Getting help - Part 1

My first meeting with my nutrition coach

How’s everyone doing this week? Are you guys settling into the new year well? I’ve been feeling really down lately — I think sometimes the pandemic definitely gets to me. To combat all of this, I usually do a 5 or 10 minute long journaling and 15 to 30 minute long meditation. It usually helps to calm my mind! How are you doing with the pandemic? Do you have any self-care routines? Do share!

I was so conscious of how I looked because I felt so “flabby”.

I came back from my annual birthday trip in June 2019. During my holiday, I was still sticking to my intermittent fasting schedule. During this trip, I didn’t have access to gyms — so I chose walking as an exercise. As usual, I was always determined to lose weight after holidays.

On my flight back from Spain, I started my fast. The plan was to workout after fasting for 36 hours so that it’d restart my metabolism. And of course, the whole plan was surrounded around weight loss. Studies have shown that there is some evidence around how fasting can help to restore metabolism or provide more intense fat burning. However, no studies have shown what it can do to people who have been on restrictive diets all their lives. No studies have also shown the detrimental effects it can do to people who simply are not eating enough.

Eating usually meant bloating. I wasn’t sure what was wrong. Turns out it was because I just ate too little.

When I got back from my holiday, I was determined to start eating clean and working out regularly. However, even after doing clean eating, working out extensively, and doing intermittent fasting — I still wasn’t losing weight. At this point in time, I was desperate for any sort of help. One day, my best friend (who is now a health coach), encouraged me to speak to Nicholas. Alvina heard that Nick has gone through a personal diet ordeal, having eaten super little and still found it hard to lose weight. She recommended that I spoke to him to see how he could help me.

On my first meeting with Nick, I explained to him how I used to be skinny, how much I worked out, how little I ate. I went through my history of dieting and finally, he asked me a simple question, “How’s your period going?” I told him that my period is super light, it only lasts for a maximum of 3 days. He then suggested that I might be eating too little; and if I were to take a blood test right now; it will most likely be unfavourable. I was shocked to learn of this; because never in my life had someone ever told me that I was eating too little.

Nick also told me that I would most likely gain weight during this process. I learnt that weight gain and fat gain are two completely different things.

Nick encouraged eating more and instead of focusing on HIIT-like workouts, he favours lifting more weights. I was extremely skeptical of his approach initially and was adamant on not putting on anymore weight. However, he instead told me that in order to “heal my relationship with food”, I needed to be OK with putting on the extra weight. My body needed to heal. Half skeptical, I decided to work with Nick. My program focuses on “repairing my relationship with food” and to get back my hormonal health. The measurement of success was for my blood results to improve. In the beginning, my blood cholesterol was terrible. My T3 (linked to thyroid) count was also low. It was shocking to me as I always assumed that I was the healthiest at that time (eating clean, working out intensely).

A copy of my test results - My cholestrol level HDL and LDL are both not normal

My blood test results showing how my T3 is low

My first homework from Nick is to start tracking my calories and eat more than I used to eat. It was a scary and unfamiliar feeling. On the first day of our coaching session, I was asked to eat a total of 1,200 calories a day (up from a super unhealthy count of 800 calories per day). I cried during my first meal because I was so terrified of eating and gaining weight. The calories increased slowly on a weekly basis.

My first meal was a beef rice bowl.

I started getting educated on nutrition — especially macronutrients (commonly known as macros). I started educating myself on the function of these macros, and slowly expanded the range of food I eat.

Switching most of my HIIT workouts to lifting weights using the correct techniques.

On top of that, I was required to switch out of my usual exercise routine. Instead of spending 3 hours at the gym everyday, I only was required to spend 1 hour lifting and building muscles. If I didn’t have time to work out, I can skip it. The idea behind by eating more, you will have more energy to lift. Instead of lifting heavy, Nick also focused more on achieving good techniques, though lifting much lighter weight. All of these knowledge did help me later on in my recovery journey. My progress was measured by the amount of weights I was able to lift, my measurements and progress photos.

Are you curious to know the changes I went through during this program? Any challenges I went through during the program? What about how closely I followed the program? As this program and recovery is quite long, I am going to go into that in my next post. If you enjoyed this post, feel free to share it!

If you have questions, you can also email me! I’ll answer them in my next post. If not, I’ll catch you next week!