When to NOT hit the gym

They say any time is good time for hitting the gym. Not entirely true! Read below some instances where working out should be the last thing you consider doing:

Right after having sex or masturbation
The testosterone levels drop which is not good for endurance training. Also, you feel physically drained after masturbation and/or sex. A theory claims that going to the gym while feeling horny can be a good thing to do, for your testosterone levels are at a high then and that enables you to lift more in the gym.
Right after a heavy meal
Going to the gym after a heavy meal is not the greatest of ideas. While you may find professional bodybuilders eating between their workouts, you must know how professionally do they choose their foods and how their workout makes their body require that food at specific times. Hence, hitting the gym right after eating a heavy meal is a bad idea.
Don’t go to the gym drugged
If you are under the influence of any drug, avoid going to the gym. This holds even for people who claim to be regular consumers of any particular drug. Even if there is no damage internally if you are intoxicated and working out, small things like not checking your posture for the exercises, lifting too much weight too fast, giving in to the adrenaline rush without logically thinking, etc can cause serious injuries and can keep you away from the gym for a long time.
Don’t go when not fully well
This one is a very common mistake in terms of defaulters. If you are consistently working out and following a routine in order to chase a goal, you try and push your limits. However, pushing limits by working out when you aren’t feeling well or haven’t fully recovered from an illness can be a very bad idea.
Right after getting a tattoo
Don’t hit the gym right after getting a permanent tattoo done. Usually, a person should wait for a considerable amount of time before rejoining gym after getting a tattoo done, depending on the size and placement of the tattoo. Take the advice of your tattoo artist on when you presume working out.

Thanks for reading 🙂

How I lost 8 kg and 1 myth in under 3 weeks.

KABADDI.
That started it all.
You see, when you are already 28 years old and haven’t stretched your physical limits ever, doubting your capabilities is very easy. Doubt is almost certain when you have a dream. The more you think about the dream, the more the doubt should grow. Doubt means there is a stretch! It means it’s not going to easy but it is going to be worth it if done right.

The ever prestigious sports meet. It was a do or die situation. 4 teams battling it out for the top spot. I started the game from where my team was. I gave birth to the idea of kabaddi there. It was my arrogance that somehow made it possible for my area to form a team and participate last year. But we lost miserably. We were placed fourth in the ranking. Last.

This year, the venue was my area. Home ground. People would look up to it. I had done my initial bit by forming a nice team and getting together people who were as passionate about the sport as was required. We had practiced for nearly 40 days and we had developed solid strengths. The coach and team were confident about the team’s improved game and even more on my performance in the practice sessions. I mean I was amazing! So amazing that I myself felt good! It’s that feeling you get when you accomplish from yourself something that you couldn’t really believe you could ever! I gave my blood, sweat, and soul to the practice and it had paid off. I was definitely one of the strongest bet of the entire team.
I do not wish to praise myself by explaining how good I got, but I do it because it is important to understand the next part. The rule of the game was no player should be over 85 kgs. This rule changed it all.

A little more background about me is required here. So please, bear with me. I will keep it short at the technical spots. I was an endomorph, meaning I had the body type that stores fat very easily. This body type is very prone to obesity as they put on weight very easily. Also, I don’t run. Ever. Unless I am running for life.

20 days before the competition, I was 92 kg. I had 20 days to get to 84 kg mark, keeping 1 kg as the safe margin. This meant dropping 8 kilograms. Now I will walk you through how I did it.

So the first basic steps were easy to strategize and implement. Diet modulation began. No fats, no sugars, no complex carbs. Workout every day. Drink lots of water. Improve the sleep cycle. All this was being done.

The first big revelation was the need to run. This is what I need you all to read and take information from. I understood that in order to lose that much fat that quickly, I needed to run.

To give you a little perspective, one kilogram of pure fat contains 7700 calories. Doing a 30-minute intense physical workout, where you lift crazy weights, can burn around 170 calories for a 185-pound man. Running, on the other hand, can make the same weight man burn around 410 calories in 30 minutes at 9-10 kilometer per hour. This means while physical workout would take 45 days to lose a kilogram of fat, running would do the same in 18 days.

Now that you have understood the theory, understand the process. I have never liked running and have always shied away from it. But when I had no other option, I did it right.

Step 1: Get your running shoes right.
Very critical, for we generally run on hard surfaces. These surfaces exert back pressure whenever our foot hits the ground. These continuous jerks of pressure are absorbed by all our joints and in the long run, the joints get damaged due to this. Hence, it is very important to use proper running shoes with correct cushion and shape.

