Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

You just turned 50. You find an old photo album, and you and the wife start look­ing at them. Hey, who’s that trim chap in those pics? Where is he in your cur­rent b’day pics? Damn — where did he go? How do you get him back?

Update: This post is not just for a 50-year old. If you do not have 5 pushups and/or a squat, are over-weight — this post is a great start­ing point for you! Don’t worry about step 2 — I got you cov­ered. Step 1 comes before step 2.

Well, where and how do peo­ple get started on get­ting back to fit­ness? Most often, it is run­ning. Run­ning, almost always, has a sup­port group that comes with it, which makes a world of a dif­fer­ence. And it has very low bar­ri­ers to get­ting started. Hell, that’s exactly what I did! I ran a half-marathon, (only my extreme lazi­ness pre­vented that from being a full marathon) after being unable to run a mile a few months prior. I don’t have any­thing against run­ning — but ‘unfit’ peo­ple run­ning marathons is very dumb. You are dam­ag­ing your heart more than you real­ize. Any­ways, not a topic I want to dwell on. My method is a way supe­rior alter­na­tive to run­ning — as a gate­way to get­ting health­ier and fit­ter.

I want to use this post, or a series of posts, to get peo­ple out of the rut of ‘start­ing trou­ble’. I’ve had dis­cus­sions with a diverse group of peo­ple about this — although why these awe­some folks don’t com­ment on the blog but pre­fer to com­mu­ni­cate solely via other means is beyond me. I would really appre­ci­ate it if you guys com­mented on the blog too!

The pur­pose is to help peo­ple that fit a cer­tain pro­file start their jour­ney to improved health, and fit­ness — in a sus­tain­able and well-rounded fashion.

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The Pro­file

• You are around 50 years old. This is a broad win­dow though, coz I don’t see why it can­not apply to a 60-year old. Or a very unfit 40-year old. Hell, I could’ve used this, instead of try­ing to run, when I was 25!
• Can be male or female.
• You work a min­i­mum of 8 hours a day. You are tired and over-worked.
• You sleep 6 hours a day, and feel tired most days.
• Week­ends are an alien con­cept. Well, maybe one day a week, if you are lucky.
• You (prob­a­bly) can­not do mul­ti­ple pushups
• A pullup — are you kidding?
• You have time con­straints, to say the least.
• You have strength, mobil­ity, flex­i­bil­ity limitations.

[hr]The Plan

Jump­ing into a work­out, like “Get Fit, in under 75 min­utes” is not the ideal start­ing point, if you fit this pro­file. It is def­i­nitely a place you can get to within a short span of time. Small steps, Ellie, small steps!

Yoga is cer­tainly a good idea but it is sim­ply one part of a well-rounded pro­gramme (Strength, speed, endurance, and mobility+flexibility). Yoga rocks in the flex­i­bil­ity arena, and cer­tainly has some spillover effect on some of the other modal­i­ties. But instead, do some­thing else for the oth­ers that has a good effect, and yoga for flex­i­bil­ity! Of the four, strength is a nec­es­sary basal skill you must have. After years of inac­tiv­ity, your mus­cles are prob­a­bly weak and flabby. Build­ing up strength first is the pri­mary goal, while los­ing some weight!

And you def­i­nitely want to read my low-hanging fruit article!

[hr]Exercise

There are three com­po­nents — a strength cir­cuit, a flexibility-based piece, and a low-intensity com­po­nent. Let me detail each one, and then we can talk about how to put it all together.

Strength Cir­cuit

1. Pushup — against a wall (eas­i­est), incline pushup, knee pushups (hardest).
2. Squat pro­gres­sion — from against a wall, to an air squat.
3. Let-me-ins
4. Two-leg bridge — Floor (eas­ier) or on the ball (harder).

• Start with #1 — pushup against a wall — and do 5 reps. Take your time, you are not doing this against a clock. Once you are done with this, take a short break, and move to the next exer­cise (squats). Do 5 reps. Take a break, do 5 let-me-in. Take a break, do 5 of the two-leg bridges. That’s one cir­cuit (or round or set).
• If you feel tired, you are done! That’s great for day 1!
• Next time, you can try to do 2 rounds. Be patient.
• If you try to do 2 rounds, for exam­ple, and stop after the 3rd squat, that’s okay. Move to the next exer­cise and fin­ish the round. But do not increase it to 3 rounds until you are able to do all the work comfortably
• Once you are able to do 3 total rounds: I want you to increase the num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions in each exer­cise from 5 to 10. Once you are able to do 3 rounds, with 10 reps in each exer­cise, increase it to 15. Three rounds at 15 — make it 20 repetitions.
• Once you are at 20 reps, and 3 rounds, increase the dif­fi­culty of each indi­vid­ual exer­cise i.e. from pushups against a wall to incline pushups.
• Your goal is to progress to the most dif­fi­cult form of each exer­cise, and do 20 rep­e­ti­tions of it, for 3 total rounds. Once you hit that goal, increase the num­ber of rounds to 4, and then 5! Once you are at 5 — write a com­ment here or send me an email, and we can progress to the next level!
• If you are already at the high­est level of the exer­cise, that’s fine. Stay there while the other exer­cises catch up.
• Once you feel fit­ter, keep the rest between each exer­cise at 30 sec­onds. And the rest between rounds at 2 min­utes. But remem­ber, at the start, there’s no clock. It is only when you are at the last level (high­est dif­fi­culty in each, doing 20 reps for 3 total rounds) do we even bring this into the equation.

