Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

My name is Arvind Ashok. I live and work in San Fran­cisco, CA. If you are look­ing for the inter­ac­tion design part of my life, check here.

I was born and brought up in Madras, India. I used to play a lot as a kid, and I still do. Dur­ing the sum­mer hol­i­days in our apart­ment com­plex, I would play some sport from, lit­er­ally, dawn to dusk. I played sports in mid­dle and high school as well. But here’s the thing, and am not sure if my friends and team-mates real­ized it, I was unfit. I never did under­stand it. I could never run for too long, I tired too eas­ily, I was not strong — in fact, I was scrawny. But I still played sport and rea­son­ably well too. At that time, I was too dumb/naive to lis­ten to a friend of mine who would keep talk­ing about fish and its awe­some­ness (he grew up in Nor­way) when­ever I brought this topic up. Or to my par­ents about eat­ing more veg­gies. Or fix­ing my problem.

Today, I am a lit­tle less dumb. And that’s got­ten me down this path. I want to be as fit as I can be. Noth­ing crazy or out­ra­geous. Just an aver­age guy try­ing to under­stand fit­ness, apply it and hope­fully get some oth­ers involved as well and help them make a change in their lives. I have a sweet tooth, love my choco­late milk­shakes and ice-cream. I am veg­e­tar­ian, maybe not for long though. I want to show you that if I can do this, so can you.

I’ve made quite a few attempts to ‘get fit’. I went to a gym in Madras, quite reli­giously, for an entire year (2004–05) — ate what I was told to eat, did 3 days of work­outs on the machines, 3 days of car­dio. At the end of the year, I didn’t look or feel much dif­fer­ent. In fact, the only thing I got out of that was slightly poorer blood lipid lev­els than when I started. More attempts fol­lowed after that. But noth­ing hap­pened until I really tried to under­stand why I was doing what I was doing. Ear­lier this year, in 2010, I tried a 10-week diet and exer­cise rou­tine and it is the first time some­thing worked. And that set me down this path — because this time I knew why/what/how. Now, I want to learn more, under­stand more and try it on myself.

So, am I really fit? Not any­where near where I want to be. But I’ve come a long way from being that scrawny kid. I’ve done a half-marathon (I am not a fan of run­ning. I’d rather get punched in the face than run), cou­ple of triathlons and the like. And I don’t fin­ish last in Cross­Fit work­outs any­more. And I can squat more than 1.5x my body weight. I design my own work­outs and diet.

Today, I am a Level 1 Cross­Fit trainer, and a NCCA accred­ited fit­ness trainer. And I spend sev­eral hours a day research­ing, read­ing and under­stand­ing this domain. And I love it!

Think about it. Why wouldn’t you want to be fit? Life’s just so much eas­ier that way. It is pos­si­ble. Try it. You will sur­prise yourself.

To get in touch, send me an email - 

Dis­claimer: I am con­fi­dent this is the health­i­est way to eat and most effi­cient way to move but

• Since I am not  aware of your actual phys­i­cal condition/diet/health com­pli­ca­tions etc., all infor­ma­tion, exer­cises, work­outs, move­ments, diets & food related state­ments pro­vided here-in are not to be con­sid­ered as med­ical or pro­fes­sional advice.
• If you expe­ri­ence any kind of pain dur­ing any exer­cise stop imme­di­ately. No exer­cise is worth the risk of injury.
• If the inclu­sion  of a cer­tain food item dis­cussed here causes you to feel uncom­fort­able in any way you may be aller­gic to that item and it needs to be kicked out of your diet.
• What works for me might not work for you. So, fig­ure out what does.