Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

Cheap & Best — that caught your atten­tion, didn’t it ;)

Being healthy is not very hard work. You can get to a rea­son­able level of health and fit­ness by mak­ing a few sim­ple changes in your lifestyle. It is only when you want to progress to attain a elite level of fitness/health that it gets harder, requires a lot of work etc. For those of you who want to make a few quick improve­ments, here’s some low hang­ing fruit you should incorporate.

[hr]

Sleep

We love to sleep. Sneak­ing in a few extra min­utes in the morn­ing, hit­ting snooze repeat­edly — we’ve all done that. So, this should make you happy — sleep is essen­tial to feel­ing bet­ter, to recov­ery, and to bet­ter health. But a lot of us have very poor sleep habits.

Some com­mon prob­lems I see

• Not sleep­ing enough
• Fid­dling around with elec­tron­ics (phone, TV, iPad) until you pass out
• Hav­ing a night lamp on (are you 5?), street light through a crack in the cur­tains etc
• Noise lev­els are not at a minimum

Arv says

• Buy black out cur­tains, or use black bed sheet and make your bed­room pitch black when you are sleep­ing. Sleep masks are not adequate!
• Keep the bed­room an electronics-free zone
• Try to get 8 hours of sleep. This dif­fers from per­son to per­son, so fig­ure out how much you need. Sleep with­out an alarm, note the time when you get up. Do this a few times and you will know how much sleep you need. Do not take this as an exer­cise to stay in bed all day
• If pos­si­ble, try to main­tain a tem­per­a­ture of about 16–20 Cel­sius (65 F)

[hr]

Stress

Chronic stress can derail your health and fit­ness plans. Most of us have more stress than we should. Talk about a silent killer/saboteur! Sleep­ing less, guz­zling the cof­fee, and work­ing all day and par­ty­ing all night might feel great for a bit, but it takes a heav­ier toll than you would real­ize. The body tries to cope by over­work­ing the adrenal-cortisal sys­tem, which releases sev­eral hor­mones includ­ing cor­ti­sol and adren­a­line. As Mark Sis­son explains,

At this point I hope you can begin to imag­ine the poten­tial health ram­i­fi­ca­tions of what is often called “adrenal fatigue”: daily com­pro­mised immu­nity, con­tin­u­ous stress hor­mone release, being “on edge” gen­er­ally, exhausted sex hor­mones (remem­ber­ing my admit­tedly pet the­ory of why male endurance ath­letes often suf­fer from dimin­ish­ing testos­terone pro­duc­tion and con­se­quent reced­ing hair). Your body thinks it must sur­vive at all costs – and is there ever a cost.

Arv says

• Eat­ing more fruits and veg­eta­bles, to increase your anti-oxidant intake
• Work­out 3–4 times a week. Let those endor­phins flow!
• Get more sunlight!
• Take a vaca­tion. And here’s a crazy thought — you could even try being electronics-free for an entire day *gasp*.
• Stop bring­ing work home. Instead, hang out with your spouse/friends, play more with your kids. Get outside!
• Get a mas­sage, say once a month. You know how as you get old, it gets harder for you to stand up, sit down etc. Lots of rea­sons for it, includ­ing fuzz buildup. So, get a mas­sage, mash those mus­cle lay­ers and feel better!

[hr]

Work­out

Exer­cis­ing reg­u­larly does won­ders for you. It is not nec­es­sary to spend 90 min­utes a day, 6 times a week slog­ging at your local gym to see results. In fact, the odds of see­ing results are min­i­mal, beyond begin­ner gains. The ideal solu­tion would be to hire a trainer who will cre­ate a pro­gramme suited to you and your goals. Time for a plug — email me if you are tired of spin­ning your wheels and want to improve your fit­ness. But if you don’t have time for a gym or hir­ing a trainer, there are some point­ers below that you can add in to your rou­tine. Not all of them, mind you. Rest is impor­tant. Work­ing out 3–4 times a week is suf­fi­cient. On other days, stick to low-intensity activities.

