To Be Well With Wellness.

Wellness is the desire for all of us. We can have different measures for it. It’s important that we have a plan for our desires.

Wellness coaching is a tricky thing. There are numerous methods and recommendations towards a healthy life. Then how to choose a good one poses a challenge

The best way to do that is to set our own goals and try out what suits and works best for us.

That means, we need to be researchers. Look at recommendations and statistics, but test and evolve what’s good for us.

If I share my experience, I have found intermittent fasting as something really working. I consider Gin Stephens book ‘Delay, Don’t Deny’ as a good guide for it. She narrates based on own experiences, tests and trials.

Goals differ from people to people. I have set what could be considered as a very tough goal of acquiring six packs. That’s to look good.

Looking good is perhaps equally important like being healthy. Weight loss for many of us is looking good.

Personally, I don’t want to sacrifice much while going for the looking good and younger goal. One such sacrifice sought to be avoided is eating my favourite sweets.

Technically, internet fasting is okay when anything is eaten but confined only to the eating window. That perhaps take care of the sweet tooth. But there’s more to be done.

Losing fat, weight and toning up muscles need some extra bit of efforts. What if avoiding sugar and processed food help the task better. Well, worth giving a try.

So it’s worthwhile to look at diet, workout, and fasting to gain the best results.

For me they will be intermittent fasting as a lifestyle, some sensible eating during the window, exercises for weight loss and muscle building and swimming.

What we have to do is to select what work for realising the goal and make it the lifestyle.

Why Do We Exercise!

Sometime back I was attracted to the saying that we exercise to impress the neighbor.

Now I look at it as need based also. Weight loss is a universally accepted reason. Better health, keeping fit etc are others.

Walking perhaps is most common with gym visits, weight training and others in the list.

There are quite a few who exercise for the company of fellow athletes.

But then, after a time we want to see some results. Some adjustments are required for it to happen.

Research says that slower walking helps losing weight better than jogging or running. So there’s some science behind all these.

This is what I do now:

I have adopted intermittent fasting as a lifestyle. To compliment the weight loss. I do some slow walking.

I want to walk on stones barefoot, like I used to do in childhood days when chasing fish in the river. So my walking for fat burning is barefoot on the cobbled ground with enough pebbles to toughen the barefoot.

I have a dream to acquire six packs. So I want to lift weight, do push-ups, pull-ups and crunches.

I want to get rid of my lower belly and love handles. For this I do anabolic and HIIT workout.

I am looking at some medals in Masters Swimming competitions. So I swim like a trained swimmer.

I want to acquire some yogic benefits. So I do yoga.

That’s hell of a lot.

New Year And Resolutions.

2020, well we want to forget the year. That’s fine provided we can make 2021 worthwhile.

Sometimes, we can’t just start from scratch. It’s applicable with new year resolutions. It’s better to pick up from where it was left.

The most ambitious and key resolution I had was to acquire six packs by end 2020. There were others, now being reclassified into ‘bucket list’.

Did I acquire six packs? Well we can see it here. Some work is required. Of course, the happenings in 2020 is the excuse.

So it’s just carried forward. That means, six packs is in the list.

Others

Years of corporate life, suited and booted made my feet tender. I can’t walk on the mud without footwear. Here’s a resolution to run on stones. I am already walking in the compound, barefoot.

Continue, guide and mentor intermittent fasting. Be a coach.

Sleep seven plus hours.

Eat sensibly, less sugar more good food.

Plant trees, grow fruits and vegetables

Cook exotic, traditional and specialty food.

Travel more.

Happy 2021.

Regimental, That’s How It Works For Me!

It’s also discipline! And when we talk about discipline, the best in class is military. So regimental best describes my totally repetitive, strict and rigid discipline when it comes to diet, exercises and wellness programs.

I do Intermittent Fasting 16 to 19 hours a day, 7 days a week and it’s strict water only fast.

My daily yoga lasting an hour and a half involves the same asanas, the same breathing and the same stretches.

My crunches, running and walking are at the same pace, same numbers and same periods of time every day.

People rightly alerts me on the need to have variations. True, but I will need a trainer to manage the resultant complexity.

The benefits will be better with variations. I can’t manage complexities and hence I am regimental.

Still I believe there are benefits. Certainly so. We usually ignore most benefits as usual. If we know what we would be without the regimen and discipline, the benefits are so huge.

I feel happy when I think how i would be; without fasting, workouts and a bit too much of show off!

Six Packs. Staying on Course in Bucket List.

The dream is still on. Hard work is also on schedule, in spite of gym and swimming pool remaining closed.

More work required, much more to achieve, but the outlines are quite heartwarming.

A Dream And It’s Hard Journey!

