Losing weight takes commitment, discipline, concerted efforts, and determination to step out of a comfort zone. It requires a change in mindset. It requires avoiding mentally irrational justifications that gaining weight is alright, or that being overweight is sexy. Folks, weight gain is a big deal. Let me be frank here, being overweight is not sexy, as the promoters of such ideology want us to believe, especially not when health is of utmost importance. 

There are many ways to lose weight and keep it off, according to experts on weight loss, including changes in food intake, weight loss pills, or other prescriptions, excises, and combinations of concoctions devised by gurus on “How to lose weight for the dummies.” Many of these recommendations are confusing, contradictory, inconsistent, and unsustainable. 

My grandparents’ methods for losing weight were the best and most natural. It is a weight loss regimen that guarantees permanent weight loss without requiring gym sessions, without weight loss medications, or constant prayers about weight loss. With my grandparents’ approach, you can easily give up on the New Year’s diet resolution for weight loss and save a bunch of money in the end.  The solution is very simple: Follow my grandparents’ village way of life. 

Losing weight my grandparents’ way

Losing weight and staying fit is a function of habits and lifestyle. Their ways were simple, with less effort. It was cheap. It was natural, and it was without tears or pain. The irony was that they did not even know their habits and behaviors were golden and exemplary in the world of weight loss. They did have one advantage, however. Village life and poverty might have contributed to their good health and long life. What they did was not a deliberate or learned process. What they did was not a conscious daily plan. It was their natural choice. It was their natural way of life, for life.  

Let me share with you the habits and lifestyles of my grandparents that I observed during my childhood. They both lived to be over 98 years old and enjoyed good health for the majority of their lives. 

In retrospect, their involuntary staying fit might be credited to their poverty because they could not afford a diet that would have caused them to gain weight or create health issues. Their diet was sourced from Mother Earth: 100 percent naturally grown, from roots, tree bark, green leaves, fruits, and vegetables. 

My Grandfather’s Way

His daily routine was as follows: 

Walking:

My grandfather would walk to the farm around 6 am, a distance of 5 miles one way. With his segmented farmland, tilting the soil was a lot of hard work, energy-consuming, especially during harvest. He worked a minimum of an additional 15 miles on his segmented farms without the use of farm equipment or a vehicle. He covered an average of 25 miles a day, six days a week, free of charge. This is what modern-day people pay handsomely to do at the gym. Even when they do, they’re not consistent, and by March, all plans are thrown out the window, until another new year with a new year’s resolution to lose the weight they had gained in the meantime. In the absence of the ability to walk, a treadmill is the next best thing. 

Breakfast 

He never ate breakfast, the so-called “important meal of the day” by modern-day dieticians. As a result, they did not have to deal with processed quick-eat-on-the-run breakfast foods that are enemies of weight loss and good health: Bread, muffins, and tasty biscuits made from processed flour; processed sausages, sugary tea, sugar, sweeteners, and fried eggs in saturated fats. All these delicious foods are detrimental to weight loss and overall good health.  

Lunch

In the afternoon, he ate light foods, primarily carbohydrates and fiber, such as plantains, yams, and fresh fruits, always accompanied by some form of vegetable, to replenish his energy, which was essential for the physical labor required on the farm. Then, after farm work, he walked home. As a result, all the food he had consumed on the farm was digested by the time he got home during the five-mile walk home.  

Dinner

The evening meal, which was the most crucial meal of the day, consisted of carbohydrates, typically served around 6-7 pm, accompanied by various types of vegetable stews or vegetables steamed with red pepper, onions, and palm oil. Best of all, he ate in moderation. 

In all their meals, water was their primary beverage of choice, except on special days when they drank local wines or a shot of whiskey.

My Grandmother’s Way

Breakfast

She never ate breakfast either. She started her day as early as 4:30 am, walking to the church for morning service, a half-mile, one way, each morning of the week. After the service, she walked to visit her family throughout the village, covering an average of 5 miles a day. 

Lunch

For lunch, she hardly ate, but when she did, she ate light foods and drank plenty of water while doing house chores or going to the village market square six days a week to sell her wares, all under the heavy sun and high temperatures, soaking up vitamin D.

Dinner

For the evening, she ate almost the same foods as my grandfather, but in small quantities. She loved a variety of vegetables and ate her meals slowly.

Her eating habits:

She was a picky eater and drank her water very slowly. I could remember her scolding us, “ Why are you children drinking your water so fast? Chew your food slowly and well. Drink your water slowly so that your food can digest well.” 

My grandparents’ Common food/eating culture. 

They never ate between meals. They never ate TV dinners – again, no electricity to freeze such meals. As a result, the problems of consuming too much sugar or chemicals in unhealthy snacks never arose in their diet. 

They walk regularly by default – their only mode of transportation. 

