Acknowledgements:
First of all, I would like to thank my parents for having brought up the author of this book the way they did. Mother and Father, please accept these words of gratitude from your loving son.
I would also like to thank my wife and daughter for being the best home-makers I could ever imagine. Because of your invaluable work, I have been able to focus on creating this book in an environment of peace and comfort!
You are my most beloved among all the people in this world. In fact, I appreciate all my relatives, friends and acquaintances (those who supported me in this project as well as those who did not), as all of you have played a part in this book reaching fruition!
Finally, I thank God for all the good fortune he has bestowed on me. I could not ask for more blessings.
Print media, various video courses and online articles are full of eye-catching headlines promoting the idea of losing weight without effort, or losing weight without even abstaining from unhealthy or high-calorie food. Some of them promise weight loss within 2-3 days, exploiting our wish to have a perfect beach body overnight.
In this book, I share my personal experiences in losing 20 kilos in 8 weeks! And – since a great number of people send me letters asking me to share my experiences – I want to tell you what I did to achieve this. When people meet me, they want to know how I managed not only to lose weight within a short period of time, but how I was able to take part in a bench press contest and fulfill the requirements for becoming a Master of Sports candidate. Most people firmly believe that weight loss exhausts the body and depletes its resources, but I prove the opposite! The system described in this book will teach you how to live a healthy lifestyle that will provide you with not only slim waist, but, more fundamentally, the feeling that you are healthy, strong and attractive!
Introduction
Welcome, dear friend! The unique book you’re holding in your hands will help you lose weight and look the way you’ve always dreamed. Moreover, you will be able to achieve this ambition within a short space of time. You’re probably asking: «Who can guarantee such a result?» My answer: I can. That’s because I went through the experience I’m going to tell you about myself. At the peak of my «zero attractiveness,» I weighed 114 kilograms, and my waist was 98 centimeters. My goal wasn’t trivial weight decrease, involving the loss of both fat and muscles. That method has tragic consequences, including a weakened immune system and – worst of all – brittleness of bones that can develop without you noticing. In fact, generally speaking, losing weight exclusively by diet or exhausting physical activity has disastrous effects on one’s health.
You don’t have to run 10 kilometers every day, and there’s certainly no need for a 3-kilometer swimming race. You won’t need to keep a mono-diet and eat only apples, drink only tea, or – even worse – consume diuretics! I chose a different method for myself. I’ve been doing sports since early childhood. When I was six years old, my father insisted that I start going in for sports. At first it wasn’t all roses. I hated exercise, and I would find whatever excuse I could for refusing to do them. But after a while there were fewer and fewer excuses. Due to my father’s strictness, I hardly missed workouts. My first achievements date back to when I was twelve years old, and I did 200 push-ups in one go.
My father brought me to a boxing school, and it was then that I took up kickboxing and Thai boxing. I won many awards at both regional and national championships, and I’ve been the best kickboxer in Ukraine for three years now. For nine championship tournaments in a row, nobody could defeat me. I also had the privilege of being trained by the best coaches in the country: Volyn, Avdievsky, Veduta, Yarema and Shevchenko. Thanks to the efforts of my coaches, I’ve achieved true excellence in sports. I have won the Ukrainian championships in boxing and Thai boxing. Then, at the age of nineteen, I founded my own martial arts school, which remains popular up to this day.
Throughout my life, I was guided by good mentors, including my father, mother, friends, coaches, university teachers, and, of course, my beloved wife and daughter. So now, I want to be your mentor in this delicate matter. I completed several courses on nutrition, read thousands of articles, watched hundreds of videos courses, read dozens of books, and talked to innumerable people who had accomplished the «slimming down mission» before I understood that I had enough knowledge to share with others. Thus, I’ve had the idea of creating a book. Today, I’m ready to direct and guide you as you move toward that cherished goal!
At the moment I am actively engaged in a power triathlon and am planning to achieve good, long-term results. And that means that I can’t afford to let my health deteriorate by losing weight in an unhealthy way. My task is to retain the muscle mass I have built, and preserve and strengthen the health my body has acquired. By reading this book, you will learn how I achieved this. I will tell you about all the obstacles I had to overcome from the beginning to the very end. I will also give you recommendations you will find useful. When I started the mission that I would successfully accomplish, I told all my friends that I was ready to share everything I knew and had done to achieve the results, because after 4 weeks I had slimmed down by 11.6 kg, and my waist had decreased by no less than by 9 cm. And I’d achieved that in just 4 weeks. After 5 weeks, I had lost as much as 13.9 kg, and my waist had slimmed by 10 cm. At the same time, I was retaining maximum muscle mass and didn’t feel weakened. My achievements were well supported by the results I demonstrated in a power triathlon, which meant that my weight had decreased, but my power and endurance remained the same! It was proof that despite the weight loss, I’d managed to keep the muscles while losing the FAT!
Throughout my life I have tried to help my friends with advice. They could see my results, and I’m happy to say that those results have inspired others. Nevertheless, I always understood clearly that occasional advice cannot be as valuable as a systematized list of specific recommendations. And I began to think about devising a course that would provide 100% of the answers to all the questions I had ever encountered. I wanted that course to be not just another philosophical theory but a clear guide to turning intentions into actions! Nothing in this book has been presented randomly. I am literally responsible for every sentence and every word in this book, as I myself have experienced everything I describe.
I believe that those who are able to force themselves to lose weight will have the right to claim the status of great achievers. So, dear friends, I would like to finish my introduction with the following message. It does not matter how many kilos you need to lose: for one person, the goal might be to lose 3-5 kilos, while for someone else it’s 10-12, and there are also those who aim to drop 20-30 kilos of extra weight. You will surely achieve it, but under one condition: don’t give up. Just be aware that you deserve the best – the very, very best! – and once you achieve it, nobody will be able to take it away from you. So, follow my recommendations, and I have no doubt you’ll reach your goal!
In our lives, we come across a lot of people who talk and talk about some time in the future when they’re going to change their lives. But as we can see, they don’t go beyond intentions. Our task is to strive for the best, for the goal, and if you promise yourself right now that this very summer you’ll be the most attractive looking person on the beach, let it happen! To win, you need to forget the «give-up option.» Good luck, and let’s begin!
Goal
The first thing we’ll take care of is setting a goal! Don’t skip this chapter under any circumstances, because without reading it, moving forward will be difficult if not impossible. What could be easier than setting a goal? Yet, for some reason, most people can’t set themselves a goal during their whole lifetime! I would even go as far as say that this is the only reason why people can’t have a happy and successful life. Lots of people don’t even know how much they weigh at the same time that they’re trying to lose weight (funny, isn’t it?). They think that as soon as they begin to lose weight, everyone will notice. They’ll be quite content with a compliment from a friend about their «new» weight, despite the fact that they started their diet yesterday – just before midnight.
The first thing you need to do is to set the «departure point» and the «point of arrival».
To start, measure your