5 years since that moment of truth, I was still struggling with my weight. I had taken off 45 pounds and kept them off. But I had 30 more to go and shedding even 5 pounds off it was proving to be extremely difficult. I would lose 5-7 pounds and gain it all back if I didn't monitor my diet very closely.
Ofcourse when I was 200 pounds this weight and fitness level sounded great but now I wanted to be thinner and fitter and I was looking for something that would help me get there. And just when I was about to give up this search, I came across Dr. Nigam's Soya Diet. The promises that the advertisements made were big and that's what made it difficult for me to believe them the first time. However those days the initial expense to start the program was not too high so I decided to give it a try.
For details you can visit www.drnigams.com but at the high level its a low carb, low fat and low calorie diet. Its a three pronged attack and if you can follow the diet 100%, it delivers wonderful results. The catch being? you have to follow it 100% - even a little bit of cheating and weight loss wouldn't happen.
The website says that you have to follow diet six days a week and 7th day you can eat normal food but that's not true. I followed that for first month but when I didn't get results, I followed the diet all 7 days of the week and started losing at the rate of 2 pounds a week. 3 months later I was down by 25 pounds.
Everyone around me was amazed at how fast I was losing the weight. Ofcourse I was running 4 miles a day to augment the diet but I know that diet was the key variable for the weight loss because even after I stopped that diet, I continued running 3-5 miles everyday but didn't lose any more weight. For those 3 months I didn't touch sugar or anything fried. I stayed off all lentils, grains and rice. Only carbs allowed were low calorie fruits and vegetables. Fat and meat were also limited as it was a low calorie diet as well. It wasn't easy but results were so great that I had no reason to cheat.
Shedding these 25 pounds made me look younger, gave me energy to do a lot more with my life and overall I felt comfortable in my skin...for the first time in my life! But as we all know nothing lasts forever, my diet also didn't. Because the diet had some specific food elements that made it work, eating out on this diet was not easy.
After 3 months, my role at work changed and I started travelling a lot. I kept up with my running and continued to avoid obvious high calorie stuff like pizzas and ice-creams. I gained back about 5 pounds over the course of 18 months but I didn't consider it a bad deal. I was living a normal life without any weight or fitness related issues. So what if I was marginally overweight? It obviously wasn't too bad compared to the 200 pounds I once carried on my tiny frame.
During these 18 months I added gym, pilates and swimming back to my routine to avoid the boredom that can arise from repeating the same workout. Weekends usually meant couple of hours in the gym in the morning where I would use the machines with weight. I never did "lift" weights but used dumbbells, leg press, shoulder press and similar machines. And the weekend evenings were meant for swimming - an antidote for sore muscles. But running was something that I loved and even on days when I would have a runny nose or bad muscle soreness, I would run for 2-3 miles to get my endorphin fix - yes I had become an endorphin junkie and I was proud of it!
Ofcourse when I was 200 pounds this weight and fitness level sounded great but now I wanted to be thinner and fitter and I was looking for something that would help me get there. And just when I was about to give up this search, I came across Dr. Nigam's Soya Diet. The promises that the advertisements made were big and that's what made it difficult for me to believe them the first time. However those days the initial expense to start the program was not too high so I decided to give it a try.
For details you can visit www.drnigams.com but at the high level its a low carb, low fat and low calorie diet. Its a three pronged attack and if you can follow the diet 100%, it delivers wonderful results. The catch being? you have to follow it 100% - even a little bit of cheating and weight loss wouldn't happen.
The website says that you have to follow diet six days a week and 7th day you can eat normal food but that's not true. I followed that for first month but when I didn't get results, I followed the diet all 7 days of the week and started losing at the rate of 2 pounds a week. 3 months later I was down by 25 pounds.
Everyone around me was amazed at how fast I was losing the weight. Ofcourse I was running 4 miles a day to augment the diet but I know that diet was the key variable for the weight loss because even after I stopped that diet, I continued running 3-5 miles everyday but didn't lose any more weight. For those 3 months I didn't touch sugar or anything fried. I stayed off all lentils, grains and rice. Only carbs allowed were low calorie fruits and vegetables. Fat and meat were also limited as it was a low calorie diet as well. It wasn't easy but results were so great that I had no reason to cheat.
Shedding these 25 pounds made me look younger, gave me energy to do a lot more with my life and overall I felt comfortable in my skin...for the first time in my life! But as we all know nothing lasts forever, my diet also didn't. Because the diet had some specific food elements that made it work, eating out on this diet was not easy.
After 3 months, my role at work changed and I started travelling a lot. I kept up with my running and continued to avoid obvious high calorie stuff like pizzas and ice-creams. I gained back about 5 pounds over the course of 18 months but I didn't consider it a bad deal. I was living a normal life without any weight or fitness related issues. So what if I was marginally overweight? It obviously wasn't too bad compared to the 200 pounds I once carried on my tiny frame.
During these 18 months I added gym, pilates and swimming back to my routine to avoid the boredom that can arise from repeating the same workout. Weekends usually meant couple of hours in the gym in the morning where I would use the machines with weight. I never did "lift" weights but used dumbbells, leg press, shoulder press and similar machines. And the weekend evenings were meant for swimming - an antidote for sore muscles. But running was something that I loved and even on days when I would have a runny nose or bad muscle soreness, I would run for 2-3 miles to get my endorphin fix - yes I had become an endorphin junkie and I was proud of it!
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