“I failed at trading and fitness”.
That thought kept coming back. It felt strange because I was never someone who doubted myself.
Even if my own parents tell me, “You can’t do this”, I would never believe it.
I’ve always had zero self-doubt, and I simply can’t stop believing in myself.
So when that thought kept coming back, I knew something was off.
That’s when I realised something deeper.
Diets, calories, workouts, charts, trendlines, and strategies don’t fail.
People fail mentally first.
Fat loss and trading are psychological battles that look like physical ones.
The wake-up call
There was a time I’d wake up, grab coffee, open my charts, and stare at my P&L, refreshing it again and again.
If the market was green, I felt like a genius. If it was red, I felt like trash.
Those feelings didn’t just stay on my trading desk, but they followed me everywhere.
To deal with red days and boredom, I started numbing myself.
I started eating junk aggressively. I binge ate even when I wasn’t hungry to feel better.
I drank cans of beer to switch my brain off.
Let me confess something.
I even started smoking. I knew what I was doing, but I still did it.
I relapsed.
I kept telling myself for weeks that I’d fix everything from Monday onwards. But Monday never came.
Months passed, until one day it hit me.
Nothing was wrong with my trading or weight management plan. I was losing because I had lost emotional control.
That’s what losing emotional control looks like. It doesn’t happen all at once, it happens slowly.
I hated what I was becoming.
The strategic reset
That’s when I went back to treating my health like my trading portfolio.
I had lost the gym after an injury, but I found myself again on long walks.
Walking became my therapy when life stopped making sense. No phone, no music, and no distractions. Just me and my thoughts.
And that’s when it hit me:
“You’re helping others transform their lifestyle and lose kilos through your 1-on-1 online coaching, but when are you going to do it for yourself?”
It was high time I practiced what I preach to my clients.
Slowly, I created a customized calorie-deficit diet plan for myself according to my schedule and food preferences.
The same way I structure it for the limited clients I work with.
I went back to calorie-deficit and started quantifying my nutrition.
The gym and strength training were off due to the injury, so I structured simple home exercises to bring back my mobility and flexibility. They worked like physiotherapy for me.
I tracked everything.
The result? The weight started coming down, and I lost kilos. My stamina and confidence started improving along with my health.
In trading, I did the same.
I created a trading plan. My trading strategy followed a proper risk management plan.
I took only quality trades and reviewed them at the end of the day.
There was very little to lose, but the rewards were huge. I simply followed the plan and repeated it consistently.
No emotional trades. No emotional eating.
And believe it or not, the fitter I became physically and mentally, the wealthier I became. Not just in money, but in clarity, discipline, and all areas of my life.
The “secret” strategy
Most traders and people trying to lose weight think they need a better plan or strategy. In most cases, they don’t. There isn’t any secret or magic.
What they really need is a structure built around a few non-negotiables:
- Kicking off alcohol and smoking. (It’s been over a year since I quit)
- Staying hydrated
- A well-structured nutrition and trading plan
- Exercise
- Seven to eight hours of sleep
- The discipline to handle boredom and sit out of the market when there’s no setup.
I’ve seen the same pattern repeat with traders and with people trying to lose weight.
You think you need a better gym, fat burners, special diets, new setups, or clever hacks. But what you actually lack is control when things stop going your way.
The body and the stock market expose the same thing.
Your behaviour when you’re under pressure.
Your behaviour is the main culprit
You can’t trade calmly when your body is running on loads of caffeine and three hours of sleep.
And you can’t lose fat if you’re drinking beer almost every night out of boredom, or emotional eating after every bad day.
The mind you bring to your charts is the same mind you bring to your plate. Fix one, and the other follows.
What changed everything
Once I saw this mental connection, my approach changed.
I stopped chasing quick profits, quick weight loss, shortcuts, and dopamine hits. Instead, I built systems.
Daily actions that looked ordinary, but compounded quietly over time.
No beer or alcohol. Tracking my food. Long walks.
Limiting day trading and moving more towards swing trading.
Creating content instead of constantly consuming it.
Using the same screen time to write on Medium. That’s where I was writing articles when I disappeared from social media.
Let me confess this too. Deleting Instagram did wonders.
Things slowly started falling back into place. And at some point, I realised something strange.
The constant urge to chase results disappeared. Structure replaced an unstructured approach to trading and fitness.
I wasn’t chasing anything anymore. I was finally in control.
Final thoughts
Most people quit thinking they need a better plan, a better diet, a better setup, or a better mentor. So they keep jumping from one thing to another.
But that’s rarely the real problem.
When fat loss and trading fail, it’s usually not because you’re doing less or know less. You already know a lot. You’ve already watched thousands of videos out there.
When fat loss and trading fail, it usually starts somewhere else.
Sleep starts getting messed up. You’re tired and demotivated. Your habits start falling apart.
Impulses get harder to control, boredom pushes you into bad decisions, and stress slowly starts controlling your behaviour.
And eventually, discipline and consistency break.
The plan doesn’t fail. Your mind does. And fixing that fixes everything.
So before switching methods and strategies, pause for a second and ask yourself:
Did my plan fail? Or did I slowly start tweaking things on my own? And instead of taking accountability, did I start justifying those mistakes?
Failure rarely arrives all at once. It happens subtly with small compromises.
Just one biscuit. Just a handful of chips.
“Arrgghh! I’m stressed. Something sweet won’t hurt tonight”.
Just one more trade. Let me buy more.
I’ll start fresh tomorrow.
And by the time people realise what’s happening, it’s already too late. The damage is already done.
Diets and trading strategies don’t fail. People do.
Once the mind breaks, even simple things feel impossible. And when the mind is right, even difficult things feel simple.
A work-from-home boredom relapse forced me to reset my mindset again.
This time, with a stronger comeback.
