It’s been almost 3 months since I started my fitness journey. Here’s a quick update—I’ve lost 6 kilos and seem to be on track with my goals. I currently weight 70.2 kilos. Just going to share how it’s going, in case this ends up being useful to anyone out there.

It’s amazing what can be achieved with just a little discipline. Okay, it’s a large amount of discipline, but you don’t really feel that when you’re start seeing the results, do you? Here’s what’s been working for me.

Cut down on desserts big-time

My biggest sin of the last couple of years was gorging on chocolate and sweet stuff after every meal. Now it’s just 2 – 3 times a week.

Maintain calorie deficit

Can’t stress how important this is. I read somewhere that the best way to do this is replace half your carbs with vegetables, protein or fibre. I do this in a number of ways — muesli for breakfast, occasional green salads with a simple dressing few times a week for lunch. If I feel hungry, I’ve been snacking on 8 – 10 almonds. It really is down to the math here — make sure you don’t cross your calorie budget. Healthify has been super helful here, and it says mine is around 1600 kcal for my age and activity level.

Cut down deep-fried food

This means no to fries, KFC, samosas and so many other snacks I love. Sigh.

Be active for at least 30 minutes a day

After going crazy with cardio for the first few weeks (like all of us noobs do), it was Wayne who told me to focus more on weight training. I’ve been doing simple routines with dumbbells, lateral pulldowns, bench press and chest fly. For cardio; elliptical, stationary bike and skipping.

I’m not going to write this and pretend it’s easy. No way Jose. This is hard, especially if you’ve never had to do this before. Sometimes I get cravings so bad, I have to cave in just to stay sane. Finding a time to work out was another important lifestyle change I had to make. I found 06:30am to be the most convenient time for me and I’ve stuck with it very faithfully.

One last thing. It’s difficult to stay motivated during the first few months because you can’t see the results just yet. But I’m slowly starting to see new muscles appear — chest, biceps and back — and that’s very inspiring.