Six packs! It was a dream when I was young. The dream had it’s accompaniments. Acquire the six packs, wear a body-tight T-shirt, shave off the hair and walk around to show off.

Hair is done, T-shirt is easy; but the raja part is pretty tough. In fact, I abandoned the dream for some long time and it’s back, full and in glory over the past year.

I had set a goal, to get it by end 2020. That’s when the Coronavirus interfered. The gym and swimming pools were to be substituted.

Yoga became regular and in full throttle, walking advanced to running on the terrace, strength training is without weights and even swimming actions mimicked on land. Intermittent Fasting gives the required energy to burn over 1500 calories from these.

And yesterday’s raid in the storage room yielded the abdominal cruncher, a direct aid for six packs.

The result is here. A long way still to go. Protein powder and supplements could accelerate and bulge it out! Na, I want it naturally, and maybe with more of plant based protein.

Abdominal Cruncher. A Six Pack Workout

This Cruncher was acquired when I was in London, working for Standard Chartered Bank. And it was in the store room in Bangalore all these years, forgotten as we usually stay in Cochin.

This is a valuable addition when I am trying to keep the quest for six packs going in this lockdown when the gyms and swimming pools are closed.

Just that I don’t want to do away with any of the workouts in the last couple of months, the crunches became additional workout. With the result I clocked 1714 calories burned on these workouts, on the Apple Watch.

Age, Ageing and Being Masters!

Long Road to Six Packs!

‘Learn to age gracefully’ was an uninvited comment when there was a discussion on my pettiness to hide my age.

That was a challenge. And I decided to take it up. Luckily I didn’t choose to be resigned to the natural process. I decided to challenge it a bit.

Intermittent fasting has been the proverbial ‘paradigm shift’. And I plunged on sincerely. It works.

Perhaps another important factor is my ability to interact comfortably with any age group, particularly with the very young. It’s actually a revelation, you get to learn many things from the youth and it’s marvellous.

Being physically fit is a dream. We say ‘happiness is……… (many things)! What if ‘happiness is when you look at the bathroom mirror’!

That’s when the six packs become important. It’s harder when you are older. But perhaps not impossible.

I always remember my teenage dream of acquiring six packs, shave the head and walk around in black tight T-shirt. The hair part is done, and I learned shaving off the bits left. The mission is to get the other and of course the T-shirt is on sale.

Oh, I started with ageing gracefully. Masters Games is the answer. Now I can be better in my age group and feel happy with the number in age.

Happy to be the Master Games Medalist, Fitness Consultant aspiring to wear a six pack.

The Flying Fox. The Largest Of The ‘BATBIRD’!

I got him flying solo in the evening sky! Every evening I can watch about twenty of them flying southwards, but never in groups like the egrets or other migratory birds.

Nicknamed ‘flying fox’ these birds actually fox me as I have never seen them flying northwards in the morning like the migratory birds. Perhaps these nocturnal ones might be crossing my balcony view before sunrise and before I officially get up.

I may stand alone, if I say these are cute flying things. For, they are linked to the dark things, like you expect to see them in a Dracula movie.

And then they are or their kind are accused of causing the deadly Nipah virus in Kerala.

But imagine seeing them flying like this or hundreds of them hanging upside down on a single tree! There’s something macho about them, certainly.

I may want this guy on my that black, tight, tee shirt, that I dream of when I have the muscles, six packs and the shaved head- the childhood dream.

For now I have the head done and of course this live picture of the flying fox and dreams are on for the muscles and six packs.

To be renamed ‘BATMAN’ then!

Afraid Of Being Called Narcissist. But Take A Look!

‘Self love’, ‘me too moment’ are trending along with the age old obsession of I, me, myself.

Excess of any of these or probably all these as they are all the same, is summarised as narcissist.

It’s bad by the sound of it itself. It’s defined to be bad. But it’s trending and people become that without using the name.

So, being in majority is power. But it’s more power when someone lives the definition and stand out among the majority.

One of the easy tests to see if you are in the majority of narcissists is to count the number of times one observes oneself in a mirror, especially the bathroom mirror with no holds barred.

When that’s the test, then count me in.

Me bad! I don’t think so. For one I do it alone in ‘me time’. And we have not heard anywhere that ‘self love’ is bad. I just wonder if it’s the training ground for loving and lovable people.

But the most important is to be happy as a narcissist. Clearly, that’s possible only when what one sees for himself is good.

And when you bare in front of the mirror, it should look good as mirror like number doesn’t lie.

So one should look good. You can possess a pre-arranged face, but everything else is just made. One needs to sweat it out for that V shape and in the case of men like me, to have that chiseled look with muscles flexed to thrush out what it should be the six packs.

See, it’s not all bad, not at all! A lot of hard work and discipline are involved in looking good.

Not bad at all, then!