Govinda Rampersaud of UMHS Chronicles His 100-Pound Weight Loss & Tells How Everyone Can Get In Shape & Eat Healthier

Editor's Note: Everyone at the UMHS North American Administrative Office has been amazed by the amount of weight that Marketing Coordinator Govinda Rampersaud has lost since he first joined us as a college intern in winter 2012. The UMHS Pulse asked Govinda to write the following guest blog post to chronicle his experiences and offer tips to anyone wanting to lose weight, build muscle, be healthier and eat better. Watch for future guest posts by Govinda on fitness, health and nutrition for students at American and Caribbean medical schools.

How I Lost 100 Pounds

By Govinda Rampersaud

I stepped on the scale and weighed 255 pounds. I thought to myself, "I have lost a lot of weight before and I can do it again." I’m now 100 pounds lighter and still get asked how I did it. When I started to exercise, back in late January, early February 2013, I knew this was going to be a long process, and had to work through the physical pain, hate, temptation and the biggest of them all, giving up again.

I started by doing two things first: eating "clean" and doing cardio every morning. When I mean by eating "clean" is not eating fast food, junk food, processed food, sugary food, or fried food. I ate whole food that is either baked or grilled or simply raw, and drink lots and lots of water. I substituted sugary things for my sweet tooth with fruit, and curbed my salty cravings with protein or nuts.

Eating "clean" does not mean starving yourself, which is never hard to do. On top of eating "clean," I would do something called intermittent fasting. This means you have an 8-hour window to get all the calories your body needs for the day, and the other 16 hours you fast. This helped me drop the weight so easily. If I was hungry after my eating window was closed, which was rarely, I drank water and ate fruit. I loosely counted my calories, but never went too crazy with it, because it would just drive me insane after a while.

The other half of my journey to lose weight and get fit was starting off slowly with exercise. People usually go full blast, thinking they can get into shape within a week, but it’s not true. You’ll just burn yourself out and quit, or worse, even injure yourself. So before I even picked up a weight, I started with cardio on my treadmill. I remember when I lost 40 pounds back in 2010. I could run 2 miles easily. But I knew I couldn’t do that now since I had been out the game for 3 years. So I started off by running 5 minutes, then walking 10 minutes. Then, slowly running for more time and walking less. Then I would run for a certain amount of time and burn out with walking on the max incline. This routine usually took me an hour every morning. And then from there I would increase the speed and incline while I ran and ran for only 30 minutes, for my morning run, which is about 3.7 miles.

I made amazing progress and when I got to the 55 pounds (50 pounds was my original) goal mark in August, I decided to get into the gym and start lifting weights. Before I stepped in the gym, I would look up workout routines and how to use proper form while bodybuilding on YouTube. I knew that building muscle was another long progress, so I had to be patient and keep on my grind. While I was at the gym, I met a gym buddy who told me about body-weight training, and got hooked on it. I had the best of three worlds: aerobic training, bodybuilding and calisthenics training.

So I kept at it, even though I had “haters” in and out the gym, and not every day was Christmas while working out. Now I’m 100 pounds lighter. I wanted to continue to get fit and lose a bit more weight to get leaner. Then a friend told me I should compete, and I thought about it for a day or so and signed up for the Spartan Race, which I’m currently training for now.

Govinda's Tips for Losing Weight & Getting Into Shape

Anybody can lose weight and get fit; you just have to make it a need. Here are some tips on how students at American and Caribbean medical schools can lose weight and get in shape.

• Eat Clean – It always comes down to what you eat! No junk food, no fast food, stay away from processed sugar, processed foods, no sugary drinks, no fried food. Eat whole food; grilled or baked works as well. Eat more veggies; eat them raw if you can.
• Drink Lots of Water – Avoid those sugary drinks or substitute them with diet drinks. Drink several glasses of water a day. Water helps you feel full and flushes out toxins.
• Morning Cardio – 30 minutes isn’t the end of the world.
• There’s bodybuilding, calisthenics training, bar training, etc. Find the one that interests you and stick with it.
• Mental Game – Don’t be afraid to push yourself because mental blocks can stagger your progress. Ignore the “haters”; you’re doing this for you and only you.
• Weekends should be your heaviest training days. You have more time take the grind!
• Rest – Make sure you get enough sleep each day, or take a day off. But don’t make a habit of taking every other day off. You have a goal and you need to stay focused.

(Top photo) BEFORE & AFTER: Govinda Rampersaud before his 100-pound weight loss (left) & now. Photo: Courtesy of Govinda Rampersaud

About UMHS:

Built in the tradition of the best US universities, the University of Medicine and Health Sciences focuses on individual student attention, maintaining small class sizes and recruiting high-quality faculty. We call this unique approach, “personalized medical education,” and it’s what has led to our unprecedented 96% student retention rate, and outstanding residency placements across the US and Canada. UMHS is challenging everything you thought you knew about Caribbean medical schools.