How My Weight Loss Journey Turned into a Selfcare One

One of the first steps to achieving health consciousness for me was learning to understand my body.

This leads me to today’s topic, where I’d like to address two questions I received following the last article:

1. How did I come up with the idea for this newsletter?
2. Why is it important to understand your body?

Starting Health Conscious was an easy decision. Recently, my focus has been on becoming the healthiest version of myself, and I’ve learned that understanding the root cause of any health issue is key to addressing it effectively. While I’m a strong advocate for natural remedies, I also recognize the critical role modern medicine plays in our lives. That balance is important - knowing when to use natural methods and when to trust medical science. It’s essential to understand your body and how it responds to various factors because misdiagnosis is a reality in healthcare. But understanding your body goes beyond diagnosing illness; it also involves emotional regulation, knowing which foods work best for you, and being aware of how your body reacts to certain environments and situations. This holistic understanding is what inspired me to start this newsletter—to share insights on how we can all better tune in to our bodies and live healthier, more conscious lives.

Now to answer the second question.

The first thing you should know is that every body is different.         

Understanding your body is crucial for optimizing health because it helps you make informed decisions about your well-being. When you know how your body functions, you can better understand your body’s unique responses. Each body responds differently to food, exercise, stress, and sleep. By understanding your body, you can tailor your diet, fitness routine, and self-care practices to meet your individual needs. I began my weight loss journey on June 4th, 2024, at 99.1kg, I am currently 84kg (I took a break to study my body during this journey). The first thing I did was to create a plan. This plan was what I followed that effectively enabled me easily to lose 15kg withing three (3) months without even having to exercise. It was based on the information I had gathered from previous experiences trying to lose weight and my experience, at the time, gaining weight while going to the gym. This was my first experience with understanding my body to tailor the best weight loss approach for myself. Let me walk you through my process of creating a plan.

Step One: Understanding My Body

The first step in my health journey was to take an honest look at the facts about myself and my body:

1. I weighed 96.2kg before I returned to the gym. After over a month of working out, my weight increased to 98.5kg. I understood that I gain muscle easily, and the scale reflected muscle gain, not fat gain. But my goal was clear - I wanted to focus solely on fat loss.
2. Lifting heavy at the gym made me hungrier. Even though I managed my nutrition, I knew that to maintain my lifting, I’d need to eat more, which could reduce my calorie deficit and slow down fat loss.
3. The only diet that had ever worked for me was Keto, but it wasn’t sustainable in the long run, and my body reacted negatively after I stopped.
4. I often reverted to unhealthy eating habits after only a short period of attempting fad diets.
5. I was insulin resistant, which made fat loss more challenging.

Step Two: Drawing Conclusions

Based on the facts I gathered; I drew conclusions about how I wanted to approach my weight loss:

1. I needed to quit the gym.
2. I needed something sustainable and long-term - a lifestyle change, not a temporary diet.
3. I wanted something that required low effort to help reduce stress.
4. My plan had to address and help reverse my insulin resistance.
5. I needed to focus on eating high-volume, low-calorie foods to stay full without overeating.
6. I had to cut out sugar entirely.
7. Since I wouldn’t be working out for a while, my main focus needed to be on maintaining a calorie deficit through my diet.

Step Three: Creating a Plan

After trial and error, I developed a plan that aligned with the lifestyle I wanted to create. Through research, I discovered the best weight loss habits for achieving optimized results:

1. Adopting a Whole Foods Diet: This approach was more sustainable for eating healthier, as it meant consuming fewer calories while still getting more nutrients. It also helped me eliminate sugar and processed foods. Most importantly, it was something I could maintain long-term as a lifestyle, not just a diet, because I could still enjoy food—just healthier options.
2. Intermittent Fasting: Intermittent fasting turned out to be the "magic pill" I didn’t know I needed. It was low effort, eliminated bad eating habits, helped me become fat-adapted (even better than keto), and - best of all - helped reverse my insulin resistance.
3. Improving My Sleep Habits: Better sleep became a cornerstone of my weight loss journey. Getting adequate rest helped everything else fall into place.
4. I did not time-restrict myself: This was essential because one mistake I find a lot of us do when approaching anything is restricting ourselves to a time limit. It is important to have a timeframe where you want to execute certain tasks but ensure it is realistic and workable.

Step Four: Execution

I stuck to the plan.

I ate only whole foods, followed intermittent fasting by eating between 12pm–6pm, and made sure I was in bed by 10pm. The weight started to melt off, and the best part was that I didn’t feel any pressure. I was just living my life, and the results followed.

This was how my journey to health began, and as I embraced understanding my body and choosing a healthier lifestyle, the benefits started to show. These benefits are;        

1. Mental Clarity: A few days into my weight loss journey, I noticed my head felt clearer and sharper than ever before. After doing some research, I realized that I had been living with mental fog for most of my life without even realizing it. A bad diet robs you off many things and it's unfortunate that sometimes you're not even aware you're being robbed.
2. Improved Eyesight: One day, I noticed I could see across the road more clearly than ever before - it was almost miraculous! I learned that because my diet had become more diverse and nutrient rich, I was likely providing my eyes with the vitamins they needed to function better. This taught me that a poor diet starves essential organs of the nutrients they need to work effectively.
3. Increased Productivity: With the mental fog lifted, I found I had more energy and was more productive in all aspects of my life.
4. Boost in Confidence: Before I even started to look different, I felt different. I felt so good about myself that my confidence soared. As someone who was already fairly confident, I was amazed to learn how much feeling healthy could elevate my self-esteem. I made a vow never to lose that feeling.
5. Clearer Skin: My skin has become clearer and my skin tone more even.
6. Happiness: The joy that comes with becoming a better version of yourself is unmatched. Sometimes I wished I had started sooner, but I am grateful every day that I took the steps to change.
7. Gratitude: Life started to seem more beautiful, and I found myself more appreciative of everything I had. I learned to be more present and grateful.
8. Better Mental Health: My emotional well-being improved dramatically as my physical health got better.
9. A Sense of Purpose: My life changed in ways I hadn’t expected. Soon, I found myself motivating others to become healthier versions of themselves. This gave me a deep sense of purpose and fulfillment. I began to research health more broadly and discovered so much that I now want to share with the world. (This is how Health Conscious was born)

The benefits I’ve shared here are just the beginning—there are many more that come with truly understanding your body and making conscious decisions to optimize your health. This journey is how I learned to listen to my body, and it completely transformed my approach to wellness. In this edition, I focused on the why—why it's so important to understand YOUR body to optimize your health. When it comes to health, wellness and self-care, there is no one approach that fits all. It is required to be tailored to you, your body and your lifestyle.

In an upcoming edition, I'll dive into the how—how you can begin to understand your body and take actionable steps toward achieving your own health goals.

Thank you for joining me today! I hope you found this article insightful. I’d love to hear your thoughts—feel free to share your comments, questions, and insights below. Let’s continue learning and growing together on the path to better health!