How leading a fit lifestyle changed my life

 ‘The clock is ticking. Are you becoming the person you want to be?’

– Greg Plitt

Day 16/30

Like every other person in their 20s, I was oblivious about fitness and it’s immense benefits. I used to think being fit is for celebrities and models. I genuinely believed that I would NEVER be able to achieve the level of fitness demonstrated by them. By the age of 28, I had tried and failed at all attempts made to lose weight. I obviously didn’t start with workouts first as that seemed like the difficult option. I started with skipping meals, eating lesser portions, trying healthier options, dieting etc. Nothing worked as I wasn’t consistent.

In the year 2017, I was fed up of not being able to plan a trip to South Korea even after trying multiple times. I wanted to visit South Korea (I still do) since 2012 ever since I was introduced to K-Pop and K-Drama. I didn’t have the finances back in 2012 and tried to save small amounts every year to fulfil this wish. But it wasn’t just me, my sister was in college back then and it was practically impossible to save the travel cost for 2 people with all the other responsibilities I had. I gave up and left it to the Universe to decide. As childish as it may sound, I decided to quit the thing I loved the most in life, SUGAR, till I visited South Korea. While it seemed like an absolutely impossible task back then, I did not touch sugar for 1.5 years and finally quit it in the mid of 2018 when I found a new job. Though I couldn’t manage to travel to Korea yet, I realized that my mind was stronger than I thought as I was able to keep my promise of not eating sugar for 1.5 years!

In the year 2018 itself, I was fed up of being overweight and unfit and decided to embark on my fitness journey. I started by eating healthier (quit sugar, junk and processed food) and added running during the weekends to my routine a week later. The week that followed this weekend, I added HIIT workouts too. And I can safely say that this has been the BEST DECISION of my life. I’ve listed down few changes in me ever since I chose this fit lifestyle.

• I feel mentally stronger : The last rep of any workout or the last km in a run always seemed the hardest to me. Day after day, rep after rep, km after km, as I pushed through it, I trained my mind to let go of the resistance and learned that I was stronger than I thought.
• I’m open to new challenges : My run training has helped me develop a positive attitude towards life. When I run and almost feel like giving up before completing my target, I trick my mind diving right into the last run and not letting my feet stop. Our body is always stronger than we think. In a similar manner, we are always stronger than the challenges we face in life. Just dive right into it and face it.
• I feel focused : During the first three months of my fitness journey, I was the most productive I’ve been in my entire life. I managed to read over 20 books and watch countless movies/web series during those 3 months. That has been the most effective utilization of my time ever. I know I could have done better than watching movies but I’ve always had problems with being attentive while performing a single task. My mind tends to wander in 100 different directions when I’m doing any task. Being able to focus my attention on completing my to-do list for each day felt like a big achievement.
• I felt confident : I have always been insecure, had low self esteem and low confidence all my life due to my weight. Once I started shedding of my excess weight, the excess baggage of negative thoughts also disappeared along with it. I felt productive every single day as I started my day with my workouts. I felt accomplished and positive. My life changed for the better.

If you still need a reason to start working out, you can check out the transformation stories of countless people on the internet who have completely changed their lives. Fitness is forever. Let’s strive to lead a healthy lifestyle and become the best version of ourselves.

Consistency > Motivation

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.”

-Dwayne Johnson

Day 7/30

As I was binge eating chocolate today, watching videos of amazing fitness influencers smashing their workouts, I thought to myself begrudgingly, “It’ll take me years to reach their level!”. It’s funny how I decided that I might be able to do it, without trying my hand at it. I have been working out for close to 2.5 years now, the intensity and passion in my effort has worn off sharply since the first 3 months of my fitness journey. The first 3 months were intense and I was extremely motivated to lose weight. That was my sole purpose in life during those 3 months. Ever since I lost weight, I have given myself the leeway to give up fairly easily, have no restrictions in my diet, skip my workouts, be indisciplined at times with the only excuse of, “I deserve it this time, I’ll get back on track tomorrow.” And that tomorrow never comes.

It’s easier to be consistent than wait for our motivation to support us in our goals. The journey towards achieving our goals is set on a long, winding and difficult path. If we wait for our motivation to help us scale this journey, we might have to take frequent breaks and delay the journey by a couple of years. However, being consistent and working on our goals everyday, in the best way possible, shows definite results over time. The wait is excruciatingly painful but can be borne by frequently rewarding ourselves on achieving our daily tasks.

Also the best way to be consistent is to make a habit out of it. Force yourself to stick to a schedule for at least a month or till the time it feels weird when you skip it. Once this is achieved, being consistent is comparatively easy. There are many ups and downs in every human’s life. As I was talking to someone close to me today (the most talented person I know), I understood how negative thoughts can absolutely DESTROY a human being. I know she is capable of GREAT things in life however her mind has total control over her actions. Her negative self talk flares up, especially during important events in her life and clouds her judgement. She ends up losing a lot of great opportunities to take her life to the next level and witnessing this physically hurts me. I realized from her experience that I do not wish to give the negative thought process in my mind any attention and DO WHAT’S BEST TO TAKE MY LIFE TO THE NEXT LEVEL, always! I want to be clear on what I want to do and be in life. Right now, I’m on the brink of losing everything to negativity. I wish to change it, FOREVER.

