Where everyone is trying to get fitter, I thought this might help!
I have been doing this for the past 07 years now. Yesss!!! I have been a student of fitness and good health, working and experimenting, learning by practice, reading, observation of myself and the world around me. These 7 Solid Years for which the water has flowed down the river which I have been keeping this blog to jot down my learnings and share with you.
And therefore, I will share with you things from my firsthand experience. Yes, this is rare! Most of the content out there is by teachers rather than practitioners of good health. So, I can tell you for sure what works and what doesn’t! My story of transformation has been mind blowing simply because I followed what I learned on the job, and not merely applied the theoretical content.
This blog is about giving some fundamental understanding of the concept of health and fitness. I have divided the concept into two:
Section A: What Health is not about & Section B: What health is all about
The major hurdle with us, due to which we are unable to catapult our lives into living healthy and fit, is how we look at it. The attitude that you carry about fitness can either make or mar your health. This is the number one concept that you must be very aware of. So, with these two sections, I am aiming to build your attitude towards fitness.
So, let’s begin by understanding what good health and fitness are not about.
HEALTH is NOT ABOUT SHOWING OFF
Of Course, who would not love to look younger than their age and better? Each of us, right?
But it should not be just about your looks. Most people go to the Gym to build their muscles -the visible muscles, like your Triceps, Biceps, the Abs, the Calves, etc. The girls, too, make the mistake of looking good to be the benchmark for fitness.
You can’t be further from the truth about Fitness. The truly healthy body and fit body won’t be just about looks. A truly functional body is about excellent mobility, agility, flexibility, strength, and endurance. Folks waste a lot of their time honing their looks instead of getting the holistic idea about health and overall well-being.
FITNESS is NOT JUST ABOUT EXERCISE
A lot of us are mis-led to believe that if we start exercising tomorrow, our health is going to get better from that very moment itself. I do agree that our lives today are so much entangled, and we are tethered to the buttons and clicks that we hardly allow ourselves to get even the normal dose of movement. But, presuming that exercising is all the magic that we need is the most misunderstood concept about getting healthier and fitter.
FITNESS is NOT ABOUT LOSING WEIGHT
Fitness is not about losing weight. This is so much advertised these days that reducing weight has become the maxim of being fit, hale and healthy. So, a lot of attention is being paid to some of the most harming notions on health. The whole weight loss industry is out there just to make sure that you can lose your weight. People are losing their minds because they can’t lose their weight.
Cutting down eating is not the key to losing weight. Dieting can harm the body in the long run making it deficit in some very essential nutrients need for the proper maintenance. So, the people are starving themselves and playing their own mental games and then getting stuck in their own traps that I would explain at an appropriate place.
FITNESS is NOT A ROCKET SCIENCE
This is the most profound thing that I realized by practicing good health myself. Thanks to the fitness industry that has cropped up in the past few decades, fitness has been made to look complicated. Because complicated look towards fitness benefits everyone except the person to whom it should matter the most. So, everyone is busy making bucks around fitness.
Good health is the result of your healthy and clean habits and respecting the natural laws governing our health and wellbeing. That’s it!
Eat nutritious food. – Proper Diet
Drink lots of water. – Proper hydration
Move and exercise to the extent your body can permit and keep improving and challenging your limits from time to time. – Regular Movement
Sleep well – Proper REST
Think positive and breath slowly – Proper Thinking
Stay in harmony with nature and just be grateful to God – Building Harmony between your mind, body and spirit.
This is it!
But, as some wise man has said, it is simple to be Happy but is difficult to be simple. All you have to do is live your life in a healthy way to keep yourself healthy. You can’t abuse and dream that you will have a healthy body without a healthy lifestyle. Your life style is the key.
So, if you wish to be healthy. Uncomplicate your Health. Make it a DIY –Do it Yourself Project. Just want to add a Caveat here that I am not telling those who are terminally ill or facing the illnesses due to various causes. My message is only for people how to keep their good health in a general sense.
Just do the things that you know will keep you healthy. Don’t just say, Do it and do it for yourself.
FITNESS is NOT JUST ABOUT YOUR BODY
So, what I am trying to say is that your mental health is part of your physical and overall health. You can’t expect yourself to be fit and healthy if you suffer from a short temperament. Sooner or later you might discover that your short tempered attitude has turned you into a BP patient. Or you may attract any such lifestyle ailment.
