Ian's Background

Ian is 48 years old, is married and has two teenage children.

He has a demanding technical job with the Australian government that forces him to work relatively long hours.

At his heaviest, Ian weighed in at almost 85 kilograms (190 pounds) at a height of around 173cms (5 feet 8 inches).

Ian's weight loss motivation

While not excessively large, Ian was conscious of his weight and wanted to reduce it to feel better and help him avoid any unnecessary health problems as he moved into the final stages of his working career and beyond.

Among his goals was a desire to reduce the fat stored around his waist (which is the most dangerous) and in doing so reduce his waist measurement.

In addition, Ian wanted to drop a few kilograms to look healthier and wanted to improve his general fitness.

Getting started

As is the case with many of us, Ian had tried to lose weight before and had been successful to a degree.

The problem was that over time his weight would creep back and reach new heights in the process.

Feeling fat and unfit didn't make it any easier to get started again, but that is what he did, he decided to try again and this time was determined to stick with it.

Ian's frustration with his weight peaked towards the end of 2001 and he began his weight loss program in October that year.

Ian's weight loss plan

In October 2001, frustrated with his weight and determined to do something about it, Ian joined a lunch-time walking group at work.

Convinced that exercise would help him lose and control his weight, plus improve his cardiovascular fitness and general well-being; walking seemed like the obvious choice to begin with.

Initially Ian walked 5 to 6 days a week for around half an hour with workmates during lunch.

Although walking helped him lose 6 kilograms and feel fitter and healthier with more energy, Ian felt he needed to take his exercise to the next level in order to lose more weight.

To give his weight loss efforts a real boost and improve his fitness even further Ian began incorporating jogging into his daily walks during January 2003.

Around one year later, having slowly built up his fitness, Ian moved from walk-jogging to running, and that's when he really started to shed the kilos. Today, Ian's runs vary between distances of 6 to 9 kilometres and the goal is to build up to regular runs of 10 kilometres.

After developing a basic fitness for running, Ian started incorporating bike rides into his exercise routine. These rides help him burn extra calories by forcing his body to adapt to new challenges, give him extra recovery time by extending the periods between runs and provide extra motivation and stimulation by adding variety to his routine.

By increasing his exercise intensity and adding exercise variety Ian achieved his greatest weight loss between February and October 2004 when he lost the best part of 10 kilograms.

As well as helping him to achieve his weight loss goals and making him much fitter and healthier looking, the daily exercise sessions with colleagues helped Ian develop closer friendships with the workmates that he exercised with. This in turn made daily exercise easier and much more enjoyable.

As far as modifying his diet was concerned, as someone who enjoyed his food Ian didn't do too much initially.

As Ian puts it, "I pretty much maintained my eating habits as they were but eventually I started to eat less. I think this was a natural result of the exercise and as I felt fitter, stronger and healthier I just didn't feel like eating as much despite all the exercise."

What Ian did consciously try to minimize (but not eliminate) from his diet were things like soft drink, snacks (biscuits, chips) and take away.

How Ian's weight loss changed his life

The greatest thing about Ian's weight loss is that he didn't need to change his lifestyle significantly in order to achieve it.

The benefits of those small lifestyle changes, like exercising everyday and trying to minimize his consumption of take away and the like have been much more significant than the effort and encroachment on his pre weight loss lifestyle.

Among those benefits the greatest part of losing weight for Ian has been getting rid of the stomach that was developing and his new ability to be able to do a reasonably long run without stopping.

Another great benefit is that if Ian does want to eat something normally considered "naughty" or a weight loss no-no, he can do so knowing that he'll burn it off during the week while he's exercising with his workmates and friends.

Ian's greatest weight loss challenges

Because he started off slowly and progressed gradually with his exercise, allowing his body to adapt to the new stress being placed on it before increasing his efforts, Ian didn't face many exercise related challenges during his weight loss progress.

But despite successfully incorporating exercise into his daily life so that it became habit, being patient and losing the weight gradually over a number of years, there were a couple of exercise related hurdles to overcome.

Among these, Ian found it most difficult to motivate himself to exercise when he was away from his workout buddies, like on weekends for example.

The other challenge worthy of noting was making the transition from walking to jogging.

Even though walking builds up our fitness and the strength of our leg muscles so we can cope with jogging, it still takes commitment, persistence and a slow and steady approach.

The key for Ian was not to try to run too far nor too fast to begin with.

Keeping the weight off

Other than the support of his walking, running and cycling friends and colleagues, Ian did not need a great deal of support and so believes that maintaining his personal motivation and continuing with his exercise routine are the keys to maintaining his impressive weight loss.

And that plan seems to be working.

Ian has successfully maintained his weight at around 70 kilograms for almost a year.

Because he achieved his weight loss over a number of years rather than weeks or months, and the fact that Ian has found a way to consistently exercise on a daily basis and continually sets himself new exercise goals, we're confident that he'll maintain this comfortable weight for as long as he wants to.

Main lessons from Ian's story

We think there are six key lessons to take away from Ian's story:

1. Slow, steady weight loss is best and the easiest to maintain
   
   
2. Exercise doesn't have to interfere with our work, home or social life
   
   
3. We don't have to radically change our eating habits or totally avoid some foods to successfully lose weight
   
   
4. Patience and persistence are key ingredients to successful weight loss
   
   
5. Increasing our exercise over time in a slow and steady manner will really give our weight loss a boost
   
   
6. Exercise is easier to do and maintain when you workout with friends

Conclusion

Ian Burch successfully lost 15 kilograms and kept it off.

His story is an inspirational one that demonstrates that successful weight loss can be achieved without making dramatic lifestyle changes and sheds some light on the importance of persistence and patience in weight loss.

Ian's story represents great news for all of us because if he can do it, so can we. Like him, we just need to move more, eat less and stick with it.

Good luck with your weight loss and thanks for visiting weightloss.com.au.