My Biggest Weight Loss Struggles | Overcoming Obstacles on My Journey to Health

Are you struggling with your own weight loss journey? And in this video, I have— I'm going to share what are the biggest challenges, struggles I faced with my weight loss journey, and how did I was able to fail more than 10 times in my own weight loss, and what are the lessons which I learned, and what are my biggest struggles. I'm going to share this in this video. And if you are the one who are consistently struggling to losing and gaining weight and not able to sustain your lost weight for the rest of your life, and you've been struggling, then this video is for you. So avoid these challenges, whatever I faced, and follow the methods which I followed. How did I was able to overcome these challenges so that it will even help in your own journey to not only lose weight and maintain that weight for rest of your life. Hi, my name is Arvind Padmaraju. I am a health and lifestyle coach, and in this video I'm going to deep dive into top 5 or 6 struggles which I faced and how did I overcome during my journey. So before we get into the secrets, I want to just show you my journey of struggles and my journey of failure. Years, how did I fail more than 10 times, and what are the mistakes I did, and how you can avoid those mistakes into your own journey right now. Okay, so first let me show you my own transformation. So this is what, uh, my last 20 years of a transformation where I was in 2003, I passed out from my college, and where I was, I was thin and lean and fitter, uh, fit version of my— I was able to maintain my ideal weight, uh, during my college time. Then over a period of time, because of the, my, the lifestyle changes, the amount of process foods, amount of excess consumption of calories, and lack of a certain lack of exercise or sedentary lifestyle, I was kept on gaining weight. I did multiple diets, whatnot. I followed a GM diet, I followed a keto diet, I followed intermittent fasting, I followed different diet patterns, whatever you can call it out— low carb, high carb, paleo diet, high protein diet, all kind of diets and restrictive diet patterns, and doing workouts in a different fashion. I did almost like every single thing. And finally, what I understood is I have overcome these 5 biggest struggles of my life, so which I'm going to share it in this video. How did I was able to not only lose weight and maintain that weight for not last 4, 4 and a half years, I'm able to maintain my body. So this is what is my transformation. I went from 102 kgs to maintaining around 80 kgs weight from more than 4 years. And one point of time I went and hit even a 7% body weight where I was competing for a bodybuilding competition. Now more than anything is I, I enjoy my life and I'm going share with you some of the struggles which I faced and how did I overcome those challenges in this particular video. So let's deep dive into the biggest struggle, the first and foremost struggle, which I struggled a lot with the consistency. So because of the busy schedule, because of professional and personal, um, a lot of work and a lot of things was going on, I always used to start my journey with the highest energy and used to do it until I reach my weight. The moment I reach any weight I will get a full freedom that, you know, I can do whatever I want. And then I, I get back to my old schedule of eating all, all kind of foods and also not exercising regularly. And this is— this was been a pattern for so long. And how I was able to get over this consistency pattern was so I was able to accept— I know I, at one point of a time, I came to know, to a conclusion that weight loss is a temporary thing. Your lifestyle, lifestyle habits is a lifelong thing. It is okay to even go overboard or go distracted and go out of the schedule for some time. What is most important is— so what I used to do, the biggest mistake is if I was not trained for 3 days, 5 days a week, then I used to leave everything rather than falling back. The biggest lesson what I learned from my own journey is consistency doesn't mean that you're doing it 365 days out of 365 days. Even if you can do some things, uh, even at the 60% of accuracy, even if you can do 200 days of the regular practice of following a diet and exercise, you can still lose weight. So consistency, meaning that you have— you will have a distraction because we all are humans. You all have a family, you all have kids, you all have personal priorities come up. But what is most important is falling back to the plan and continuing even after a distraction is what is real meaning of consistency. So I want you to accept your distractions instead of self-sabotaging, complaining, criticizing about yourself, rather than accept and fall back to the plan. See, Your progress will stop only when you quit taking actions. Your progress will continue as long as you're taking actions, you are consistently putting your efforts. And also another biggest shift came, that is I am not going to do exercise or a diet just to lose weight, and the moment I lose weight I will not go back. I will do this because the rest of my life I want to live a healthier and fitter. This was the biggest mindset shift also I got. This journey is going to be a lifetime journey. This action, whatever I'm going to do, I'm going to do it for a lifetime. If I am not able to do it, if I'm not able to sustain, if it is not flexible, I will not be able— I will not do that particular activity. This is what is the conclusion I came. So I want you to ask yourself, any activity you are doing, ask yourself, can I do this for lifetime? Can I do— can this particular action will be sustainable? Can this is being flexible with my own routine? Ask your question. So then only do those actions, because consistency is where you get the result and you will be able to maintain that result for rest your life. That was the biggest struggle I faced. The second biggest struggle was cravings. All the time I used to crave for sugary foods. How did I avoid craving for sugary foods is I followed some of the methods. One of the things is I was not able— I was not following a balanced meal. What is a balanced meal is when I— whenever I started with my previous weight loss journeys, I was not prioritizing two things. Prioritizing these two things has helped me to overcome the cravings. One is including fiber as part of my diet. The second thing is including a good amount of protein as part of my diet. These two things helped me managing cravings. And also, I was— I used to neglect sleep, and also the stress management was the biggest reason. These are the four things. By correcting it, I was able to manage my cravings much, much better. And every single time there is a craving happens, And also there is another step also I did is keeping all the junk food away from my sight, not to keep in front of easily accessible. Even if I crave for some food, I used to go out and eat. This is the way you can do it for yourself as well. And at the end, once you start eating a