Flex­i­bil­ity Component

Sun salu­ta­tions — that is all.

• Start by doing 2 rounds (two on each side) of this, slowly. Once doing 2 is com­fort­able, increase it to 3.
• Increase num­ber of rounds after you are com­fort­ably fin­ish­ing the cur­rent num­ber of rounds.
• Increase speed of the move­ment after you get com­fort­able with it.
• You will be sweat­ing at the end of this!
• In the begin­ning, it is okay to bend the knee as much as you want, when you are try­ing to reach your toes. Mod­ify the move­ment so that it can be exe­cuted by you. As you get stronger and more flex­i­ble, you will get bet­ter at it!

Low-intensity Com­po­nent

• A long hike, say twice a month. By long I mean a multi-hour hike. But know your lim­its, and do some­thing that is enjoy­able and repeat­able. You can slowly increase dis­tance and time involved.
• Go play a round of golf, with­out a golf cart. When you feel stronger, drop the caddy as well, and carry your own bag.
• Just being active and out­side — gar­den­ing for example
• Walk­ing vigourously, for an hour or so. Go to a beach or park, and enjoy being out­doors. Tread­mill as a last resort — get some sun­shine and fresh air if you can!

Putting the three com­po­nents together

So, we got 3 pieces. Here’s how I want you to put them together.

• On Mon­days and Thurs­days, I want you to do the strength circuit.
• On Tues­days and Fri­days, I want you to do the flex­i­bil­ity component.
• On Wednes­days and Sat­ur­days — the low-intensity com­po­nent. For exam­ple, walk for an hour on Wednes­day, and play a round of golf on Sat­ur­day. Mix-and-match it how­ever you want.
• Chill out on Sun­day. You earned it! If you did not get the “Ellie” ref­er­ence, look it up, watch the movie and/or read the book! There’s one Sun­day I planned for you.
• If this sounds like a bit too much, start off with just the Mon/Wed/Fri/Sat i.e. one strength cir­cuit, one flex­i­bil­ity piece, and two low-intensity com­po­nents for the week. Then add in the sec­ond flex­i­bil­ity piece a week or two later, and the final strength cir­cuit another week or two after that. Make sense?
• Yes, you can switch this around to suit you. Day 1/4 are strength, Day 2/5 are flex­i­bil­ity, Day 3/6 are low-intensity, Day 7 is rest. The idea is spac­ing them evenly. If you have a doubt, ask!

[hr]Nutrition

Have you read my post on a nutri­tion tem­plate yet? If not, do check it out, for a more detailed level of under­stand­ing. Don’t worry though — I will make it a bit eas­ier to fol­low coz what point is a diet if one can­not fol­low it.

1. Eat about a kilo of veg­eta­bles every­day. That’s just 333g per meal! Mandatory.
2. Eat about half a kilo of starchy veg­eta­bles every­day — car­rot, squash, sweet potato, potato, yam, yucca root etc. Mandatory.
3. Eat a chunk of pro­tein with every meal — eggs, paneer, yoghurt, cot­tage cheese, meat, seafood. Mandatory.
4. If you can fit in white rice after this, go for it. But items in #1,2,3 have higher pri­or­ity. So, if you are gonna waste any­thing, waste the rice!
5. Change your cook­ing oils from indus­trial seed oils and veg­etable oils. Use but­ter, ghee, coconut oil instead!

If every meal sat­is­fies the above cri­te­ria, I don’t really care what else you are eat­ing. I am just inter­ested in get­ting you started on the path to fit­ness and health. Once you get health­ier, you will clean up your nutri­tion even more. Set­tle at a bal­ance that you find sus­tain­able — the 80/20 rule is kinda per­fect. Eat right 80% of the time, and you will be fine.

[hr]Stress, Sleep, & Recovery

• Don’t bring work home
• Sleep 8+ hours in a dark room
• Get a mas­sage once a month
• Take a vacation

Sleep, rest, and recov­ery — these are as impor­tant as the exer­cise you are doing! C’mon — do I really need to entice you to sleep?! Here’s the link to my arti­cle again — low-hanging fruit!

[hr]Attitude

• Don’t rush it. There’s no hurry. Being patient, and con­sis­tent is the key to improv­ing your health and fitness.
• Stay the course. You will see results.
• Be proud of what you are doing
• Get oth­ers to join in with you. Work­out together. Form your own sup­port sys­tem!
• Don’t stress out. If you miss a work­out, you can always make up for it.
• But don’t make excuses. Be honest!

[hr]Finally…

If you fit this pro­file, give this a shot. If you know of peo­ple like this, share this! If you have ques­tions about how you can tweak this to suit you, ask!

Dis­claimer

• If you are under­go­ing rehab etc., con­sult with your doctor.
• In fact, con­sult with your doc­tor before doing this. I don’t know your indi­vid­ual sit­u­a­tion. If you are a 55-year old with nor­mal health and no com­pli­ca­tions, you should be able to do this with­out issues.

Com­ing up next in this series — house-wives/house-husbands, kids, unfit 35–45 year olds. Am I miss­ing someone?

See these tiny but­tons below — go crazy, click on all of them!