Their diet consisted mainly of carbohydrates and vegetables, which were necessary for energy due to their lifestyle and inability to afford anything else, resulting from poverty. It was on my grandmother’s shelf that I saw canned butter turned into liquid, because she hardly ate bread and thus had no need for such ingredients. Local palm oil was her choice of vegetable oil for eating tams, plantain, or similar foods. 

                  ____________________________________________

Below were what my grandparents ate on a regular and daily basis, as part of their daily diet:

Lessons I learned: “You are what you eat.” 

Perhaps if my grandparents had grown up in the industrial age, when everything was mass-produced at a low price for more market share, the story I’m now telling might have been different. They did not indulge in what we consider unhealthy today because they were not exposed to it. They lived their lifestyle as a result of poverty and circumstances. It doesn’t mean we have to be poor to live healthily; it means we need to adjust our lifestyle, not because we can afford it, but because it’s the right thing to do for better living. 

The lesson I learned is that what is good for us in terms of good health or weight loss has nothing to do with poverty or wealth; instead, we must adopt an eating habit or lifestyle that we can adhere to if we are to live a healthy and long life without major diseases. It makes no sense to do what we ought to know will be detrimental to our health in the future and continue to do it. We seem to be becoming our own rebels. 

Pollution and other man-made environments are a different story entirely, because during my grandparents’ time, the environment was cleaner, purer, and uncontaminated – all of which are essential for good health and weight loss. Given the current state of affairs and the foreseeable future, we must find ways to navigate the world’s evils so that we can live well and healthily. For example, wash your fruits thoroughly before eating them. 

Losing weight and staying fit is simple and doesn’t require the hype of a barrage of confusing, inconclusive methods of how to lose weight all over the place. Losing weight shouldn’t cost a lot of money to achieve, either. All we need to do is eat the right foods for good health and understand the ultimate benefits of what we consume. All we need is discipline, commitment, and consistency. After all, there is a direct correlation between what we eat, the weight we gain, and our health. After all that, type one or type two diabetes culminated from somewhere – our unhealthy eating habits. I still remember when I used to chew a mouthful of jelly beans, until cavities started to pay me a visit. My inspiration was watching one of our Presidents with a fancy bottle of jelly beans on his office table at the Oval Office. 

My grandparents ate natural foods, drank plenty of water from the stream, and engaged in regular exercise by circumstance. They did not consume snacks between meals, except occasional cooked groundnuts, roasted or cooked plantain (proteins). They ate plenty of vegetables and mushrooms regularly.

They ate in moderation. They consumed a variety of vegetables rich in iron. They ate home-grown fruits, which are rich in various forms of vitamins and minerals, containing all the essential ingredients necessary for healthy living. Their diet provides strong bones and muscles, as well as a healthy heart, all of which are packed into their daily meals. They worked hard and walked around a lot, which is tantamount to modern-day gym-for-fee exercising. They ate a lot of carbohydrates, but they needed them for energy. Even though they consume a lot of carbs, which are necessary for the energy required for their harsh everyday living, they incorporate more vegetables into everything they consume. 

These days, in our modern world, we consume carbohydrates while sitting on the couch, turn on the television, and watch our politicians for hours going at it for issues we can’t do doodling about or whatever is trending on TikTok. Minutes later, we go to bed with a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, or snack on a bowl of tantalizing ice cream with rainbow colors. Now, you know the reasons many of us are overweight.  

My grandparents and mother did not read beyond pre-school; they were not exposed to modern health information on how to eat the right way, yet they lived to a ripe old age. They ate well and they ate healthy by circumstances.  

Most notably, they consumed less meat overall because they could not afford the associated costs: The derived benefits of poverty. The meat they ate was homegrown, such as lean chicken, raised in the family courtyard, with less fat.  

They did eat more meat on certain occasions, such as weddings, funerals, and during traditional festivals, but not daily – let’s say they ate on average, every fortnight. Their meat substitutes included fresh fish, smoked fish, and a variety of fresh mushrooms. I grew up with the thought that eating mushrooms was the best thing since sliced bread. Many times, I thought they were meat at a distance. Sooner or later, I grew accustomed to eating mushrooms as a substitute for meat.  

They also had one modern-day benefit out of their reach. Benefits that were never part of their diet or elements of their eating habits. During their time, they didn’t have to consider or worry about processed foods because there was no economic incentive for manufacturers to sell them in the village, where there was no electricity to freeze them. Even in many villages or towns today, there is no refrigeration to keep anything cold. 

Equally, they can’t afford sugary drinks because water is cheap and free; sugary drinks were considered the drinks of the rich or celebratory drinks for those with some form of education or for those who went abroad and came home to show us their newly acquired tastes. Even when my grandparents could afford it or when relatives brought them from the city as gifts, they would only take a sip and give the remainder to the children. To that end, they never missed consuming them. 