Step 2: Get your running posture right.
You need to take care how your foot lands on the ground while you run. You should not stomp your feet while running. This means your foot should not land all at once on the ground. This flat-foot running is detrimental to your knee and ankle joints. The rolling motion needs to be kept in mind wherein your heel should hit the ground first and create a rolling motion towards touching the front of your foot. Hence when the toe and sole is in contact with the ground, the heel should be taken off by then. This circular rolling motion makes sure minimal pressure is exerted on the joints and enables you to run for longer time.

Step 3: Layers matter.
The dress code is crazy for running. We need to ensure we generate maximum heat and let minimum get off. I used to wear one thermal inner, one t-shirt, one sweatshirt zipped up with a cap on my head. All this would trap a lot of heat when you run and help keep body temperatures elevated for longer. This, in turn, would burn fat speedily.

Step 4: Be clear of the motive.
The motive is to keep my heart rate spiked and body warm. Simple. To keep heart rate spiked, I would have to stretch my limits as I run. This means if I am very comfortable running at 6, I would run at 7 for I need it to be a little difficult for me. Not too difficult because I need to do it for a long time, say 40-50 minutes.
So I get my heart rate up and this, in turn, signals my lungs to breathe faster as more oxygen is needed for the fast-flowing blood. Now when I breathe faster and deeper, I immediately start burning fatty tissues in my body. Simple.

Step 5: Do the time.
Running isn’t easy for those like me. But, you need to do it for a long time nevertheless. One simple trick is to break the time in fragments. I used to run for 40 minutes in the morning and 90 minutes in the evening. For the evening time, I used to break it even further. I used to start my evening workout with 45 minutes of running and conclude it with another 45 minutes of running. This way I never felt the mental heat.

This way, I got to 86 kilograms 3 days before the competition. This was time to go crazy. Now please note that till now whatever was written can be implemented by everyone to lose fat. But please understand what I write below about what I did in the remaining three days will make sense only if you have a stringent deadline to lose weight as I did.

Having come this far, I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t even leave any margin for error. My target weight wasn’t 85 kilograms but 84 kilograms, leaving a 1-kilogram margin for exogenous factors. Just in case what Murphy’s Law suggests comes to life.

The next three days were defining. I took guidance from a very renowned and experience powerlifting coach. I had to drop carbs to a bare minimum, switch to liquid diets and lessen my water intake.
I was eating one granola bar every day. I consumed pulses and curd only. I took 2-3 glasses of water in a day, not even a liter full. In short, I was killing myself with all that running and physical workout, and so less diet. But, as I said before, it was imperative as I was on a clock.

What you need to understand here about the lessening of water from the diet is the logic behind it, which is that our bodies store a large quantity of water. This reserve is utilized only when demands aren’t met externally, with us consuming lesser water than our body requires. It is similar to the calorie case, where we consume lesser calories than we use up and thus creates a calorie deficit to enable the body to burn stored fat and help us lose weight. Similarly, when we consume lesser water than what our body requires, it utilizes the stored water and thus our water weight drops, thereby dropping our overall body weight. While this is not a healthy and sustainable way to lose weight, I repeat, it was important to meet the deadline.

Finally, the day of the competition arrived. We had to give our weight measurement 10 minutes before the game began. In those 10 minutes, I had a plan to eat as many calories as possible to gain energy boost for the game. I had bananas, big chocolate bars, and energy drinks ready in my bag.

I gave my weight. It was 83.8 kilograms. The whole team started cheering. They knew that the final hurdle was crossed. I suddenly felt super confident about winning all games as I could play and contribute!

I hope this real-life story helps you understand things about fat loss and help you gain insights for your own struggle to get fitter.

Thanks for reading. 🙂

Little Imperfections

Nobody is born perfect. However, the little imperfections we have can haunt our psychic disturbing our mental peace. A point to note here is that the imperfection may not be causing us loss but the feelings associated with it may be damaging us gravely. Below I discuss three small real-life cases where I witnessed how slight imperfections can hamper a healthy mindset, and how one can fight through it.

Case 1: A friend of mine recently started witnessing receding hairline. Mind you, he is just 23 years old. “Genetic reasons”, he said. His father had a similar issue and so did his grandfather. He feared how he would lose confidence if he lost all hair. He saw his imperfection staring at him.

Case 2: He was born with the mind of a powerful man but with legs of polio. His right leg was half the size of the left one, baring acting as a stick. It resembled as if he was walking with a stick, just that stick had skin on it. He lived through bullying and being thrown around. He had no friends, no confidence, no real purpose. His imperfection was staring right at him.

