Deva Sanjeev

When in doubt look away from the camera 🌚
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Thank you for trusting us – .lk for letting us to manage your digital platforms and more over trusting us to do the event management for your newest outlet opening too 🙏🏽
My friends & fellow content creators who were present irrespective of the heavy rain on the day!
Also, a special thanks to .with.shaf and for the media coverage❤️ @ Liberty Plaza

These two pictures are exactly three months apart and after 10kg of weight and 3 inches of waist loss.
: THIS IS MY STORY. BUT CONSULT A NUTRITIONIST BEFORE YOUR START ANY DIET PLANS OF YOUR OWN.
My body type falls into skinny fat. Meaning: my torso and legs are skinny but I have visible, flappy belly fat and a tiny portion of neck fat. So, whenever I tried to cut down the calories to get rid of the belly fat, BOOM!! all the muscle gains say goodbye! On the other hand, adding more protein to the diet to get bulk comes with an additional benefit: love handles.😂
I’ve been gyming since 2015 but not consistently! TBH, I was frustrated and disappointed with my gains. Which led me to try fancy diets and workouts; I had tried KETO, it was a total disaster and won’t recommend anyone. High protein diet resulted in a quick gain of muscles but also my body fat percent hit 20+ for the first time.
So, how did I make this transformation without losing any muscle within 3 months? Four things: Calorie deficit, high fibre diet, abs training and most importantly intermittent fastening.
All these didn’t happen overnight, I’ve tried more than 3 years to find the right combination that works for me without messing up my system. Screw what others tell you, no one knows you well better than yourself. You gotta keep trying till find what works for you!
Back to my story, last December I was going through random YouTube videos and found out intermittent fastening. It's basically a diet cycle between periods of eating and fasting. Here is the best part: it does not restrict which foods to eat, but rather when you should eat them. So you can eat whatever you want within the eating window and must fast for the rest of the time. I've tried the basic diet plan: 16/8 Method 16 hours of fast and 8 hours of eating. In the beginning, I felt like I'm not taking this forward cos I was hungry all the time. But once you used to it, it's not hard at all! Let's say you break fast at 8 in the morning, then your last meal for the day should be consumed before 4pm.
Intermittent fastening started to give me results but I would say the real reason for my weight loss was my diet. I stopped eating rice, string hoppers and bread, basically I limited my daily carb intake. But I replaced carbs in my diet with healthy fibre. Vegies, oats and nuts!
The one thing I learnt in a hard way was you should enjoy what you eat, no point of starving to lose those extra two pounds. It's not sustainable cos very soon you'll get fed up of what you're doing and eventually will go back to your previous routine. So, I made sure whatever I eat must taste better! Eventually, I ended up cooking my meals for the first time in my life! BTW, if you want to lose weight I strongly recommend replacing rice with oats. Trust me, it's a lifesaver. If you cook oats with veggies and meat it tastes so much better and you won't have any cravings for carbs later in the day!
Till the end of January, I was able to lose about 5-6 kgs but I still had belly fat and the love handles were so hard to get rid of! To speed up the process I tried abs exercises cos I hate doing cardio. (The only cardio I love to do is swimming that is usually once or twice a week) TBH I don't have the discipline to do abs exercises one by one and keep track of the timing. A friend suggested me to try an app called 'six packs in 30 days'. Although I haven't got six packs yet, I assure that it helped me to get rid of my extra belly fat. I've been training abs for about 40 days about 30 minutes a day and I would say "Yass, it works!!"
The key is consistency. Once you start seeing the results it'll become an addiction! If you're someone like me who is struggling to get the best version of yourself I have a piece of advice for you: never give up, progress is progress no matter how little it is! Good luck!

In love with this unnamed dessert! I just got flattered when I saw my name on the plate. Thank you for the invitation and of course this delicious customized dessert ❤️ You guys rock!!