The real cause of stress in our life is we ourselves. This might shock you. But this is what I have found from my observations about fitness. I have mellowed down a lot ever since I started to practice fitness. My social relationships have seen a complete turnaround with my kids, spouse, parents and the friends and colleagues around.
I realized I could sleep better, run faster and smile a lot by becoming aware of my own thoughts. That allowed me to establish a positive and optimistic self-talk. And those selftalks have made my immunity stronger and better. Moving your body also moves your mind and vice versa.
Health is a Blessing. If you have a healthy body, please don’t ABUSE. So that when you grow to my age, you could be thankful to the one who created you. The real essence of fitness is felt when you are greying. You will grey gracefully and for most of the time, you will be happy that you can move without medical issues. What could be a better way to live than living in a healthy manner.
Choice is yours. Choose your health over cheap pleasures.
GOOD HEALTH is the source of JOY and HAPPINESS.
Though we acknowledge that we need to be healthy, we have hardly understood what real good health really means. Reason is not far to seek. We never got the experience of living a healthy life. So, it is just not possible to really understand until and unless you have experienced it firsthand.
No one really cares about health as long as the body functions are going great. It is taken for granted. No one really want to express their gratitude for the body that they are blessed with at the time of the birth.
It is our social conditioning that teaches us that Health is important. But that’s just to be politically correct. No one really practices it including those who preach or teach. Did you ever get to learn that Health is the source of Happiness. Of course, we have heard the proverb – Health is Wealth. So, people are more interested in wealth than health.
It is only when you are going to treat Health as equivalent to Happiness you will turn towards happiness. As long as health remains a hygiene issue, it is not possible to experience good health. For me my happiness begins with Health. I feel great to move my legs, swing my hands, lift, drift and turn in all directions. I enjoy the movements. I enjoy the hardships that I can carry out with my body like tilling the land, walking, lifting heavy loads and doing the home chores manually. It’s cool with me unlike the vast majority who are socially conditioned to think that doing things themselves is meant for the poor and the downtrodden.
GOOD HEALTH is about DIVINE RULES & RESTRAINT OF THE MIND
Ok, I am taking the liberty of saying that Temptations lead to bad health. The temptation of our taste buds. Even though we are well aware that a particular item may be injurious to our health, but we still end up consuming it. Any guess why? The reason is we are tempted to do so. The sight, the sound or the tastebuds tempt us to eat the unhealthy.
But did you ever wonder why we are led to eat the unhealthy and feel like heaven. This is the way we have been conditioned to think. We are conditioned to think that the good things are sinful. So, our mind is in the confused and the in the state of conflict and we behave with double standards. One for being politically, socially correct and the other for the sake of temptation to feel heavenly.
And we fall to temptations due to lack of training to discipline our minds. We never get that training in our childhood. Never! But we must learn and cultivate the habit of restraint against the temptations. And this won’t happen overnight. You will have to reason it out several times in your mind before you find the power to restrain your mind.
I would say that you have got to train your mental muscles to behave in a particular way for the betterment of your health. Most people end up bed ridden because they could not restrain themselves against the temptation.
So, the health is not just about knowing what to eat and how to eat and when to eat but it also means what not to eat and the art of self- control. And guess what the art of self-control you learn for the sake of health can be leveraged in your other walks of life. A disciplined and self- controlled mind is a strong and powerful mind.
GOOD HEALH is a JOURNEY, an ADVENTURE
I must tell you that we must never give up on working our way to health. Lot of people start with a lot of enthusiasm to get into shape. But somewhere down the line, they lose the hope that they would ever get to the level of fitness that they desire.
The problem with such people is that they think that health should happen in no time. But if you think so, you are no further from the truth. We all have different type of bodies with variable functioning of each of our body parts. So, how your body is going to respond depends on how you have been using your body and its current status. It may just take a while for me get into shape with just a few sets of exercises in a month or two but there may be people who have spent the whole damn year working out, but they don’t see the light of the day and eventually they give up and never bother to get up again.
But, it is more about moving on and on than simply giving up on them. Look at your good health as a way of living and it should last your life time. This is what I told myself when I started my fitness journey on 1st Jan 2018 and I have never looked back. So, I would suggest you too to have a life long fitness plan and not just for a matter of few months or years.
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