Arv says

• Walk 60+ min­utes at a brisk pace. Low-intensity exer­cise is a great way to burn fat.
• Sun salu­ta­tions are a good work­out, and will help improve your mobil­ity and flexibility.
• Pick up a sport. Hav­ing fun is impor­tant, this goes towards reduc­ing stress as well.
• Orga­nize week­end activ­i­ties with a larger group — go on hikes, explore trails. Use your imag­i­na­tion! There are things out there beyond drink­ing fol­lowed by pass­ing out, other things to do besides din­ner and a movie.
• Con­tinue going to the gym, if you already do that. You are bet­ter off going rather than not — my point is that you can accom­plish a lot more with a smarter work­out programme.
• Don’t have time or equip­ment? Well, you don’t really need too much of either. Check out this 15 minute work­out that you can try.

[hr]

Nutri­tion

Nutri­tion is a can of worms. Since every­one eats, every­one has their own opin­ion on this. Add to this flawed mod­els about cho­les­terol, heart attacks, sat­u­rated fats and, a food pyra­mid plate built on stu­pid­ity, it is no won­der there’s so many fat peo­ple out there.

Arv says

• Switch oils. Use coconut oil, ghee, but­ter, olive oil. Dump those veg­etable oils.
• Eat more veg­eta­bles. I eat about one and half kilos of veg­gies every day. Do you come close? And wait — you are veg­e­tar­ian? Ridicu­lous, don’t you agree?
• Get some pro­tein. Most veg­e­tar­i­ans get minis­cule amounts of pro­tein. Granted you don’t need the amounts an ath­letic per­son would but you still need some (about 15–20% of your daily intake). And no, lentils and pulses do not meet this need. Add more eggs, paneer, whole fat dairy, meat to your daily meals. If pos­si­ble, buy some whey pro­tein and mix it up with milk and fruit for a super deli­cious meal replace­ment, right after a workout!
• Sup­ple­ment with vit­a­mins and min­er­als, depend­ing on what you are lack­ing in your diet. Vit­a­min B12, Zinc, Vit­a­min K are com­mon defi­cien­cies. Get your­self tested, and add these to your daily rou­tine. There are really good multi-vitamins out there too. Mag­ne­sium is another sup­ple­ment you should be con­sum­ing, as it is often over­shad­owed by cal­cium, not just because it makes poop­ing easier.
• Stop eat­ing when you are about 80–90% full.
• Drop wheat. Wheat is NOT bet­ter than rice. Both are empty calo­ries but wheat does a lot of neg­a­tive stuff to you. “Is this that anti-gluten thing” you ask. Yep — a quick intro is right here.
• Stop drink­ing Coke, Pepsi, or what­ever it is. Yes, even the zero-calorie ones. They are crap.
• Same goes for juice. Eat the fruit instead. Have you tried eat­ing 4 apples in one sit­ting? Then how can you drink the equiv­a­lent of it in under a minute and assume you get the same benefits?
• Eat real food. The rest will take care of itself.

[hr]

Social Sit­u­a­tions, Atti­tude, and the rest

A lot of us fail because we lack a sup­port sys­tem, or give in to peer-pressure, or feel embar­rassed. Being labelled anti-social might be on people’s minds, but think about it for a sec­ond. Was drinking/smoking/junk-fooding, your sole source of release when you were 15 years old? Then why should that be it now? Get your head straight — fig­ure out a balance.

Arv says

• Believe in what you are doing.
• Be proud. You are right, they are wrong. As sim­ple as that.
• Recruit your friends and fam­ily, develop a sup­port system
• Learn to say yes.
• Learn to say no as well, and learn to say it the right way.
• Smile.

[hr]

Almost all of these can be fit­ted in with min­i­mal fuss. Get to it. Con­sis­tency is key. Stick at it, and you will sur­prise yourself.