I like spreadsheets and graphs, because they’re useful to interpret data and because it’s generally fun to create them. I worked a lot with spreadsheets and graphs in my life, but also privately it makes sense in some cases, for example if you want to document what type of effect regular running has on your weight, or if you want to document what goes in and out of your piggy bank. I like the fact that spreadsheets and graphs can help me to achieve long-term goals. There is something about looking at graphs, because they make you realize your actions are taking fruits. It also motivates me to continue with my plans.

Talking about my fitness routine, I broke through 74 kilograms this weekend. To be more exact, the scale is now showing 73.4 kilograms. That’s my personal record, and I can’t remember anymore when my weight was that low, I was probably younger than 18 at that time, but now I am 36 years old. I’m feeling very fit and my belly is pretty flat unless I sit (laugh, but that should be allowed). Also one of my friends told me that my face looks very healthy and skinny. I think he’s right, I noticed this in the mirror too, I have very distinctive features again, like a visible jaw bone line and visible cheekbones. That was the case when I was 18 or 20 and that’s how I liked myself on pictures. I’m pretty happy with the effect of my fitness activities.

What I really like is that it’s not so much rocket science unless you want it to be rocket science. I often saw articles online where they preach ways to starve yourself and what not. I really don’t care about diets. And by the way, I like eating. The only think I wanted to do is becoming active again, I wanted to do regular fitness. Apart from that I was interested to change a few things in my nutrition, but not on a way that I start to hate my life. I’m still eating tasty things, but I am more aware about what and how much I am eating during the day. I found a couple of tricks for myself. Somehow we grow up with these rules that you need to eat at special times. But I realized it doesn’t matter. If I eat a carrot and a tomato before lunch, I might be less hungry and thus I eat less during lunch. It’s stunningly simple. Our body doesn’t need rules. I also realized that problems like my acid reflux were basically caused by rules we grew up with, like the rule that you have to finish the plate (not sure if it’s everywhere the same, but here in Germany kids get told that if they don’t finish the plate, it’ll rain tomorrow), because the stomach doesn’t like overeating.

So, I changed my behaviour a bit, but not massively. It’s not so much about eating less, starving myself, decreasing my weight. It’s much more about listening to my body, starting to feel again when I really have had enough. Things like salt, sugar and so on, these ingredients make it more difficult to find out when you had enough. So, what I am doing is listening a lot more to my stomach, and paying a lot less attention to my tongue. I’m not starving myself if I ate just one dish, I still can eat an apple an hour later. The nice thing about this is that I am consuming a lot more fruits and vegetables, which then contributes to a healthier living as well. So, there have been small changes with my nutrition, but the bigger change was about drinks.

I realized drinking a lot of water is actually not that bad, and once you did that for a couple of days, the craving after sugary drinks will stop. I personally don’t need a lot of sugary drinks anymore. So, this is what I did last year and this year, because 90% of the time I am just drinking water now. Once in a week I allow myself a bottle of ice tea. To me it’s not so much about breaking weight records, it’s because I realized that I feel and look a lot better if I am active and if I make some small changes. It’s not so much about the numbers, but about living healthier and about feeling better. And drinking water instead of sugary drinks makes me feel a lot better than before. The effect is incredible.

This is maybe the fun about fitness. Maybe not right away, but eventually you become more aware of what you consume. Eventually you also want to change a few things there.