Case 3: When I was 9 years old, I was diagnosed with Gynecomastia. I had swollen nipples, which at my age appeared breasts developing, which was odd because I was a male. It was caused due to hormonal imbalance. I have lived in shame and guilt of having swollen nipples for a long time. Hiding them behind clothes made my wardrobe options shrink as fast as my confidence. It was my imperfection staring right at me.

Think about it. Does one thing, one imperfection, need to define who you really are? Will one small genetic mistake decide the fate of your vanity? Will one disease alone be enough to poison your entire childhood and threaten all your future?

NO.

Not if you are willing to read on and follow what I am going to write next.

To all the people feeling they aren’t perfect physically, to all those who believe they look hideous, to all those who believe they don’t have confidence, I say this: WORKOUT.

Workout. Period.

You see, when you workout and start improving your fitness, you will initiate this transformation. Now this transformation, be very careful, is three-dimensional. Most people feel that it just works in one direction: make you gain muscle. This is wrong. Read on!

When you constantly workout, stretch the limits of your body, improve your core strength, your body changes. Your muscles grow to the size and shape they should be in, the way natures designed us to be. The fat goes away and your face becomes prominent. Your posture improves and so does the amount of face you choose to lift. Your body becomes better by each passing day. This is the first dimension.

Next is the changes you would feel at a mental level. You witness the physical transformation and you gain confidence. The perception you have for your own self-changes. Here the feeling of achieving something you thought was so difficult also comes into play. You see this as a stepping stone towards greater goals in life. This is the second dimension.

When you lift iron in the gym, you embrace pain. The way our muscles grow is very simple. The muscle does two motions: contraction and expansion. Now when you do any exercise, you engage a particular muscle in these two motions. When you work that muscle out, it tears off a bit. How much this muscle will tear depends on how hard your workout has been on that muscle. In other words, how much you have exhausted that muscle. Next, you fill your system with protein which helps bind that muscle together. Combined with proper rest, the muscle recovers and is bigger in size, stronger in strength. Now for this to happen, you constantly need to tear that muscle, workout after workout.
To explain it better, let’s look at it from another point of view. They say it doesn’t matter if you do 5 reps per set or 20 reps per set, it matters how many reps you do after the muscles start to pain. Muhammad Ali once said he didn’t count his reps before it started paining. Only the reps we do bearing that pain really count in making us stronger and bigger. So in order to grow, we must embrace pain in increasing quantities in every subsequent workout we do.
Now when you take on so much pain in the gym, something changes. It is a spiritual experience that you witness in which it becomes easier for you to push through the pain. It is this exercise of moving against the pain that we do in the gym that provides that spiritual bend in our life. We start seeing things differently.
We understand the pain of others better because we then recognize pain better.
We don’t feel pain in normal life so much because of what we feel inside the gym.
Everything becomes clearer under pain and the moment we start embracing it inside our gym workout, we also start embracing it in our life. This is the third dimension, where how we look at pain and growth changes.

This is the way workouts improve your life. It is hard to find people who undergo such physical transformations and still remain confused, directionless or sad in their lives. The reason is simple: you gain perspective over your limits, pain and get the confidence to start planning for other aspects of life too.

I believe everyone should thus stretch their limits and get to the best physical form they can be in before deciding to give up on their imperfections and before kneeling down in defeat.

Thanks for reading. 🙂

The Mathematics of fat loss.

This topic is based on incredible talk by Ruben Meerman.

Let me start by asking you all a question. When we loose weight, say go from 80 to 70 kg, where does the remaining lost weight, here 10 kg, go?

Sweat? Stool? Energy?

The chemical formula of human fat is C55 H104 O6. There are a few variations between number of carbon and hydrogen atoms but oxygen remains same at 6 per atom.

So the reaction at weight loss goes like this:

C55 H104 O6 + 78 O2 —————————→ 55 CO2 + 52 H2O + Kj

Fat + oxygen gives carbon dioxide, water and energy.

How much each?

84% carbon dioxide and 16% water.

So if you were to loose 10 kg fat, you would be needing to loose 8.4 kg CO2 and 1.6 kg water.

NO SPECIAL DIET, NO SPECIAL ROUTINE, NO GREEN TEA

You just need to eat less and move more.

Let me elaborate them both. Eat less would mean you are consuming less calories than what you are needing to function in the day.

