Losing Weight to Gain Muscle (Part 1): Set a Goal and Make an Undenieable Plan

Here’s a short story:

       Back in time when I began my quest to lose weight and gain muscle, I straight away took a year’s membership at my local gym and started doing some very serious workouts. This went on for some days and even week’s (I think for about 4 week’s or something) and then I had to attend my college party. I attended that party (which was great) but I skipped my workout for that day, and guess what happened the next day? I didn’t go to the gym. I literally stopped going to the gym and to be very honest, I had exactly this mindset, “I don’t care about what the world talks about me, if I’m overweight, people have to accept me the way I am and not try to change me, if a girl wants to marry me, she has to marry the real me and not the changed or modified me”.

This kind of mindset didn’t only wasted all my hard work I did for the past 4 weeks, it stopped me from doing a workout for the next 2 months. This made me think, how should I be consistent and lose weight? How can I gain muscle or turn this fat into muscle?

I went out to a couple of people (they were actually marketers) and took advice from them. What they said is to make some goals and create an action plan. They asked me a couple of things like:

·       How much weight do I want to lose?

·       In how much time do I expect to achieve that much weight?

·       What would I do if I didn’t achieve that weight?

·       What strategies will I follow to make sure that I don’t skip my workouts?

I answered all of them and then they told me to make an action plan and write it down on a big paper and post it on my wardrobe. I would then wake up and do exactly what I wrote down in my action plan and if I skipped something on that day, I had an alternative plan ready to be executed.

How did that affect my life and more importantly my weight? I was able to lose around 7lbs of weight in the first 3 weeks, this might not sound too much but it was a great milestone for me. In the next month, I lost around 15lbs of weight and I was already looking more muscular than overweight.

SETTING GOALS:

In your quest to lose weight, make sure you set a goal for

yourself. It will not only motivate you every day and give you something that you should work towards but it will also make you force yourself towards your goal. Why? It is just in our minds that makes us feel guilty and not capable of achieving something if we don’t achieve our goals.

Make sure you write down everything in detail that you want to achieve. I would advise you to break your goals into some mini-goals, this will encourage you to move forward towards your end goal every time you achieve a mini-goal.

I write my goals in a specific pattern that link to each other and then links to the end BIG goal. It helps me to see things clearly and then I make some kind of strategy, that I should accomplish this mini-goal first and then the next one. You too can do it this way.

MAKE SURE YOU SET A REALISTIC GOAL

Do you want to disappoint yourself? Do you want to make yourself feel guilty that you can’t achieve the goals that you set yourself? Aren’t you capable of achieving that weight?

If you don’t want to disappoint yourself, make sure you set a realistic goal for yourself. Goals like “I have to lose 10lbs of weight this month” sounds realistic and can be achieved by regular exercises and diets. But if you set something like, “I want to lose 30lbs of weight this month and compete Daniel Craig”, this sounds completely out of this world.

You can surely lose that kind of weight with the help of some medicines or going for a Liposuction but that would make you vulnerable to many diseases and might make you feel weak and will surely invite wrinkles on your skin.

If you set your goal of losing some pounds, but if you lose more than that, then you surely deserve a treat. Make sure you reward yourself when you achieve your goal or achieve more than that. If you achieve more than your goal, then it should be a grand reward, but don’t go out of the way during this ceremony.

This is the time when people think that their hard work is over and they should start doing everything they feel like they should be doing. This will only wipe out all the outcome of your hard work and will bring you back from where you started, and as the statement of the Physics goes “If you return from where you started, then work done=0”. So make sure your work does not count to be 0.

MAKE AN UNDENIEABLE PLAN:

You should or you WILL HAVE to create a master plan to follow. Without a plan, you ain’t going nowhere. This master plan will make sure you do everything as per your planning and don’t go out of the way. This is like a Mission Impossible, you have to follow the plan in order to survive in this world. So make sure you survive because it is important for you and everyone out there.

Create an alternative plan. Why? What if you failed to follow your master plan? There should be a Plan B to back you up which will make sure you achieve your daily milestones. These small milestones are what makes your end goal, so make sure you take them seriously.

Synchronize all your plans with your to-do task list in your Smartphone so that you never forget. This happens many times at the start because you don’t have a habit of doing what you will be doing. Always include your calorie counts in your Master-Plan and your Plan B. This will help you keep a track of how many calories you are losing and how you should balance it with protein and carbs.

You will have to limit your carbs, but make sure you provide the daily required carbs to your body to keep it functioning. Do you want to die losing weight?

Protein is very important and so limiting it will only make matters worse. 

Below I have mentioned some action plans and diet plans which will surely vary according to your body type and weight. Consult a nutritionist to create your own diet plan, but if you follow mine, it will do the thing.

DIET PLAN:

Week 1 –

Breakfast: peanut butter and banana shake, tomato and omelet, oatmeal (prepared with water), low fat vanilla/any flavor yogurt, cooked turkey bacon/wheat flour tortilla, blueberries, wheat English muffin, medium sized apple (you can make a combination of these or eat one item in one day but make sure you stay in the limits or else it will stop you from reaching your goals.)

Snack 1 (optional) – 15-25 almonds, 1-2 medium apples, 5-6 whole wheat crackers, ½-1 cup green grapes, 1-2 slice sprouted wheat bread, 1-2Tbs dried cranberries, 1-2Tbs sunflower seeds.

Lunch – 1 hard boiled egg, 1oz whole wheat pretzels, 2-4oz roasted turkey breast, ¼ cup chopped tomato, 2-3Tbs diced avocado, lemon juice along with 1Tbs olive oil, 4-5oz turkey burger (cooked), 2-3 cups mixed greens, 2-3Tbs grated Parmesan cheese, 2Tbs sliced almonds, an Asian ShrimpSalad.

Snack 2 (optional) – 3-6oz non-fat fruit, yogurt, 1 medium banana, 1oz whole wheat pretzels, 10-15 almonds, 1 hard boiled egg, ½ cup low fat cottage cheese, 1oz walnuts, ½-1 cup blueberries, 1-2 slice whole wheat bread, 1Tbs natural peanut butter.

Dinner – 3-5oz grilled chicken breast, 3 cups chopped lettuce, 1 cup cooked penne pasta, 3-5oz grilled flank steak, ¾ cup cooked whole wheat couscous, 1 large baked sweet potato, 1Tbs low fat plain yogurt, 2 cups broccoli, roasted with 2 tsp olive oil, 3-5oz grilled salmon, 1 cup sliced cucumber, 4-5oz cooked turkey cutlet, 1 cup steamed green beans, 1 cup cooked brown rice, ½ cup cooked quinoa

Snack 3 (optional) – For this snack, you can make a combination of snack 1 and snack 2 or simply follow snack 1 for one day and follow snack 2 the other day.

This is the first post of the series in which I will explain how you can lose weight and gain muscle the correct way. Make sure you comment below to give me some tips and I will include it in my next post.

Update: Here's the Part 2 of Losing Weight to Gain Muscles

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