On fitness

The globalization and knowledge industry have brought in huge amount of opportunities to people especially in countries like India. At the same time, growing competition at workplace is causing mental and physical stress to people. Long working hours, late-night teleconferences are part of life now and they cannot be avoided. Even though organizations proclaim they provide so called ‘Work-Life-Balance’ to their employees I personally feel it is more of a ‘FUTTA’. Everyone knows that in order to keep up with the competition we need to work hard and no other way. In this scenario it is up to individuals to keep themselves physically and mentally fit. I have been struggling with this for the past four years and sharing my learning’s in this blog.

When it comes to doing fitness most of us (Including me) start saying ‘Where is the time?’. I very well agree that the time is less but we should ‘Create’ time by ‘Mental Creation’. Stephen Covey in his ‘7 habits of highly effective people’ says every thing in this world is created twice. The first creation is called ‘Mental Creation’ and the second one is ‘Actual Creation’. The mental creation plays very important role in fitness because the exercises need to be done on a consistent way. Achieving consistency is extremely difficult without mentally creating a picture that ‘Fitness is very important for me and there is no compromise on my health’. Once this mental picture is formed the time problem will be solved. Depending on the nature individuals can choose either morning or evening for exercises. Choosing morning time is better because both body and mind will be fresh.

Once the mental creation and time is chosen the planning and execution comes into picture. The planning stage starts with finding out where the individual stands with respect to health. This can be found out by measuring current weight, fat percentage and Body-Mass-Index (BMI). This can be done by visiting any nearby physician or dietician at nominal price. Some organizations (Most of the software companies) have visiting consultants who provide this service at free of cost. By talking to the consultant we can find out what is the ideal weight, fat and BMI values should be. After the consultation we mostly observe that we are having more weight and fat because of past ignorance. Now a plan needs to be done on how much weight needs to be lost on a monthly basis. While planning having a conservative estimation helps. Say for example a plan to loose one kg per month is a good estimation. At this phase individual also need to have a mindset that ‘Fitness is not a destination and it is a continuous and never ending journey ‘.

The execution part is the most important and difficult phase. To start with individual need to choose a particular type of exercise that suits him or her. After my discussions with dietician I found 35 minutes of yoga/jogging/brisk-walk/gym/aerobics burn 100 calories. So any of the above mentioned activity can be chosen but the important point is that the individual should feel ‘Comfortable’ with it. If you are not comfortable better don’t choose it. Also don’t choose it just because your friend is doing it. When we start doing exercises we often find that we are not able to do it on every day and we end up being frustrated on ourselves. But that is part of life and don’t try to be a critic of yourself. Just take it casually and continue it from next day. Having a graceful mindset helps. It is always better to maintain a monthly log of weight and other parameters. During this phase it is very important to keep control on food. Avoiding fatty and oily foods will help to achieve the ideal weight quickly. Once the ideal weight is achieved we can start eating all type of food along with exercises.

I also found big people like Lakshmi Mittal and Anil Ambani spend two hours every day for exercises. If they can spend time why not we? After all ‘Health is Wealth’. Take charge of yourself and its high time to become fit.