The second and more important one is move more which basically decides the pace of your weight loss. Now as we know for loosing 10 kg, we need to loose 8.4 kg carbon dioxide. But how do we do it? The only way you can do it is through your lungs pumping it out. Which would mean breathe more.

So does that mean if we sit and breathe more, we will be loosing weight?

No, but you will enter a medical state called hyperventilation wherein your body is getting more oxygen than is needs. You might need medical attention then.

So how do we do it? How do we make our own body require more breaths?

Simple: by creating a need for it.

When you do any physical activity, involving your muscles, your heart starts pumping more blood to those areas. Hence, to pump more blood, it starts beating faster and harder. Working in accordance with the heart are your lungs, which immediately sense need of oxygen inside and thus starts giving signals to increase breathing. Your breathes increase, resulting in giving off maximum carbon dioxide, thus reducing your weight. Bonus is the sweat which you release, containing the water molecules and also toxins from your body.

Hence, the ONLY way to decrease your weight is to exhale more carbon dioxide.

How being regular at workouts changes your life.

Well, if you talk about physical transformation, you search for two extreme images to be on display. The better the physical contrast between them, the bigger the transformation. Most people display huge arms, skinny waists and six pack abs, but is that the only benefit workout has to offer to you?

I am going to talk about how the time I spend in the gym affects the rest of my day.

First things first, the sleep. I am a firm believer of the quote ‘Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.’ Hence, I try to hit the bed before 11 PM everyday. However, I may hit the bed at right time, but how do I make the sleep take over? Do you ever experience days when you wish to sleep off but are unable to? No mater how much you try, you cannot sleep. You keep tossing and turning in bed, realizing how time was getting wasted.

Well, I had such nights too. However, things are different for each day I hit the gym. The days I don’t workout, I am susceptible. However the days I hit the gym, my body tires up nicely and is ready for a deep sleep. All I need to do is feed it well and put it in bed ASAP.

One other thing to notice here is the quality of sleep. Post workout sleep is a deep one, the one unaffected by most nearby disturbances. It is at length sleep, doesn’t break in between. Hence, fulfills the sleep needs of the body nicely.

Secondly, my diet and weight regulations. Most people are fighting with weight and fat related issues. They either are too slim or too obese and fight to get in proper shape. Now the approach matters a lot, as we see how people despite getting in proper shape for once, loose it again in some time because of the wrong approach inherited to begin with.

I have an endomorph body type, meaning my body would put on and maintain fat tissues easily. I had major issues with my body fat content, which was more than 40%. I was over 110 kg at 6 feet, a bad sight.

However, workout helped me in this arena. The way workout worked was in two stages:

Put my body in a position where my body fat was reasonable and I has measurable muscle strength and stamina.
From there on, help me understand how to modulate weight according to my own requirements and routines.

Now both the aspects had study of diets included, as what I eat when I workout forms the basis of my development. Let me explain how each of these steps work.

In the first one, you embark on the journey of reducing the fat content of your body. For me, it began with me understanding the anatomy of human body and how it works. Then there were dietary plans, workout regimes and a lot of dedicated effort over a long period of time. There were no shortcuts and after a couple of years, the fat percentage was close to 15 while the weight was 80 kg. Overcoming the obesity was fruit numero uno of working out.

The second phase is more important one and stays active for a longer time. Now when I was in the shape I wanted to be in, I had two questions:

How to I retain this physical state forever? How do I make sure I don’t become fat again?
What else can I do with this body now, to further enhance it?

Actually, the answers to both question were inter-linked. I needed to stay physically active to stay in shape. I also wanted to develop a good strong heavy built for which I required a special workout and diet plan altogether. Now since my body was, due to years of hard work put in loosing fat the right way, in good form stamina and strength wise, I could take it anywhere from here. I could go for power-lifting, gymnastics, swimming, etc.

I worked on gaining some muscle first, went on to 200 pounds with 15% body fat. Workout gave me knowledge and base line to develop future fitness targets.

The other important aspect was diet. Now different fitness programs require different dietary patterns, but let’s leave that on the side for now. In our regular days as well, we see issues with diet plan disturbances. We skip meals, feel less hungry at times due to numerous things going around in our mind. What goes in the mind directly affects our appetite.

Let me give a small example here. Let’s say I had an issue with my boss and returned home in a very foul mood. This would definitely affect my appetite, I may not wish to eat then. Even if I try, the food will do more harm then good if eaten with such improper mental thoughts.
What I can do instead is hit the gym, get on with my workout. This will channel my heightened emotional state’s energy into body building. This will also create post-workout hunger which will compel me to crave food from within, no matter how the day was.

