2/11/2022 – Friday

Consistency: How I transformed myself from fat to fit.

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As part of 2022 goal of mine to improve my public speaking skills, I have joined Cosmos Toastmasters Club. This is my first ever speech in the club.

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Thank you for the introduction Toastmaster.

Hello everyone, happy Friday! As mentioned in the introduction by Alex, this is my first ever speech in Toastmasters and my first ever speech in 17 years. The last time I gave speech was when I was in school, about 10 years old.

Am I nervous? Yes. Am I excited? 100%.

Today I am going to talk about the word, “consistency”. And how that word helped me transform my physical fitness to the level I never imagined in my lifetime.

Before I continue with my story, can I get show of hands, how many of you go out for walk/run at least once a week?

It was first week of January 2021. On one typical gloomy Pacific Northwest Saturday, I went out to run outside. The plan was to run 1 mile but oh boy! Comes the quarter mile and I couldn’t go on anymore.

Defeated, I return back home and look myself in the mirror. What have I done to myself. Working from home in the pandemic, I had gained layers of fat all over my body.

Something had to be changed. It was new year, first week, why not take a resolution. Therefore I did. Get fitness to a level where I could run 3 miles, hike 4000 ft, lift 150 lbs. and of course, get rid of the excess fat that I had accumulated.

Step 1: Start eating less

Easy enough right? No. That was my first mistake in the journey. I started eating way too less.

I quickly saw initial results but after 3 weeks of eating at extremely low calories, my cravings started to take over and I started binge eating.

Before I know it, I was back where I started.

The problem: being too — aggressive.

I could’ve learned from my mistake but I did not.

Step 2: that I took upon was to move more. My idea was that instead of eating less, I could move more. I could go on long hikes, long walks and that will burn the extra calories.

I did that for a few weeks…until one day when I was hiking down from Snow Lake trail in Snoqualmie and twisted my knee. Reason? I was going down too fast and slipped off from a rock.

It took me about 3 months to heal.

Back to the square one.

Step 3: Having failed two times, I sat down and devised a new approach.

Move more, eat less, sleep more but do it slowly. Do it consistently. And not be too aggressive.

I eliminated all the targets that I had in mind and set only one target – follow the new rules day over day and forget about the results.

Thus started new phase of my fitness journey. I was enjoying this approach as I was able to eat out with my friends, still go on trips, go to gym and lift weights. There was no pressure to achieve anything as such, I was able to do it weeks long without feeling sad about life.

6 months passed by and I started getting noticed by my friends. The comments were in the form of

“Darpan, you don’t look like the person we knew few months back”

My clothes wouldn’t fit me anymore, the jeans were 4 inches larger.

I checked my weight. I was 135 lbs. When I started, 170 lbs. 35 lbs gone without me realizing.

How did this happen – doing the same damn thing day over day.

-or- in other words, “Consistency”.

Back to you, toastmaster.