Translator: Tijana Ilic Reviewer: Mile Živković
Hello everyone.
One of the reasons I am standing before you
is that about a year ago
I lost over 40 kg in a period of six months.
On that path I have experienced the change of my personal life and style,
and also I've done plenty of other things.
You'll probably ask now, okay, there's still a lot of you,
and you still don't seem so skinny.
How does it really look?
The same way Vlada made a preview, I also have evidence for this.
For example these jeans that I wore exactly two years ago,
with closed zipper at that moment.
Well, this is the difference when a man loses 40 kg.
Now I gained another 5 or 10.
This is the difference and these are my triumphant jeans
that I always used for demonstration.
By accident, as in all the good examples of dieting, I have the proof for this.
It is a photograph. You'll say: It's photoshop. It is.
It is me on both photos, photographed in the same area
in the period between two New Years.
One New Year, exactly a month before I started my program,
and the second New Year later, when I was partially in my program.
You can see the difference in me then and now.
Parallel with my diet program,
I started writing a blog,
about which I'll share some details later on,
but what you could assume is that someone would use
this photo to advertise some product for weight loss.
And you probably expect a number, e.g. how to drink some pill.
However, what is interesting is that the text I wrote,
which brought a great number of visitors to my blog,
was the text I wrote
when I lost those 40 kg in 6 months.
It is interesting that the first comments of people reading the text were
that it was about some magic recipe for weight loss, some hoax.
It's also interesting, in those first texts,
I started from one quote from Đorđe Balašević's concert,
who said that fat people believe in miracles:
that you can eat anything, whatever you want,
in the end drink a magic pill,
some product and magically lose weight.
I knew about it - the story - and I simply didn't believe in miracles.
I needed some way to solve my problem.
I had 135 kg at the moment when I was 29.
I sat an average of 12 hours a day in front of a computer,
but one could freely say
that at some moments it was a lot more.
That November in 2009, I had some issues, I wasn't well,
and I visited a cardiologist. He measured my blood pressure to be 180/120.
Immediately that New Year,
at the beginning of January I visited my uncle -
we are a very big family, there are about 70 of us.
He is the first one in the family who is older than I am.
That New Year, he got a pacemaker.
What I understood then: well, you are next.
What are you going to do?
That was the final trigger when I changed my life.
And why did I change it? Because I generally wasn't happy.
There was an interesting lecture before this one, talking about happiness.
Food brings temporary happiness
and to be clear, I still love to eat.
Some things don't change mentally.
You have to change your life style and organization
and realize that these things make you happy for a moment.
As a rule, the worse it is, the happier it makes you.
Finally, in those texts I wrote that I come from Vojvodina.
What does it mean? It means that I love food very much.
And now, what does it really mean when you grow up with it?
So here I'll show you a couple of examples.
One of the most striking
is Banat ham,
very similar to Dalmatian smoked ham.
In the month of November when the meat is prepared,
the pork leg is separated, then nicely prepared, salted, smoke-dried.
However, what you may not have known about ham and smoked ham
is that you never eat this year's ham.
You eat the last year's. It has to be well dried and prepared.
The chief master for the ham was my grandpa
and he always prepared these things.
This probably seems nice and tasty.
However, this is only an appetizer for us.
What is maybe a dessert for you,
and could often be the main dish for us
are e.g. dumplings with plums.
This photograph, I apologize, is quite different
from the real dumplings with plums that my grandma makes.
Why? In one important matter: these don't have pits.
These are the so-called "popped" plums.
When there is a pit you know exactly how many you ate (Laughter)
so when we had, at the end of lunch,
between 9 and 12-15 pits in the plate it isn't so strange to us.
It is the main dish after all.
Now, as I mentioned my uncle a few minutes ago and my family now,
then I was thinking:
OK, my great-grandma lived to be almost 80. Grandpa as well.
My uncle and I are now in the situation that we live shorter than our parents,
shorter that people who lived before, and who ate
in a very similar way to the one we also love.
We simply need to find what are those things
that really changed in our lives and everything.
Then in a way, when I was in that program of changing my diet,
I looked up the things that changed.
Simply to have some topics to write about and the like.
There are several fairly critical changes which we don't think about
and there are several critical things that haven't changed,
and we haven't adapted at all to those changes.
One of the things that changed is our working hours.
People used to get up much earlier than we do.
We are talking about the majority.
People used to get up earlier than us.
They had a different rhythm of life.
They went home at lunchtime and again returned to fields or factories.
Today we work from 9 to 5.
It is a totally different work time from the one before
and from the organization of our diet as it once was.
The descriptions of jobs changed also.
We changed from production towards a great number of services.
Our work places aren't in the fields and factories anymore.
We usually sit in front of computers.
We work non-stop. 7 - 8 hours is reduced to sitting and the like.
We don't have as much physical activity anymore.
Whatćs important is that preparation changed.
