of distracting at first especially at work, but it feels good knowing these soreness are actually the muscle cell repairing and building up.

So why the sudden changes in how I perform my exercise if you ask. Apart from the problem that I had, which I think I hit the exercise plateau, it’s because bodybuilding increases the metabolism in resting phase ( look it up in the internet for more info ). The analogy to put behind this is like between actively working to get money and renting out properties to get money. Running is like you had to do your main job to earn money, while bodybuilding is like renting out rooms and you have to do that agreement with your tenant as a one time thing, but you get your money each month without literally doing anything else, well, I hope you get your idea.

Turns out my plan worked and at the end of January, I was about to reduce somewhere around 1.5 KG. I continue this routine until March, losing average a KG or two, and I had hit 80.5KG at the end of the month.

What's next?

After hitting my target, I am looking forward to maintain my weight. I no longer do vigorously gym routines but still continue to experiment different types of routine/eating habit in order for me to maintain the weight effortlessly.

I learned a lot of dedication and discipline in these 5-6 months. Not only that I am able to achieve the ideal weight that I wanted, but most important of all, I know if I put my mind and heart at it, I would achieve success in what I do be it in career or something else that I like.

This new body of mine also constantly reminds me of who I were, and what I would do to sustain the current weight in order to not waste all my hard efforts. I urged all of you who are trying to put down weight and reading this, please, please, please, do not give up on yourself, your only challenge is yourself and if you are brave enough to do things that you won't usually do, I promise you that you will be surprised on the potential you have. Trust me.

"Alright Lee, where's the result? After reading for so long, I see no pictures of the new you yet"

Haha, I know, and last but not least, here's how I look like after dropping 14KG, if my guide help or inspired you, do give me an upvote and spread this around, good luck to you, thanks for reading