My last post was about how to gain weight. And I promised that my next post would be about how to lose. Although we should look at how much we weigh, and try to keep the weight under control, we must understand one most important thing, that we almost all of the time, forget. Being under-weight / over-weight is not the disease. It is a side-effect. The real problem is that we are unfit. Fat is not bad. If you haven’t noticed until now, nature doesn’t give you anything that’s bad. It becomes bad when you accumulate too much of it. Wikipedia says, “Fats play a vital role in maintaining healthy skin and hair, insulating body organs against shock, maintaining body temperature, and promoting healthy cell function. They also serve as energy stores for the body. Fats are broken down in the body to release glycerol and free fatty acids. The glycerol can be converted to glucose by the liver and thus used as a source of energy.”
Wait… so what’s it that we are doing in the gym?
Question your motives. Do you want to get fit? What’s the definition of fitness…? Faster, stronger, more agile, more flexible, more resilient and last but not the least, a more long lasting body should be the true target. Not a specific body weight, or the size of a specific body part (waste, biceps, etc.). This doesn’t mean you don’t look at the size or weight at all. But that should not the only focus. Because there are a no. of ways, you can achieve your target and some of them may not be healthy viz. extensive dieting to lose weight.
Set Goals. In continuation to the above topic, we end up creating the wrong goals at times. Some of the goals that are not so advisable as primary goals are: Weight, size, no. of hours in the gym, etc. Some of the good goals would be distance covered in time on the treadmill / bicycle, poundage, flexibility, repetitions. things that prove your strength, stamina, agility, flexibility, etc. should be kept as primary goals. And then things like size / shape / definition can be kept as secondary goals. After all what’s the point in working out so hard if you don’t have something to show off.
Humble beginnings. One very important point about starting workouts is to start small. Of course you won’t be able to push 200 pounds or do 20 miles on the treadmill in the first week. There is no shame in accepting that this is a beginning. I am a software engineer and when work pressure is high, my gym discipline goes for a toss. But I never quit and when I start again after a month or even 2 months at times, my strength / stamina goes down. I feel ashamed, but I still keep reasonable targets. I will tell you what works. I have a line that I keep repeating in my head when I feel ashamed of my performance at the gym, “we’ll see about that”. And soon enough I am back to normal. So even though I am quite regular, I have my down times too. Nothing wrong in accepting that these are just the beginnings. If you keep too high a target, you might very well end up injuring yourself and then never see the gym again. As Lee Haney (Champion body builder) says it, “Stimulate, not Annihilate”.
Beat laziness. That’s a tough one. Scores of books have been written on the subject of Motivation and trust me, there is no panacea for this. This is pretty much the root of all problems. People may come up with any number / type / size of “reasons” for not being disciplined. But the root cause is generally this laziness. Human body evolved with this primal instinct to rest and save as much energy it can, while it can because primitive times were harsh. However, we do not live in the primitive times any more and sadly enough the evolution of the physiology is not as fast as the technological explosion. Hence we cannot rely on our primal laziness to push us into the gym every morning.
But again, you don’t have to be harsh with yourself. I will tell you my system and you can develop one of yours.
Monday: First day of the week. Full energy. Besides it is Shoulder and Triceps today, Let’s go to the gym.
Tuesday: Second day of the week. Lower body boring but biceps very interesting. And besides Building legs is very important. And this is just the second day. I can do it.
Wednesday: Cardio. Just Do It.
Thursday: Last 2 days and the week is gone. And Back and Triceps is very interesting.
Friday: Last day of the week. Chest and Biceps, Favorite body part. And then Saturday Sunday are rest days.
Essentially what I am trying to say is break it down into smaller targets and find excuses to workout everyday. As Michael Jordan once said, “16 points per game every game looks a formidable enemy, but 4 points a quarter looks quite achievable”.
Patience and persistence. There are multitudes of factors that affect the amount of time your body will take to achieve the goals. Diet, rest, genetics, mental pressure, profession, even friends and parties because they affect sleep. You may not see visible differences initially. But forget not that continuing something is as difficult as it is easy to start something. Lots of my friends have started gym, seeing gym-goers and getting excited. But the difficult part is to sustain that excitement until you see visible differences. Trust me once you start seeing the differences, you would be hooked. You may not be super disciplined but you will keep returning. And that’s good enough. And then there’s what I call the Endorphine syndrome. You feel a sort of an euphoria when your workouts are somewhere between moderate and high. This is said to be because of endorphine getting pumped into your blood. Once you get to the level where you start getting the euphoria, you will return and then it will become easy.
The trick is to get to the Endorphine syndrome before the laziness syndrome gets to you.