balanced meal with including fiber and protein and take care of your sleep, your— my cravings has came down drastically. Drastically to down, and that has helped me to maintain my cravings. The third important thing which I, um, which I dealt with my own struggle was the mental and emotional struggles. I have a biggest tragedies happen in my life and I lost my wife and I went into a deep depression. And also when I went with a multiple, um, big impacts with where I lost my money, I went into a deep depression. Whenever that deep depression moment happens, I— food became a replacement of to getting over these emotions. I used to overeat food, and I was not able to understand what is that emotional trauma. And I don't know what are some of the ways you can come out of the trauma, and how the mindfulness, and how the personality development tools like healing and understanding out of my own emotions. And once I started working on them, I was able to combat with all those traumas in a much, much better way rather than replacing. Because 90% of the time in my own journey, every single time there is a biggest tragedy or biggest pain happens, food became a replacement for my— it's kind of, um, what you can say is to suppress those emotions, I used to eat a lot of food. And this has been one of the biggest struggle. So I overcome that, started working on investing on myself in the personality development tools and understand that, you know, the traumatic experience you need to go and heal. So once I introduce the healing, I was able to come out of that. So, so don't take any kind of a past traumas and you carry a lot of resentment because of those traumas, and that puts you into your body. You may be having that cravings or, you know, that binge eating happening because of you are not accepting your past and you want to get over it. You made food as a replacement of that. This is one of the biggest struggle. And the second important part is a mindset. All the time I always used to feel about my past experiences, past challenges, whatever I had, and I used to self-sabotage myself and I used to not believe in myself. My feelings and my thoughts were not aligned with the result, whatever I'm going to get it. The moment I changed my feelings, my— the moment I changed the thoughts by consistently reprogramming my subconscious with, with the positive thought process. So this is what I help in my program is, uh, 90% of my program is depends on your psychological reprogramming and changing your behavioral patterns. So the moment I transformed that, my actions became seamless. 90— previously, for every single part-time when I do, um, uh, previous times, I used to focus on diet and exercise. I left my mindset aside. So one important thing what I learned is a fat mind cannot create a fit body. A fit mind you need to create first to create a fit body. Yes, so focus on understanding your mental and emotional struggles is very important. The next important thing is balancing your social events and also family gatherings and outings. Earlier I used to follow a very strict diet which is not even have any scope to, um, you know, enjoy with going out with the family and all of that. So Over a period of time, what it has created is it has created dissatisfaction on my relations, and also it has created some kind of a binge eating mode. After 3 months of time, I feel like eating so crappy food, and all the time I keep craving about the foods which I, which I'm consistently saying that no, no, no, no. So rather what I did is I used some of the methodologies like intermittent fasting, and I made my diet flexible. 80/20 rule I introduced. 80/20 rule is nothing but 80% of your diet would be part of your nutritious food, and 20% I was able to manage with all my favorite food. If I feel like eating a sweet, I used to include. If I go out for a birthday parties, I was able to eat my favorite pastry or the sweets. All of them I was able to include as part of a routine. So this is one of the biggest struggle. So if you know how to manage it, if you know how your diet works and how you can balance it out, your, your meals, you can literally enjoy all the social events. Right now I go out and eat with my family, but what I find is a balance. Balance is very important in your journey if you want to maintain this for rest of your life, balance is a key. That balance has to come even with your family events and all of that. If you, if you have a little awareness about the nutrition and if you have little awareness about how your calories, calorie in and calorie out works and what kind of foods you can choose, you can easily manage most of your social events. Then the last but not the least is hitting into a plateau. The plateau is something is that you, you are doing every single thing right but you're not losing any of your weight, you're not losing any of your inches, you're not seeing a progress. What happens is your body goes into a kind of a thermostat kind of a behavior. So you be in the same calories for longer period of a time, what happens is your body get adapted with that challenge, that calories. Even though you are with the calorie deficit, you will not start losing weight. So in that case, what you need to do is either you need to increase your energy expenditure or you need to reduce your calories, or sometimes maybe you need to come back to the balance maintenance calories for 2 to 3 weeks after every 12 weeks so that your body gets back to the back momentum. There's something like you're giving a shift to the pattern of your body calories, energy expenditure, and energy intake. So once you go to— I use some techniques called reverse dieting and forward dieting. So these tools will use to help me to break this plateau. Plateaus are very quite common because when your journey is a lifetime, right, you don't need to bother about these all small, small challenges and small, small struggles. You can always break it. And these are the some of the struggles which I faced, and hope this video is help helping you. And also, please avoid these mistakes. And whatever I shared in this, these struggles, I want you to implement in your journey as well. So just to recap, these are the 6 struggles which I faced with the consistency. The second important thing is cravings, managing cravings. The third important thing is mental and emotional struggles and traumatic experiences, what I had and how did I heal. And the fourth important thing is managing your social and family gatherings and events along with enjoying. Don't be too restrictive. Be— have the flexibility in your life. And the fourth— the fifth important thing is managing with your plateaus. So these are the 5 struggles, and I think the follow those, uh, the things which I shared with you which helped me in transforming in my own journey. So hope this video is useful. If you are still new to our channel, click on the subscribe button and also click on the bell icon. You will be notified when I post my new video. 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