From 138 kilos to 55 kilos: How I shed so much weight

Might you have watched the rom-com movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding?

In a certain scene, Toula the protagonist, hides behind the counter when a good-looking man walks into her café.

She hides behind big glasses, frumpy hair and baggy outfits because her self-confidence and esteem are at their lowest. Toula does not believe she deserves any attention from anyone.

That is exactly how it felt for 29-year-old Satnam Aildasani Thomas when she attended a wedding in the US in 2013.

“I have always loved hiking. One day while in the US, we went for a hike at Utah, Zion and we got to this point called Angel’s Landing, a spot that you needed to pull yourself up to get to. Everybody got to the top but I couldn’t. They tried carrying me to get to the spot but they couldn’t. It felt so bad having hiked for five, or six hours all the way but couldn’t get myself to the top. Then I went to a wedding and the bride was heavily pregnant and about to give birth and I was still bigger than her,” says Satnam.

Those two incidents, triggered Satnam to want to fix her plump frame. Standing at five, she weighed 138 kilogrammes at the time.

“My heaviest that I weighed was 138 kilos, I was probably more but I didn’t step on the scale because you always come down with that little bit of self-consciousness when you are heavy,” she says.

The actuary says she began to put on weight at the age of nine when she lost her mother.

“I have a love-hate relationship with food, whenever I am down, feeling sad I would turn to food. When I lost my mum that’s when I started to seriously put on weight, it only got worse when I went to the US because everything there is bigger, juicier and greasier so I ate even more because I was away from family. I suffered depression and so food became my vice,” she says.

With her confidence massively dented, Santam was more than eager to get it back and so she enrolled for a nutrition course studying it parallel to her actuarial science degree.

“The beauty about studying in the US is that you can do majors or minors in different subjects. So I took a nutrition class as well as a physical education class and I learnt how the body works. I tried it on myself and that was the beginning of my body change,” she says.

How exactly does the body work? I ask.

“It’s different for every gender. For males, it’s easier for them to lose weight because they have a higher amount of testosterone hormones.

“A man can see the weight difference quicker if he is active but for females, it’s the opposite because the level of testosterone hormone in them is significantly low. For us losing weight it’s such a hormone thing because progesterone and estrogen hormones come into play.

“So trying to figure out what works for you is the hardest part for females. For females, there is no secret recipe that applies to all everybody’s journey is different. But there is one rule that applies to all and that is ‘calories burnt vs calories taken’” she adds.

In other words, if you are eating more than you are burning, you are already in surplus and that means you are gaining weight, and the reverse is true.

“That’s just how (body) science dictates so this notion that you have to eat much just because you exercise does not hold. At the end of the day, it’s how much you have burnt vs the intake,” Satnam now a certified fitness coach, clarifies.

With the nutrition knowledge Satnam enrolled in a gym and CrossFit exercises became her go-to form of workout. It was not long before she started noticing some changes.

“When you are heavier, you lose weight pretty much fast in the beginning period but only when you have been consistent. Within the first month, I could see noticeable changes. My clothes were becoming a lot looser, and I felt more confident but what stood out for me was the fact that I felt stronger than before,” she says.

Having mastered CrossFit a regime that involves constantly varied functional movement performed at high intensity, Satnam felt it was time to spice up her fitness programme.

“As years went on I wanted to work on mobility and flexibility so I incorporated yoga, I also did pilates to a point where I could do everything. To date, all these aspects constitute my workout programme. So I start with HIIT [high-intensity interval training] as a warm-up, then a little bit of CrossFit then yoga for stretching. I do that four to five times a week,” she says.

A big advocate of weightlifting, Satnam is encouraging women to lift weights allaying the misguided narrative and worry that they would end up bulking or their torso harden up as that of men.

“I completely disagree with that school of thought. As a woman if everything is regular hormonally there is no way—no matter how much weight you lift—you can put on muscle to the degree where you feel like you are manly. Instead, you will be toned and leaner because the more you work out the more muscle you build. You will never get bulky unless you are adding creatine and other supplements or extra stuff,” Satnam insists.

In other words, the female can only have muscle mass similar to that of a male if one is on supplements or steroids.

“That’s the only way you can build a bulky look but if you are a regular woman like myself you need to do weightlifting because the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn and the better you look. I mean look at me, do I look bulky or manly? Neither do I have that proper indentation of back muscles yet I can easily deadlift 100 kilos,” she says.

Satnam also wants women not to be scared of building muscles because it’s easier to lose it than it is to lose fat.

“It is easier for you to burn out muscles. If you do feel like you are getting a little bit into the bulky side you do some cardio and you will burn off the muscle, it easier for you to do that than it is with fat,” she says.

For two years since beginning her fitness journey while in the US, Satnam kept her workout regime consistent as well as nutrition. And like the plague, she avoided the weighing scale at all costs until she could not.

“I had come back for a holiday in 2015 and my brother kept pestering me that he needed to see how much I had lost. I weighed 84 kilos, I was mesmerised, I had lost a whole human. Now I weigh 55 kilos,” she says.

The reason why Satnam is against the idea of weighing oneself is because it has its downside.

“I refused to step on a scale and even to date I discourage my clients from doing that. I recommend measurements. Find a smaller dress or jeans, try to fit into it every month and see how it fits you. It’s better doing measurements to see how your body looks in the mirror than stepping on a scale,” she argues.

Also, “when you are bigger and step on a weighing scale you are already discouraged because you are always thinking of the number you want to be and if you weigh and are still far from it you are discouraged further and you start feeling like quitting.

“Also sometimes you might be weighing heavier than expected because you have begun building muscles and muscles are always heavier than fat,” she says.

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