I can attest that they had excellent teeth, healthy teeth, even at an advanced age.  Access to these health-damaging foods as a result of civilization and development was non-existent. As a result of the circumstances, they were spared foods that could be detrimental to their health and lead to diseases, all by default. 

My grandparents’ principles about eating the right way seemed straightforward.  

1. Don’t eat any foods you cannot lose, intentionally or otherwise. Eating what you can lose each day is a great plan to follow. For instance, if you consume 10 pounds of food a day, you must lose 10 pounds of weight a day to maintain the same weight, or lose more than 10 pounds to lose weight

2. Eat a small portion of anything you consume. The French population is very good at this

3. Don’t eat too late at night. The latest for them was 7 pm

4. Chew your food very well

5. Stop eating when your belly is full, not because the food is available

6. Drink your water slowly

7. Don’t talk while eating

8. Walk around a little after eating or do some house chores. Children easily do this because they jump around the house or compound after eating 

9. Stop eating to feel good. I call it satisfaction eating or mercy eating. You don’t need to eat because your boyfriend or girlfriend dumped you, or you failed that class. Instead, study harder or take your time to look for a better boyfriend or girlfriend. Better things are always out there; hopefully, you’re doing well yourself. Do not be deceived or deceive yourself.

Results:

During simpler times, when life was less complicated and artificial foods were not yet available to feed the masses, there were fewer cases of diabetes, lower cholesterol levels, lower blood sugar, fewer strokes, and lower high blood pressure compared to the population today. 

The questions or challenges for losing weight and remaining so are these:

1. Are those trying to lose weight and stay in shape willing to follow the footsteps of my grandparents and their lifestyle?
2. Are you ready to denounce your sedentary lifestyle and walk anywhere, no matter the distance, daily?
3. Are you ready to accept the reality that eating the right way is for life and better living as you age?
4. Are you ready to admit that money alone cannot reverse the consequences of a poor diet and a bad lifestyle?
5. Are you ready to do the right things for you and nobody else?
6. Are you ready and determined to accept the fact that all that is sweet and yummy is not good for you, even when you convince yourself that “You  have a sweet tooth?”
7. Not everything in the media to eat is good for you. Not everything sold by the sexy influencers is good for you. 
8. Are you ready to drink alcohol in moderation and irregularly?
9. Are you ready to drink more water?
10. Are you ready to stay away from carbonated drinks, especially the “Get one and get the second one half price?” If you eat right, you don’t need energy drinks
11. Do you realize that eating healthy saves you money by spending less on losing weight when you get sick? This can be considered another form of financial investment for your old age. You save money by eating less and incur additional significant savings from reduced medical expenses, such as copays, deductibles, and traveling expenses. 

Summary of losing weight

1. Have a weight loss goal and stick to it.
2. Eat a balanced diet: Consisting of a variety of foods from different food groups, in the right proportion 
3. Eat only when you are hungry
4. Eat in moderation – the right portion
5. Chew your food slowly. Don’t eat on the run all the time
6. Drink your water slowly
7. Drink plenty of water first thing in the morning and during the day
8. Stay away from sugary drinks – soft drinks. We call it “mineral” in my part of the world. 
9. Stay away from alcohol. If you do, drink in absolute moderation. 
10. Stop what you know is a bad habit. Stop deceiving yourself or trying to rationalize bad behaviour.  
11. Stay away from processed foods – maybe once in a while to celebrate the birth of your child 
12. Don’t eat or snack between meals. If you do, snack on fruits or healthy stuff. 
13. Perform moderate and consistent exercise – walk daily, for at least 30 minutes.
14. The resolution to lose weight should be made at any time of the year.
15. Lose weight for life and your health. Living long and healthy is the best way to go through life.
16.  Doing the right thing is a mental thing. Get your mental abilities straight  
17. Pray, if you’re a believer, for the strength to do all the above, beyond New Year’s resolutions

Caveat: 

If you have to eat something that’s not good for your health, do it in moderation. “To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Or prevention is better than a cure.”

Walking the talk

As a challenge to myself to do what I preach on losing weight, I will lose ONE POUND each WEEK, starting today, Wednesday, the second week of July, 2025, the year of our lord. I will update my success every 90 days. I welcome others to join me and call me a bluff. This little promise of mine is based on the honor system, because I believe that “Do not be deceived, whatever you sow, thou shalt reap.” 

My daily regimen towards weight loss is: 30 minutes on the treadmill each morning (at 5 elevation and a speed of 3). This will be 1.5 miles and result in a loss of 140 calories. 

Warning:

Please consult with your doctor or physician before trying any of my grandparents’ ways of life. 

In retrospect, I wish I had followed my grandparents’ ways of living a simple and natural life; I would not have gained more than 100 pounds today and counting. Ha! I bet you’re waiting for me to tell you my weight. Please, don’t hold your breath…

Share your thoughts. Share your weight loss regimen. Share your monthly weight loss