Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

First, a background

I was never the fastest, strongest or fittest in my group of friends in high school. I was pretty good at sports while grow­ing up but I was severely lim­it­ing myself due to the state of my body. But as a kid of 15 or so, I really did not know bet­ter. So, I man­aged. I always won­dered why my friend could keep swim­ming laps in the pool while I was done after one. Or why spend­ing 10–15 overs bat­ting in the mid­dle exhausted me while oth­ers seemed unaf­fected. After that, I spent the bet­ter part of the next decade wors­en­ing my body, through col­lege, grad school and work­ing in Sil­i­con Valley.

It is not that I did not try. I spent a year at a fancy gym in Madras, after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, reli­giously work­ing out 4–5 days a week and eat­ing what the nutri­tion­ist pre­scribed. It did not do much (the rea­sons are obvi­ous to me now) to change my fit­ness lev­els or how my body looked aesthetically.

Around April 2008, I thought I should give it another shot and decided to train for a half-marathon. First day, I couldn’t run a mile but at the end of it, I ran it pretty decently. But I still was not fit. I tried going on var­i­ous diets to slim down, to get fit­ter but noth­ing worked. Add to it my sweet tooth and my love for south Indian food — I was not going anywhere.

What is the point of talk­ing about myself? I want to tell you that I’ve been where you are at, and get­ting fit­ter (every­one will have their own def­i­n­i­tion) is impos­si­ble if you do not know what the right thing is and SO easy if you do. This post is the first part in a series of three or four and I hope to get you started to your path to fit­ness by the end of this.

(Update) Who is this post for?

This post and most of the sug­ges­tions are meant for peo­ple who are not doing endurance train­ing or exten­sive cross­fit­ting etc. If you are one of those and do not under­stand nutri­tion, you are in trou­ble. This post is meant for peo­ple who range from mostly seden­tary to work­ing out a decent amount (3–4 times a week) but who are not see­ing results even if they are ‘eat­ing right’ accord­ing to con­ven­tion. Or — most peo­ple I know on a first-name basis.

Uh, so are you an expert already?

Not yet. But I am get­ting there. I do not pre­tend to know all the answers. But the last year, and par­tic­u­larly the last 10 weeks have been a rev­e­la­tion. As I’ve learned more about exer­cis­ing, nutri­tion and fit­ness, I can see how my body is improv­ing. And this is not because my body is respond­ing but because am under­stand­ing how the human body works, how nutri­tion works, how fuel­ing works. Our body is such a com­plex machine and it is so much fun to fig­ure stuff out about it.

Why do we need to exercise?

Quite sim­ply because our body needs it to func­tion nor­mally. Read that again. Not to func­tion bet­ter but to func­tion nor­mally. We have evolved from cave­men who had to do a lot of phys­i­cal exer­cise. They had to run sud­denly to catch prey, run to avoid being prey, walk around look­ing for food — inter­mit­tent, high-intensity exer­cise as well as long, low-intensity ones. And our bod­ies still need the same amount of activ­ity to func­tion nor­mally even though we do not live in that age anymore.

You can read a friend’s response to this ques­tion as well.

Why should I start now? And why should I be fit in the first place?

Because it is eas­ier to start today than tomor­row as you are older tomor­row. If you can­not get a flat stom­ach today, is it going to be eas­ier tomorrow?

As for rea­sons to be fit, am scared you had to ask. But I will oblige

• So you dont die early
• So you can play with your kids and not sit and watch from the sideline
• So you dont despise how you look in the mirror
• SO THAT YOU DO NOT DIE EARLY

I dont know about you, but I’d rather like to die attempt­ing to climb Ever­est when am 70 than be bed-ridden at that age.

How do I get fit?

Three things — eat­ing right (about 80% of the bat­tle), exer­cis­ing, and get­ting enough rest.

What is “eat­ing right”?

