How I Lost 14 Pounds In One Summer

My wife suggested I write this piece to encourage others who may have lost hope in achieving their target weight. I’d been trying to shed some excess pounds for some time (two years) but had made very little progress. This all changed last summer.

Firstly a little background. I’m a middle aged man, the wrong side of 40. I work in a sedentary, desk based job that doesn’t provide much opportunity for physical exercise, but is very demanding and quite exhausting. I eat a good diet and I have managed to put aside my tendency to snack on unhealthy fattening foods between meals.

Around 3 years ago I noticed how my weight, and waistline, had steadily been increasing. Not by massive amounts but having to buy jeans that were a size larger than I’d needed the previous year (when they were already a size larger than the year before) really struck me. My weight wasn’t increasing quickly and nobody was commenting on how fat I was getting. By today’s standards I still looked slim but I was 20% heavier than I had been when I was aged 18.

Like most people who want to lose a little weight my thoughts immediately turned to my diet. I took some advice from a few people who encouraged me to look closely at what I eat each day. One suggested that I write down everything I ate and another suggested I use visualisation techniques to picture all that I had consumed in any one day.

I found that I didn’t really need to write down everything I consumed (my memory isn’t too bad for a man of my age) each day. The visualisation technique really worked. Sitting quietly in the evening I would picture a table laden with every cup of tea, coffee, biscuit, sandwich and chocolate bar that I had consumed that day. This immediately highlighted a few key facts: I was drinking lots of tea and coffee, I was eating a lot of snacks between meals and I wasn’t really eating enough fruit and vegetables.

I immediately cut down on my tea and coffee consumption. In fact I have stopped drinking tea or coffee after lunch time and this has been enormously beneficial to the quality of my sleep. I also cut out all those snacks between meals. Instead I eat a piece of fruit if I am particularly hungry.

One thing I discovered is that my will-power is much stronger during the day but weakens in the evenings when I’m relaxing with my wife. So, in the evenings, I allow myself a treat which is usually some hot chocolate and dried fruit and nuts.

My dietary changes put a stop to my steady weight increase but they didn’t bring about my desired weight loss. My weight simply stayed the same for over a year. During this time I tried a variety of dietary variations but nothing had any great effect on the excess pounds that I was carrying around. It was time I looked at my lack of exercise.

I am not interested in sports of any kind. I don’t indulge in any form of sports activity, I don’t watch sport on television and have no interest in league tables and the like. But I do love to walk in the countryside and I do enjoy swimming. My partner and I regularly go for several long walks every month and I mean long. Generally in excess of 20 miles across the Sussex downs. We’d increased the frequency of our hikes but still, nothing was making a dent on my love handles.

Then came the big break through. While I love to swim I don’t really like to visit our crowded local pool. My wife and I had been considering an above ground pool for our back garden for some time so we finally took the plunge (excuse the pun).

Having our own above ground garden pool in our back garden made all the difference in the world. I started to use the pool sometimes twice a day during the summer. The effects were near immediate. I noticed how my muscle tone appeared to improve all over my body and very soon those annoying love handles began to diminish in size.

Within 3 months I’d shed a full 14 pounds of unnecessary fat and I’d become a lot fitter in the process. Changing my diet was the first step but acquiring our own above ground garden pool has really made all the difference. I am now slimmer, healthier, fitter and happier than I have been in a long time. I still use my visualisation techniques, often while relaxing, floating in my pool. These days I get a lot more satisfaction from resisting temptation than I do from giving in and my paunchy workmates are now jealous of my physique.

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