Before going into my project, I have to agree with the assumption of the course that

meaningful, effective, and collaborative leadership begins with the development of personal,

emotional, and interpersonal awareness. Life is like a game and I am a character with

statistics such as physical, emotional, spiritual or social (just like health ,attack ,defense in

game) and I realize that physicality is my weak point. Therefore, this project will be about my

developing physical attributes, particularly losing weight with a scientific strategy.

A.PART I

My target behaviour

The first behaviour that should be adapted is exercising 5 days per week. The most effective

way to burn fat is only by working out. I attribute my constantly overweight state to my

previous lifestyle which lacked exercises. This change of lifestyle will have a great impact on

my appearance after 21 days.

Secondly, eating more healthy food instead of fast food. Exercising is surely important but

nutrition also plays an important role in helping me control my weight. People in America has

a high rate of obesity and this can result from the popularity of fast food.

My final target behaviour is having enough sleep. Life at university is snowed under several

tasks and homework that sometimes I have to stay up the whole night to meet the deadlines.

This requires me to absorb more energy so I have to eat more and as a result, I cannot control

my weight. Some nights I just stick my eye on the phone screen, ignoring my demand for

sleep. But now I will try to change these bad habits by setting up the amount of sleeping time.

Reasons why I choose this project

The first reason for losing weight is to boost my confidence. Too much fat percentage in my

body makes me feel insecure about my appearance. I have a feeling that everyone is staring

at my overweight body and it kills my confidence. The main issue is that confidence is one of

the characteristics that a good leader must have because confidence makes a leader dare to
show all of his/her capabilities. Confident people do not hesitate to encounter problems but

instead, they are brave enough to try different methods to solve them. Confidence makes a

leader tougher, more reliable and he/she will win faith from everyone else. Furthermore, I

consider myself as a person with a lot of cool ideas and I want to share them with people.

Sadly, my lack of confidence prevents me from conveying my ideas smoothly and even if I

try, people are not willing to listen to an insecure person. That is why I have to lose weight

and restore my confidence.

Another reason for me losing weight is I want to become the best version of myself. Like

everyone else, I look in the mirror to check my appearance but I am more like a narcissist that

spends a lot of time staring at myself in the mirror. However, my narcissism does not mean

that I am already satisfied with my current appearance. Rather, everytime I look at my

reflection, I have a feeling that I can still be more handsome, more attractive and that better

me is lying deep inside me. He is trapped in “the safe zone” and asking me to help him get

out. I always wonder what that “me” would look like so I will try to pull him out of my

current “me”. By losing 5kg of fat, my body will become more in shape and that better

version of me will gradually reveal himself.

My goal and how I plan to achieve it

I only have one goal: “Losing 0.5 kg of fat per week”. Simple as it may sound, it requires

discipline, consistency and effort to keep up with the goal “per week”. That’s why I build a

thorough plan for this goal and if I follow it properly, I will lose 1.5 kg of fat in 3 weeks.

Firstly, I will have to do some calculations because these numbers will orient my weight loss

plan. To reduce fat, I have to put myself into a state called “Calories Deficit”. “Calories

Deficit” means the calories I burn exceeds the calories intake (KCAL OUT >KCAL IN). To

enter this state, I have to thoroughly calculate the figures of energy that I absorb and release

by applying the following formula:

 TDEE=BMR x PAL

TDEE stands for “Total daily energy expenditure”

BMR stands for “Basal metabolic rate”

PAL stands for “Physical activity level”

According to a professional trainer in a Facebook group that i join, PAL depends on how

active a person is:

PAL= 1.15-1.2 for office workers with no exercise

PAL= 1.3 - 1.35 for people exercising above 3 times a week

PAL = 1.45 - 1.55 for people with intense and frequent exercise

PAL = 1.7- 1.9 for professional sport players or people exercising twice a day

I exercise 5 times a week so I will choose PAL = 1.35.

To calculate BMR, I use Katch-McArdle Formula:

BMR=370 + (21.6 x body weight without fat)

My weight is 68 kg with 24% fat so my fat-free weight is 51.68 g => BMR=1486.3

Therefore my TDEE=1.35 x 1486.3 = 2006.5

There are 7,700kcals (kcal=calorie) worth of energy in 1kg of fat. That means in order to burn

0.5 kg of fat per week, I must burn 550 calories a day.

2006.5 - 550 = 1450.5 is my daily calories intake.

Now that I know how many calories to burn a day, I could build an exercise schedule:

● Monday: Arms and Chest (pushup, dumbbell, bench press, raises, curls)

● Tuesday: Mixed Exercise (sprinting, squat, pullup, pushup, deadlift, plank)

● Wednesday: Rest (doing housework, gardening, etc)

● Thursday: HIIT (jumping jack, burpee, squat, lunge, plank, pushup)

● Friday: Legs (squat, leg lift, step-up, box jump, bridge, sprinting)

● Saturday: Mixed Exercise (sprinting, squat, pullup, pushup, deadlift, plank)

 ● Sunday: Rest (literally rest)

Another important factor of my plan is nutrition. Diet is much more important than people

usually believe. It can make up 80% of losing weight so I have to be strict and careful about

the maximum daily calories intake. I tend to diversify my dishes in order to avoid feeling fed

up with repeated meals but rice is indispensable in every lunch and dinner. Besides three

traditional meals, I also have a snack in the afternoon before exercising to boost the efficency.

My menu includes any food that has high protein and low carb such as eggs, beef, vegetables,

chicken breasts, seafood, milk, etc and I have to check all of their calories intake to make sure

my meal never surpasses 1450.5 calories. However, there are some types of forbidden food

and drink such as sweets, fast food and gas drinks because they are bad for health.

Last but not least, sleep is also important for losing 0.5 kg of fat per week. Sleeping helps

cool my muscles and relieve my mentality after a hard working day. Without enough sleep,

my muscles will hurt and I tend to eat more than usual. I discipline myself to sleep for 6

hours on weekdays and 7.5 hours on weekends. Sleeping more than that (oversleeping) may

cause tiredness and laziness not only in the morning but also the whole day.