Fitness 101: From not a fitness professional
*Disclaimer: I am not a fitness professional, I am not a fitness trainer and this is an effort to chronicle my journey and experiences in striving to be as fit as I can be. I love working out, pushing and swinging heavy weights and all the fun that comes with that.
This is a first post that I have been planning to write since ages. It’s probably been a decade that I have managed to stay fairly fit despite the rigours of life in the 30s. I am 40 right now and I have been working non-stop without a break for 19 years in the technology industry with lots to travel, and for me fitness is third on the list of priority after Family and work.
There is a saying that the best way to get fit is to stay fit. As per me it’s not inflammatory in any which way. I have nothing against people losing x kgs / lbs of weight to get to their desired weight range, but the fact is that it takes an herculean effort to get to where they could have been. It’s definitely a good achievement, but the bigger achievement is to stay fit. “Get there and stay there” should be the mantra.
This is me front squatting 85% of my body weight for a set of 10 reps+:
And here is the Mrs fooling around with me deadlifting puny weight as proof, while making a tough face.
Now that begs the question, “What is being fit?”. The answer is that “it depends”. Medically it’s a whole different ballgame but in general it is much more nuanced. For someone it could be staying in their weight range (so called) and continue fitting into their past clothes. For someone it could be running marathons or even ultra-marathons. For someone it could mean having visible abs or having a low body fat content, etc, etc. I am not qualified to talk about professional athletes, hence would refrain from doing so.
For me fitness means the following:
1. Cardio-vascular health: Having good cardiac health is important in the age of stress, affordability of junk food, and demanding lives.
2. Strength: Being strong or athletic enough to take on life and keep doing what they used to. Alright maybe, bench-press 1 x bodyweight, squat / deadlift 2 x their bodyweight for their 1RM and more.
3. Good body composition: Having a relatively lower body fat content than usual, and also being able to maintain a range consistently.
4. Flexibility, Mobility, Athleticism: Be athletic enough to continue to play that game of Tennis or Yoga any other sport of choice till late in life. That would also mean keeping the body flexible and mobile enough.
5. Injury management: That creaky knee, that clicking noise in the cervical spine after hours at the desk, that dodgy ankle- they need to be managed (even if they can’t be fixed 100 percent).
Body positivity is a great thing and if one is fit as per the above definition, one shouldn’t be worried if they look bigger or smaller than their favourite instagram fitness model. But it shouldn’t be an excuse if one wants to get / stay / look fit.
Now I need to talk about the elephant in the room: “Diet” or “Nutrition” (which is the better word). The basic premise is that you eat how much your needs. If you need to lose weight, you need to eat less than you burn. If you need to gain weight (or muscles) you need to eat more than you burn (its a bit more scientific). You can figure out meal sizes and portion sizes which work for you in the long term but in the short term you should educate yourself on BMR and TDEE and how many calories you need. For example if my TDEE is 2000 calories, if I eat at 1800 calories for a few weeks I would lose weight. I also need to ensure I eat the right proportion of Carbs, Protein and Fats. One probably needs a more scientific approach to what would be the right meal sizes to eat about 1800 cals a day and their are various calculators, etc which would provide that information. If you are already eating less as per you make sure you have a reasonable proportion of Carbs, protein and fats: The easiest is to look at your meal and see carbs, protein and veggies in equal proportion.
What doesn’t work over the long term with respect to nutrition is reducing calories randomly. It would work initially but you would end up plateauing very soon. And there is only a limit to how much calories you can reduce till you end up starting to mess with your metabolism. Unless someone is prepping for a contest or something similar there is no point to stay at significantly low calories.
What works: Staying lean throughout the year can get stressful and sometimes one can let go and enjoy a bit of life but should be able to quickly get back on track without letting go too much. An 80/20 rule of being on point 80% of the time can provide good results, while being achievable for most people.
The second elephant in the room is “Training” (or exercise, etc). This is my favourite part out of the two and for the purpose of this article, I am referring to resistance training. I love to train and over the course of many years, I have gone through tens of programs including some of the popular strength programs (5x5 or Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1) , some from highly experienced people at Hybrid Performance, and many custom ones. I prefer well thought out programs as I don’t have to work too hard: and sometimes it is useful to not re-invent the wheel. Because of the events of last year, I have been training at home except a few months in between when I was back at the gym. At home I have got a bunch of kettlebells that I train with and an adjustable set of dumb-bells. Kettlebells are nice and effective and can get the job done. I have a repeatable and something simplistic to power through the stay-at-home period and at the same time being fairly effective too.
What works: When you are just starting out with resistance training, you will see insane gains in the first year or so (provided you put in the hard work): it is practically impossible to achieve those kind of gains in the future normally. You could start off with any kind of a program and still make insane gains. As one continues to train, rotating between some kind of strength and hypertrophy focussed programs would help in the long run. Over the years you could add in some functional movement and programming, some mobility work, and training will be fun and effective. Now if you need to look like a bodybuilder, that is a whole different ballgame and both your training and your nutrition has to be on point for years and years.
What doesn’t work: One could obviously make a lot of gains by doing enough and more cardio but body composition would still be a little sub-optimal. Also, I hate it when people gamify fitness: counting steps or kilo-meters walked, etc try to turn fitness into a status game or a zero-sum game. One has to fall in love with fitness and that is the only way to build true fitness in the long run. It is and should be treated as a positive sum game. Also, supplements kind of have got a lot of bad press and there is no need to adhere to that school of thought. You need the right nutrition — whether you get them through real food or supplements is secondary.
I hope this sets the right context and the next step for me is to delve into nutrition and training more over the course of the next few articles.
Here’s trying to summarise everything into a brief info-graphic.