In the new life rhythm we don't have time to prepare food,
and on the other hand, we have colorful supermarkets,
a vast supply of all sorts of things in the shops.
And then of course: what do you want? You want to be happy.
The first thing you buy is the one that makes you happy.
And finally, there are things that haven't changed.
One of them: our love for food.
Every one of us comes from some part of Serbia, maybe wider,
we all love some particular type of food, both ours and foreign, of course.
That love of food hasn't changed
according to what is necessary on a daily level,
and we still love to eat.
Portions haven't changed, which matters the most,
because we still eat the amount we are used to,
and which is more peculiar to some heavier physical labor.
And now, something I'm trying to explain.
I don't want it to be complicated.
When there were big firms, they had their canteens,
organised meals for their employees.
What hasn't changed is that new small firms
haven't adapted to those meal systems,
so if you work in a small firm nowadays,
you simply find yourself going outside the firm to buy something to eat.
You usually have a half an hour break and you have to return,
meaning that in 90% of cases you are doomed to fast food.
I have counted in Dorćol, from 20 food selling locations
that were in the vicinity of the firm where I worked,
there are only two places
where I could sit and eat with a knife and a fork.
In all the other locations you were forced to eat something
that is a quickie,
which mostly comes together with bread, and the like.
The problem is we are in the situation that is critical at the moment,
and very few people speak about it.
I spoke a lot and permeated different stories
that motivated me to start all of this.
My primary motivation was health.
When I had the health collapse, when I experienced
that a close relative, my uncle, had his own problem,
I had to react somehow.
I begun a program that my sister went through couple of years before.
She went from 85 to 65 kg. I knew she could do it.
I went through the program and I succeeded in changing everything.
After some time I realized that on that voyage
I came across some interesting experiences that I can share with people
who would want to read my blog.
In the beginning it was read by several close relatives, friends and so on,
and then it spread slowly.
There I tried to write about some different things.
I reached some amazing arguments
that didn't move people,
and I believe they won't move you much either.
But, let's get through them.
One of them is that according to statistics of western civilizations,
65% of death causes currently, drastically more that half,
is caused by the way we eat.
Vascular, heart, and diabetes diseases.
Specifically, what is mostly unknown is that 95% of those deaths
we can change completely, if we change the way we eat.
Do you want to change it?
Next, every third child in the world is unhealthy and obese.
Fast food, fast food preparation, etc.
Billion people in the world are unhealthy and obese.
If there are 7 billion of us, that means it's every 7th person.
However, nothing of this has helped.
We always read about it in the papers, on the internet, everywhere,
and then I started to write how I felt while on diet.
How I felt opening the fridge and craving everything, but I mustn't.
How I felt in the situation when I couldn't move to do something,
and now I ate something else and I could do it now.
How I felt in all kinds of situations.
How I changed myself, how I hated doing something, etc.
And then people started living my life with me.
While writing I realized that people need real experiences from life.
Those experiences I shared regularly.
Finally, I found it necessary to show them that it's achievable.
The first three to four months everyone asked for photos of before and after,
what it was like.
Everyone asked for: how did I start with it all.
What I didn't want at any moment is to present myself as a nutritionist,
as someone who would give advice about the food, etc.
Mostly I shared my experiences.
And what matters is that I shared the advantages of change.
When you tell somebody that when you lose a big amount of kilograms
the Francuska street, e.g., doesn't seem so uphill anymore.
You simply park your car at you-don't-care-where,
you take and climb up and it's OK, you made it.
Until that moment you hated parking three blocks away.
What is it like when someone says,
''Somebody called me and in 15 minutes I got organized,
went there, called him, came back, no problem.''
Until a year ago if someone called me I wouldn't go.
Those advantages of change motivated people the same way.
Somehow in combination of all those things I wrote, on average, once a week
about those experiences, I came to one
strange combination of inspiration and motivation.
A number of people answered with their comments,
thanking for parts of my experiences that I shared with them.
Truth to be told, at some moments those comments
have been the trigger to carry on.
Then finally, one day, there came a message,
it was written by a man called Predrag Aranđelović,
that completely blew my mind...
There are no right words to express myself with.
He wrote these words and sent me a photo.
He said that my blog changed his life and sent me a picture
of what he looked like before reading my blog and after.
Predrag is getting married in two weeks
and he said that he wanted to look his best.
He is still on that path.
Currently he is more successful than I am and looks slimmer.
These are his photos before and after reading my blog.
(Applause)
What I want to ask you at this TEDx:
how many little experiences, little things in life
or big things in your life every one of you has got,
and which you hate to do, maybe you don't have time,
and you should share with others,
because sharing our experiences is important.
That is what is the most important at our core:
to share experiences between us, to learn from one another,
to learn from others' experiences, that can help us in creating our own.
That is the idea that I wanted you to leave with from this TEDx:
to share your experiences and share forth the stories,
because your example can motivate someone to change their life.
Thank you!
(Applause)