Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

This is a rant. A rant about the dearth of good qual­ity writ­ing about health, fit­ness, and nutri­tion in India. I am yet to read an accu­rate, well researched and cited arti­cle in main­stream news media. I could pick on any one of the numer­ous arti­cles I’ve read before but the lucky win­ner is an arti­cle I came across today on The Hindu. Titled “Lean, but keen for a change?” by a doc­tor (not sure if he is a MD or a PhD but he shows absolutely no evi­dence of either), this arti­cle is utter rub­bish and a waste of space.

Being thin may not be in

Sure, it is not “in”, when you look at the bel­lies of tamil movie hero­ines. But from inter­ac­tions with clients, friends, and acquain­tances — look­ing lean, thin, and fit is resound­ingly the top of the list.

The author is cor­rect when he says that being lean does not equate to being fit. Being ‘skinny fat’ (my ter­mi­nol­ogy) is a big prob­lem too. I think that’s the group the good doc­tor is try­ing to address here, and would’ve helped if he made that point clear. On a related note, you can check out this post which has a lot of pic­tures of Olympic ath­letes with diverse body types.

Right after, the author goes back to wear­ing his stu­pid­ity hat,

They may also have weak immu­nity and may be prone to phys­i­cal injuries.

Yeah sure, they may have weak immu­nity, or they may not. Talk about being defin­i­tive. How/why would a fat guy be less prone to phys­i­cal injuries than a thin guy (let’s assume both are unfit)? Coz the fat acts as a insu­lat­ing layer? Resis­tance exer­cise, for exam­ple, has been shown to increase skele­tal strength and bone den­sity, apart from other things. That equates to being less prone to phys­i­cal injuries (harder to frac­ture a thick bone).

Binge on healthy snack­ing options

Quick or ready options like cook­ies made out of oats or ragi with pre-made shakes added to skim milk are ade­quate on occasion

BINGE?! Wow. From my expe­ri­ence, when­ever I’ve allowed clients a bit of lee­way with stuff, they tend to go over­board. From “eat what you want”, I’ve changed my stance to ensure that my clients know what quan­ti­ties fall into the accept­able range. Too much of any­thing is bad for you. When you say a word like binge, rest assured a lot of peo­ple are gonna rack up a calo­rie count of 1000+ on snacks alone. Ridicu­lous sen­tence. And is he seri­ously advis­ing oat­meal cook­ies? What next — bran muffins, bagels, dougnuts, and twinkies?

Fruit juices and shakes that are high in calo­ries like banana and mango shakes are also extremely healthy.

Why are they healthy? Just coz you state it like fact makes it one? When I was bulk­ing, I def­i­nitely turned to liq­uid foods. I made calorie-rich smooth­ies but they had a bal­anced macro-nutrient split. Hav­ing ade­quate pro­tein intake is essen­tial when you are try­ing to build mus­cle. Absolutely no men­tion of it here. He does men­tion it later, but just a men­tion. Let’s not get started on fruit juices.

To have a healthy body, proper exer­cise is vital. Try brisk walk­ing or yoga.

Yes. Walk­ing is awe­some, espe­cially if you want to lose fat. Why are you rec­om­mend­ing that here? And to bor­row lib­er­ally from a com­ment that a like-minded friend made — yoga seems to cure any­thing and every­thing, from bulk­ing to sprint­ing to win­ning the lot­tery. Map­ping goals to what you are try­ing to do is essen­tial. Just coz some­thing is good does not make it good for everything.

The good doc­tor has about 20 words that are actu­ally use­ful. Being “skinny fat” (not his ter­mi­nol­ogy) is not healthy, that omega-3 fatty acids are nec­es­sary, you are what you eat, and that it is nec­es­sary to be patient — that’s about it.

Again, it is unfor­tu­nate that I picked on this one arti­cle. Just his luck that I reached my tip­ping point today. But think about it

• Not clear about what he is say­ing. I inter­pret it as going from being ‘skinny fat’ to adding a decent amount of mus­cle on your frame
• No cita­tions, links, ref­er­ences. Just statements
• No men­tion of macro-nutrient ratios
• Stu­pid and down­right bad rec­om­men­da­tions, like fruit juices

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, makes me want to tear my hair. Instead, am just gonna click “Pub­lish” and go to the gym and take my rage out on the barbell.