Wellness Journey-1: The Process

This program is not about a crash diet or spending hours in the gym but it is focused on building the hormone harmony that plays a key role, which is not only how to lose weight but also how to maintain it forever.

The whole program and the journey towards wellness takes about eight months. The program is divided into two parts - the first four-month part focuses on fat loss and the last four-month part on getting leaner by increasing the muscle mass.

Understanding body weight

Bodyweight consists of three-parts: - bone weight, muscle weight, and fat weight. Bone weight can't be altered so the net focus of this program is to lose fat and build muscle.

If I increase muscle mass, won't it add to the overall weight?

Yes, and for that, you need to understand the role of fat and muscles in the body, a topic that we will cover extensively in the upcoming blog posts.

There are seven key steps that we need to follow before getting into phase one of this program - we will explain them in detail in the subsequent blog posts.

1. Unlearning -

There are millions of pages on Google and YouTube videos talking about the easy way out for weight loss or diet to follow. There is no single diet plan that works for all. You need to learn more about the science behind it, to understand your body composition, and then to apply the best diet that works for you.

For example - taking apple cider vinegar (ACV) is one of the most recommended ways for quick weight loss but it's selective effective. Some studies showed that people do lose weight when supplementing their calorie restriction with ACV, none of these studies are extensive enough to come under the umbrella of medical research. ACV induces nausea to suppress appetite (Found in human trials). Or it can cause severe health risk of low blood sugar (a medical emergency that can cause brain damage) or low potassium level (Another serious side effects). You need to be in a state of near-perfect health to get the positive effects of ACV.

The best way to start the weight loss journey is to first spend some time learning science, and learning your own body, and then deciding which path to take.

2. The motive behind weight loss and expectation settings

Weight loss doesn't begin in the gym with a dumbbell; it starts in your head with a decision.

Healthy weight loss is a very slow process. It has to be slow to last long and during this eight months period, there will be times when you will want to quit. It's important to write down the motive and inspiration on why you want to start this journey. Write a short note for yourself and it will come handy when you want to quit - you need to remind yourself of why you started this journey in the first place.

You will not notice the impact or difference on a daily basis but persistence is the key in the weight loss program.

Our body uses fat as a survival mechanism and that's why losing fat is hard as it's anti-survival for the body.

3. Dieting and Nutrition principles

You need to learn more about how food works on the body, what are macronutrients, how energy cycles work, how BMR plays a role in maintaining a healthy weight, what is body set weight, why fat loss is hard and cannot be targetted to a specific area of the body, why quick weight loss always comes back, how to transform the body composition, why calorie deficit diet is not always effective.

The basic principle for dieting and nutrition is one: For a healthy weight loss, you don't need to eat less. You need to eat right.

4. Detox

Detox plays an important role in preparing the body for a healthy weight loss. We will discuss the detoxification techniques in more detail in the upcoming blogs along with a guide on how to detoxify the body once every six months and after a cheat meal.

5. Hormones

Hormones play the most important role in not only achieving a healthy weight loss but also sustaining it for the future. We will learn more about a few of them including thyroid, leptin, ghrelin, etc. among others and study how to stimulate them in a way that they help us in this journey.

6. Body Composition

Healthy weight loss is about changing body composition. It's about reducing fat and gaining muscle. We will shortly learn about how to effectively drive good body composition effectively.

7. Monitor and Maintenance

Achieving desired weight loss is easy, but sustaining it is very tough. In future blogs we will learn more about how to monitor and maintain the weight. We will also learn about the emotional journey for the first eight months and post that during the maintaining period.

You need not be an expert in this field as I have done my best to break down these high-level concepts into simple, understandable parts.

Now, if you decide to start on this journey, let's learn more about macronutrients in our next blog post.

Happy learning!

Saurabh