Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

Putting it all together can get messy. Photo Cour­tesy — http://www.flickr.com/photos/steveharris/

We looked at the weights part of the work­out in part 1, the car­dio in part 2, and the nutri­tion in part 3. Let’s put it all together then.

Work­out

• Hire a trainer, or fig­ure out your own work­out rou­tine. Stop with the iso­lated move­ments and machines and body-building crap.
• This means you need to fig­ure out your goals.
• Most times, get­ting fit­ter will auto­mat­i­cally mean you will be look­ing bet­ter. But not vice-versa.
• Is there such a thing as ‘are some exer­cises bet­ter than oth­ers?’ — yes, there is. It still doesn’t mean doing these in ran­dom order will lead to awe­some fit­ness lev­els, but it is a start.
• Have fun. Play a sport.
• Find a bet­ter gym. Unfor­tu­nately, from what I’ve seen, none exist though. They all charge increas­ing amounts of rental fees but do not offer any­thing in terms of qual­ity train­ing or advice. So, remem­ber that your gym is sim­ply a place to rent out equip­ment. Ignore the crap they tell you.
• Find a part­ner. And a sup­port sys­tem. One of the biggest rea­sons behind the pop­u­lar­ity of run­ning groups, and triathlons is the cama­raderie. Every­one sup­ports you — it doesn’t mat­ter if you are the slow­est of the bunch, or if you have a bad day — there will always be some encour­ag­ing words for you. And that’s why peo­ple wake up at ungodly hours and go run. I’ve seen this first hand in the short time I ran with Asha in the south bay, and the cou­ple of times with Chen­nai Run­ners.
• Mix it up. Dont do the same thing all the time.

Nutri­tion

• Improve food qual­ity. Restrict­ing caloric intake is sec­ondary to that. In fact, it is pretty hard (but def­i­nitely pos­si­ble) to over-eat if you are eat­ing real food.
• Reduce omega-6 con­sump­tion. That means you should drop any/all forms of veg­etable oils.
• Stay away from grains, legumes, sug­ars. I know grains is a sore point for most of us — stick to white rice, and in rea­son­able amounts.
• Eat real food

Other Stuff

• Sleep in a dark room, for around 8 hours a day
• Recov­ery is impor­tant. Rest is impor­tant. As impor­tant as work­ing out, eat­ing right and all that jazz. Pay atten­tion to it.
• Stress is a killer. If you are the kinda guy who works hard and plays hard (I read this as work­ing 10+ hours a day, and drinking/partying as much as pos­si­ble), you are in for a ton of pain. Sooner or later, stuff adds up.

Peace out.