Kisah Kurus: How Azreen Ariffin lost 38kg in 9 month.

Wan Norazreen Wan Ariffin

  • Umur: 32 tahun
  • Tinggi: 157cm
  • Kerjaya:IT Eksekutif
  • Berat Asal: 114kg
  • Berat Selepas: 76kg
  • Jangka Masa: 9 bulan
  • Facebook: azreen.ariffin
  • Instagram: azreen_ariffin

I was not born being fat. In fact, I was practically quite fit during school days. I started gaining weight during my university years. I guess being less active and eating more lead to heavier me. I continue to gain more and more weight when I started working. In between those years, I’ve tried joining a gym but I was doing it without the proper knowledge of how to lose weight. So eventually, I gave up.

Being fat comes with many ‘disabilities” I’d say. For me, being fat made me a person with low self-esteem. There are few things I tend to back out thinking that I can’t do it due to my size. Being big also made me frustrated whenever I shop for clothes. I skipped most of the “normal” shops at the mall knowing that I won’t be able to fit in the clothes they sell even if it’s the largest size that they have. So if people ask me what was my motivation to lose weight? I’d say “I’m just tired of being fat. I want to buy any clothes that I feel like buying. I want to be confident that I am no different than the rest of the world. I’m not second class people due to my size.” Yerp! My motivation is simple but to sum it up, I lose weight for myself and no one else.

My weight ballooned to 114kg.

Previously, I have never cared about what I eat whether it’s high in calories, or whether it’s high n fat or sugar. I just eat what I feel like eating. After sometimes when I finally get tired of all the questions such as “why are u so fat??”, i tried to reduce my food or tried to opt for food with no rice. I’ve tried a diet program similar to the Atkin diet (where you eat less carb- or close to no-carb; except from Salad and vegetables). It worked for a while but the strict diet was hard to maintain and on top of the diet, I also need to buy certain supplements in order to ‘maintain’ balanced nutrition. By doing that I’ve managed to reduce my weight from 98kg (at that time) to 84kg. Then I stopped doing it and that’s when my weight started to increase a lot!! Then I started working in shift schedule. That’s where my weight started to increase to 114kg (or at least that’s the highest number that I know when I started my gym membership about a year ago).

Kevin’s eBook was easy and logic

Around the same time when I started gym last year (June 2013) , I came across Kevin Zahri e-book – “How To Lose 5kgs in 5 weeks”. After reading the book, then only I understand about calorie deficit. Since it was easy and logic to follow, I said “Let’s try this”. I started following Kevin’s FB and Instagram account and regularly read the success stories in Kevin’s website. I did not join any of Kevin’s program when I started my weight lost journey.

What I did was diligently log my food in “myfitnesspal” and managed to lose around 30kg in 7 months. Around Jan 2014 only I join JK1M under Kevin Zahri and I registered for JK1M TTT under Haffiz Razali.

During my weight loss journey, I came across “Myfitnesspal” apps and i made sure that I diligently log my food intake in the apps to see what I eat daily.

I eat around 1200kcal of food daily but I increase my food intake to around 1400- 1500kcal once I started vigorously working out at the gym (depending on my workout activity) .

I did more readings on clean eating. What to eat and whatnot. However, I still eat rice almost every day for my lunch and my dinner but I limit the intake to only 1 handful of rice per serving (segenggam nasi) . I opt for nonfry food whenever possible and I tried to prepare my own food as often as I can . When you prepare your own food, you can control the amount of oil, salt and sugar. Most of the days, I will eat accordingly and I will have once a week cheat day.

My Fitness Routine

When I first started the journey, I made a commitment to visit the gym every single day to make a habit out of it. This was because previously I joined a gym for a while then stopped after few months of visiting. So I don’t want the same thing to repeat hence I commit to working out every single day for a month. Then after a month of daily “visits”, I learned that I need to allocate at least a day in a week for a “rest day”.

During the 7-8 months that I managed to reduce 30kg of my weight, what I did was the following :

  • Visit the gym to workout at least 5 times in a week. When I first started gym, I hired a personal trainer to learn all the needed exercise that I need to do. I know then that whatever you do, you need to learn from those who knows better. It was among the best “investment” that I have done. From there I learnt how to work out and my trainer taught me routines/exercise that I can do on my own even if the cardio machines are all occupied.
  • Whenever I visit the gym, I will allocate some times for cardio, TRX training (body weight training) and also weightlifting (free weights training). I also try to join Yoga\ Pilates classes at least once a week to add more flexibility on my training. Sometimes I join classes such as Zumba, BodyPump, RPM, BodyAttack and many other group exercises in the gym just to add some variety to my training schedule.

As I get lighter, I recently started running indoor (on the treadmill) and outdoor. Thanks to my JK1M instructor(s), I learned how to run correctly and where are the usual spots people will run in KL. My usual spot for outdoor running these days is Padang Merbok. Regularly on the weekend, I usually run with my friends.

Though I would still not claim that “I Love Running”, I have so far registered few running events and I have managed to run My 1st Half Marathon last April.

“Nope. I do not take any specific supplement.”

Simple rules in losing weight.

I would not say that’s “It’s that easy to lose weight”, else there will be lesser fat people in the world. However, It’s Not impossible to lose weight. But in order to lose weight you need to follow these simple rules :

  1. Ensure that you keep a food journal. Log every single food that you eat. You’ll be surprise to see how much calories you are putting in your body daily. Sometimes certain food may seem small but in reality it’s high in calories.
  2. Read more. Learn more on what is the good food you should eat. What kind of exercise you can work on. Knowledge is the key here. If you are doing things without proper knowledge, you won’t get far.
  3. Find time to work out. If you can’t spend time at the gym, work out at home. You can run near your house in the morning or evening. Spend at least an hour of your 24 hours’ time to work out. Find time and not excuses.
  4. Surround yourself with good motivated people. There will be others who will make fun of your effort to lose weight. There will be people who laughs whenever they see u struggling calculating your calories, people who snorts at your effort to workout. Believe me these people exist. Ignore these people. Find what your motivation to lose weight is. Focus on it.

“Last but not least, keep on doing it. Learn, Do, Repeat!!! . You’ll get there eventually. My favorite motto: Slowly but Surely.”