Abs

So, I now have visible abs. I weighed 68 kg when I returned from my India trip in December 2024. Within three months, I lost 5 kg. I'm pretty sure I lost a lot of body fat and gained a fair amount of muscle mass as well.

Initially, I thought only the gym was enough to get abs. No, no, no! It was a hard lesson I learned. I've been going to the gym for the past two years (not religiously, though), and I've been hiking every weekend. But still, I hadn't been able to get abs. The secret ingredient (and actually the only way) to make abs possible is diet control.

Then began my journey of extreme diet control. I've been fortunate enough to have a body that loses weight faster. I have a naturally athletic build. That's why I won't say that it was all my hard work. It's something I'm blessed with, and I'm grateful for that.

Coming to the fat loss journey, it was still pretty hard. I started counting calories in everything I ate. I am a vegetarian. Here was my meal breakdown for the weekdays:

• Breakfast (700-800 calories, 32-60g protein): 2 slices of brown bread, 6 egg whites (scrambled), sautéed veggies, butter/peanut butter (this was a cheat), 3 veggie patties.
• Lunch (400 calories, 20g protein): Salad with protein of choice (tofu, egg, etc.), followed by a single-shot Americano.
• Dinner (200 calories, 45g protein): Protein powder, yogurt.

Here was my meal breakdown for the weekend:

• Breakfast (600 calories, 50g protein): 4 slices of brown bread, 3 eggs (boiled), butter, yogurt, green tea.
• Lunch: Skipped!
• Dinner (400-800 calories, 70g protein): Salad + multigrain bread, protein powder.

Cheat meal: As you could see, this routine was too strict, so I used to break the monotony with a cheat meal on Friday. I ate Indian or Indo-Chinese food of about 1000-1200 calories.

Workout (6 days a week):

• 200 calories burned every day in a 20-minute treadmill run.
• 1-hour workout after that (alternating between chest and biceps, shoulders, back and abs, and legs).

Well, the journey wasn't that simple:

• I was living on 1600-1800 calories per day. It became very hard to sustain at times. My mind was always drawn towards opening a bag of chips. I sometimes did that with a lot of guilt.
• Salad for lunch was not sustainable at all. I used to feel very weak by the evening. At one time, I was having a hard time even lifting 100 pounds at the gym as my body was very weak. Sometimes, I felt like fainting. To get some energy, I ate fruits (bananas, apples, grapes, kiwis) somewhere in the evening.
• I have a demanding day job. It was very hard to balance everything with my job. At times, it seemed like a bad idea.
• Hair fall kicked in within a couple of weeks. That's when I realized I wasn't getting enough vitamins to supplement my diet. I started taking vitamin water to stop it. Still, it didn't work very well. I'm still figuring out what is sustainable for this.

Yet, I kept going. The results weren't visible in the beginning, but then it suddenly worked. Here it is (this photo was taken in Hawaii). The first one among athlete's body, a stoic's mind, a warrior's spirit, and a poet's heart.

I know I won't be able to sustain it for too long. I just wanted to flaunt it while it lasts!