What it Takes to Lose 30 Pounds:

What does it really take to lose 30 pounds? A strong determination, a clean diet, a rigid workout routine, or perhaps a series of failed attempts that drags you down to the rock bottom again. 
It's really not that hard to lose weight for Anyone who really wants, he can achieve this in various ways, maybe just not the healthiest or most sustainable ways. 
For me, I successfully lost a substantial amount of weight multiple times but only in 2019 did I finally make the results stay instead of bouncing back to another peak in my weight.

Finding Purpose:

How did I do it? Well, it's a combination of changes I made in my lifestyle habits, perspectives. But in order for the whole story to unfold, we have to start with purpose. Anyone on a weight loss journey has their own reason. Some want to be healthy again, some do it to boost their self-image and confidence, some do it because of social pressure. 

Whatever your weight loss goal might be, if your sole purpose is to lose weight, you'd be lost like me on this journey. Purpose, something set up as an object or end to be attained. It is the intention, resolution, and determination of your weight loss. Without the right purpose to a weight loss journey, it's kind of like trying to drive off an electric car with gasoline. 

It won't get you anywhere. For me, my purpose has been quite shallow for longtime. Being a skinny kid all my life until gaining more than 15 pounds during my freshman year at UCLA. My drive for on a diet came straight from self-repulsion. I hated the way I looked, so puffy, the way my jeans were so tight that it hurt to breathe, the way that no one compliments me anymore about how slim I look.

Shift in Perspective:

My sole purpose for the weight loss journey was to lose weight. Before rolling your eyes at me and say duh, what else would it be, let me tell you what I learned from trying to lose weight for the purpose of losing weight. When the end goal was to lose weight, I overlooked the methods of achieving this and the consequences of some concerning methods such as starving myself. 

This, of course, didn't get me very far down the road. I lost a ton away drastically but soon after I thought I reached my goal of losing that weight I immediately gained it back because my lifestyle was unchanged and my body was not well.

Adopting a Healthier Lifestyle:

I realized during this journey that weight loss is only the result of adopting a healthy lifestyle. When the goal or purpose is not to lose weight but to be healthy when that's set everything else comes along.

When I only focus on the byproduct of becoming skinny and not the core of becoming healthy even when I became skinny it was only temporary because my body was not healthy enough to sustain it. After making these conclusions about my failed weight losses, I finally made up my mind to not lose weight but do something more living healthier. When the goal shifted from weight loss to living healthier a lot of weight loss obstacles just felt out of my sight.

Changing Exercise Perspective:

When it came to exercising, I used to only view it as a mundane task to burn more calories. I obsessed over the number of calories I could burn each time I go on a treadmill or elliptical. 

To be honest, it was tiring and another honest truth I hated running on treadmills. It was boring and painful for me but I always forced myself to do it because running was apparently one of the most effective ways to burn calories to lose weight. 

But when my purpose became to living healthier I no longer stress about the number of calories that an exercise burns and more so focused on doing the workouts that are fun for me and are therefore easy to keep doing as a habit. 

I started picking up resistance training to build lean muscles, swimming as my preferred cardio, as well as taking walks and of course trying out different abs workouts. When there wasn't as much pressure to burn so many calories but just to have fun and be healthy, working out has become easier day by day. Eventually, these activities that I picked up and decided I liked sticked with me and became habits than a natural and painless lifestyle.

Reforming Relationship with Food:

Another big change that happened since I reset my purpose was that I finally stopped caring so much about my weight. 

I was obscenely obsessed with my weight to the point that I used to weigh myself multiple times during the day. This was a complete waste of my time and added unnecessary stress. For two reasons, 

The First reason 

my weight does not paint the whole picture. For example, the same 60 kilograms could look drastically different on the same person due to a change in body fat percentage and muscle mass. 

When I stop caring about my weight and just focus on gaining more lean muscles the nice thing about gaining lean muscles was that I was burning fat at the same time so when I weighed myself once in a blue moon I noticed that my weight began dropping a bunch without me intentionally trying to lower it and I honestly didn't even need to link myself to know that my weight loss or fitness journey is on track because my clothes were getting more loose as a result of focusing on becoming stronger and gaining more muscle mass which is quite counter-intuitive 

The second reason 

to ditch the scale is that your weight is determined by so so many things like your water intake how much you ate the night before etc your weight before and after your meal could differ by over one kilogram does that mean you instantaneously lost progress of course not this has discouraged me so much in the past and more dangerously made me scared to eat which brings me to the next change I made.

Conclusion:

By changing my goal from losing weight to living healthier I was able to shift my perspectives on exercising, my weight, food, and nutrition thereby adopting a series of good habits. 

It's weird when you chase so hard after losing weight it will come back and bite you and wait rebounds but when you set your goal around changing your entire lifestyle the weight loss naturally falls into place. So that's my journey of losing 30 pounds the number is just a number but the new lifestyle I adopted is a true gift from this journey that I will cherish.