Thirdly, the oozing confidence and never-ending energy. I lift heavy weight in gym, workout to great extents, I run long miles…. I put my body through hell. However, I live through that pain and it prepares me. It prepares me for the rest of the day. A flat tire then, raised petrol prices or angry boss cannot bring me pain now, I have seen much worse in the gym!

No physical distance is too much, I feel energetic to have conquered the weights in the morning itself. I am feeling good too, my muscles are toned and tight. My grip is good, head in it’s right place. I feel like I can take on anything!

Fourth, the amazing sex. For enjoying sex to it’s optimum level, one needs to be in a certain physical state. This state would require flexibility, stamina, strength, endurance as some of the physical attributes. A good workout provides all this. Hence, the act becomes more enjoyable, the person involved can last longer, have strength to try various positions.

Fifth, looking good without clothes. There are people who require make up and clothes to look desirable. However, a good worked out body requires nothing else. People put on sparkly clothes to hide the deformities underneath those layers. However, when you workout and remove them from within, you don’t need to cover anything up!

When I was fat, I used to avoid light colored t-shirts for obvious reasons. There’s a reason why black is every fat person’s favorite color. I used to inhale deeply while roaming around, to hide my belly fat. I also used to make it a point not to enter pool area in parties for water reveals truth from behind the clothes.
But after loosing fat and getting good physique, I was free to have choice of colors, I could take off my shirt anywhere and would gain appreciation for what would reveal.

All theses benefits, and numerous more which I can maintain a diary for, I appeal you all to get up and work out.

Cheers.

NO-TIME WORKOUT

So there has been a big transition in my life: I am back in school! From office life to b-school. The life here in my b-school is very rigorous and demanding. From classes to projects, from teams to simulations, from CV preparations to clubs & committees, from events planning to all the parties! To say the least, we got no time to sleep.

With no time to sleep, it’s evident I have no time to workout too! But what will happen if I don’t workout? I rot and die in vain.

I sat down with a pen and paper. Set my next fitness goal, broke down exercises for it and diet required. Diet was tricky, as I had limitations of sticking to inside-school resources. Next, I worked on time, which was the bottle neck here. I figured out I could squeeze my workout till the extent of it going from 2 hours everyday to 1 hour every second day. I, thus, had a plan.

My plan was to gain muscle. I was at 84 kg, needed to be at around 92 kg. 8 kg to go. I was to follow power-lifting program. For each day, I decided to dedicate half hour solely to single power-lifting exercise. It was a cycle between bench-press, squat and dead-lifts. Although I must admit, I did skip a few sessions of squats and bench-press just to dead-lift. I am inclined towards that exercise, as it works out entire body and also gives immense burn.

For remaining 30 min, I was to workout on other prominent muscle groups. Like day 1 could see a good amount of bicep-curls being thrown around for biceps and some pressing for shoulders while day 3 could see a few rows for that taper back with some extensions for tricep heads. This way, I was shaping my muscles while packing real strength.

For the diet part, I stuck to what I knew best: carbs. I had 10 boiled eggs for breakfast, with a litre milk, some breads. Lunch would see 3–4 chapatis with loads of pulses and veggies. A good burger in the evening snack for extra calorie boost, followed by skipping dinner for meeting deadlines.

I am at 90 kg now, on day 33. I have gained a few extra inches of fat which would require some running on my part.

The point here is that I could do things with my physique in good time even with short amount of time being devoted. The key aspect was planning. We may go inside our new routine hoping to be able to shape workout routine with new routine, but without proper planning, we see us neglecting fitness for meeting deadlines. It is important we realise this trap and work on it.

So what should be done?

Write down your fitness goal. It could be a number you wish to see on your weighing scale, it could be number of inches you want your biceps to be of, or number of abs. Write it down.
Break the goal into body parts. For example, if my agenda is to go from 110 kg to 80 kg, my target areas would be fat, lack of muscle. I would work on these two.
For each part, identify the exercises required. So for the hypothetical me, the fat burning would require me to engage in intense cardio movements.
Next, map exercises to time required and squeeze that. So if I require 30 min running for 5 days a week, I would break it down to a 15-min H.I.I.T (High Intensity Interval Training) session for 3 days in a week. With this, I have reduced time requirements without compromising on the promising output.

And that’s it, you have your new work out plan! The only thing needed now is for you to stick to it!

Guys, we make plans for everything. Routines for every activity. It is important we sit down and plan our workout, creating some space for fitness in our busy schedules. It’s am investment that won’t ever ditch you!