This is a very long and com­pli­cated answer. And like I said, I have barely scratched the sur­face in under­stand­ing this. I will elab­o­rate on this in the next few posts but first, a basic primer on macro-nutrients. There are basi­cally three — car­bo­hy­drates, pro­teins and fats. And here’s the kicker — fat does not make you fat. You want to know what makes you fat — car­bo­hy­drates. Not just sweets and sug­ars but bread and pasta and grain — all of it is carb (edit: removed fruits and veg­gies as they are good carb. But still carb. The point I want to make is the pri­mary macronu­tri­ent in your diet should not be carb and even the carb you are eat­ing should be mostly veg­gies and some fruit). And the more you eat (espe­cially processed carbs, the fat­ter you are going to get).

More about carbs

The total stor­age capac­ity of the body for car­bo­hy­dates is very lim­ited. We can store approx­i­mately 300–400 grams in our mus­cles and 60–100 in the liver. This is equiv­a­lent to eat­ing two eight cups of rice/pasta. When you eat excess carbs, your body has no place to store the excess (because you are not burn­ing that much) and it con­verts it into fat (body fat). And what hap­pens is your body also does not burn fat when you are eat­ing excess carbs. So, read this again — eat­ing fat does not make you fat. So, how much carbs do I need per day, you ask. My answer — as lit­tle as pos­si­ble — but to start, try eat­ing less than 100gms of carbs per day. And it is impor­tant that these carbs be com­posed mostly of veg­eta­bles (and very lit­tle fruit). For some num­bers, check this post here.

But a high-fat diet — wont that increase my cho­les­terol lev­els and give me a heart attack? No — keep repeat­ing this in your head — carbs are the enemy. The #1 fac­tor in heart dis­ease is inflam­ma­tion. This is not caused due to fat but due to carbs (and trans fats — which are bad fats). Are you sure — are you try­ing to kill me? No. Seri­ously, start here.

Take-away

• Carbs are bad. But dont freak out too much.
• Step 1 to eat­ing right — drop grains (wheat, rice etc.) and that includes bread. Drop all sugar (includ­ing sugar-free stuff). Yes, this might be hard but there are so many alter­na­tives. I will point out  a bunch of recipes soon but like I said, I am just try­ing to inform you of what is right and what is not
• You need to exercise
• Your diet should be mostly com­posed of fat calories
• You should get 0.6–1.0 gms per pound of body weight in pro­tein (weight in kilos x 2.2 = weight in pounds). I weigh 60kgs = 132lbs. So, I need to get approx 130gms of pro­tein per day.
• You can­not get thin by doing only cardio
• Fat loss and weight loss are not the same thing (update)
• The best way to lose fat is on a low carb, mod­er­ate pro­tein and high fat diet (from Mark Sis­son). Update: A lot of peo­ple do dis­agree with this, includ­ing famous train­ers. But this applies to you (and me)  for the most part as their clients are body builders etc.

Don’t worry about por­tion con­trol, reg­i­mented meals, fanat­i­cal exer­cise or even fam­ily genetic pre­dis­po­si­tion. Calo­rie restric­tion leads inex­orably to long-term fail­ure. Bot­tom line: It’s all about insulin to enjoy life­long weight control.

In the next part, I will elab­o­rate on food. In the third part, I will talk about work­ing out. And finally, will con­clude by answer­ing a few more com­mon ques­tions and also help­ing you get past your excuses. Use the com­ments sec­tion to ask more ques­tions or if you want more infor­ma­tion about something.

Some links for get­ting more information

Why grains are bad — link 1

And of course, the other stuff that I linked to are a good start as well. But hey, if you dont want to read all that, at least read my post again. Most of us are fac­ing a prob­lem only because we lack infor­ma­tion — not any­thing else. Even the lit­tle bit that I can change about your cur­rent mind­set will go a long way.

Update: On a final note, I under­stand that a lot of what am say­ing is against the norm. But that’s why you are here, right? You’ve done all that — it has not worked. I am not ask­ing you to take me at my word. Try this out — if you do it right, there is no way you will not lose fat, there is no way you will not get fitter.