Is it possible,

• to never succumb to negativity?
• to have total control of our mind?
• to use our mind to our advantage, always?
• to make the best choices for success in life?
• to be in sync with the Universe?
• to ignite our motivation when we need it?

I don’t know the answers to these questions yet but I wish to learn them soon. I’ll start with self introspection and understanding my short and long term goals in life. Once I have these written down, I’ll devise a daily routine that helps me work on all of my goals, brick by brick, each day. The most important aspect is to be CONSISTENT at it, by hook or by crook.

Let’s do this!

When things seem uncertain

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity. ” 

-Gilda Radner

Everything in my life seems uncertain at the moment. Ever since I turned 30, I feel the presence of a ticking time bomb right above my head. I don’t know how much time is left for it to blast but not knowing it makes me want to quit everything and move to a place far away. My mind keeps making desperate plea for clarity and peace.

The past week has been emotionally taxing. I never used to experience any mood swings or emotional upheavals as part of PMS before. However, anxiety has somehow befriended my hormones to give me the choicest of fears to deal with right before Aunt Flo decides to strike with cramps.

In the middle of this mental turbulence, I gave a job interview through the reference of one my closest friends. On the outcast, the job seemed perfect but I just couldn’t convince my mind to take it up. The job timings were odd (from 12.30 pm to 9.30 pm) and I’ve felt mentally harassed and tortured while working in these timings before. It would have been a different case had I enjoyed working in a corporate set up or I was passionate about my career choice. The primary reason I work in a corporate is to make myself and my family financially independent. My “job” and career as an accountant always feels like a routine, is burdensome, stressful and drains me of my energy as it’s far from my personality and purpose in life. Don’t take me wrong, I am grateful for my current life and all the opportunities I have been blessed with. It kills me to feel constantly “unfulfilled” and “unhappy” in life.

Even the thought of working at this new organisation made me feel extremely stressed and unhappy. I knew that I couldn’t put myself through any more mental pressure for the sake of increasing my pay scale. I finally told my friend yesterday that I couldn’t go ahead with the job process. I might have lost out on a great job opportunity that could have made a huge upswing in my earning capacity. However, I couldn’t bring myself to say “yes” to it, believe me I thought about it, A LOT. Surprisingly I don’t feel dejected by it at all. All I feel is extreme “uncertainty” and “anxiety” about my future.

As kids, we never looked for reasons to be happy. Now, happiness feels like the most expensive commodity in my life. I constantly feel the need to prove myself, work hard, go through pain and turbulence to “earn my happiness“. It feels like I’m on a constant wait for something, someone, to change the course of my life and make it better. Is there an end to this phase of my life? I hope there is because I’m EXHAUSTED of waiting.

I have decided to make 2021, MY GLOW UP year! Even if I start the year on a great note, I know for a fact that I WILL relapse back to my depressed self soon enough. It’s not because of the occurrence of a setback or failure, my positivity usually wears off when I realize that I’ve lost control of my life.

For 2021, I’ve decided to take cue from my “weight loss experience” and be “consistent” with my goals, by hook or by crook.

My mantras for 2021 :-

• What this means is that, my focus would be on my efforts in present moment rather than expected results in the future
• I’ve decided to give my best in the present moment, work hard to become the best version of myself and have faith in the UNIVERSE to unfold things in my life, what it considers BEST for me
• Stop fighting against all situations in life and fear that the Universe has turned it’s back on you
• Document everyday, each day is special
• Trust the process, go with the flow.

I guess I’m all set for the new year, are you?

A touchy subject

“SHE WAS BRAVE AND STRONG AND BROKEN ALL AT ONCE.” 

-ANNA FUNDER

I’m a patient person by nature. Meditation has really helped calm me down when life gets stressful. I also am aware of certain things or actions that instantly uplift my mood. Of late I have realized that a particular topic keeps disturbing my mental peace. I try to deal with this topic in the best possible manner however it keeps lingering on my mind for a long time. The topic in question is “marriage”.

I haven’t grown up in a loving environment as far as my parent’s marriage is concerned. My childhood traumas affected me throughout my teenage life and still come to bite me in my adulthood. My subconscious mind houses a lot of fears and negativity about marriage and it haunts me whenever someone brings up the topic in front of me.

I do want to get married but I am yet to find a compatible partner to share my life with. When milestones like this are age bound, the resultant decisions become extremely haphazard and are done only to make the society happy. I hope the Universe has got me covered in this matter as I really need all it’s blessings to make the right decision. I REALLY hope 2021 makes my life easier as far as “marriage” is concerned and I get to choose this phase of my life as per my wishes. I am hopeful and positive about the future as always. To end this post, I would like to share one of my favorite quotes which instantly brings peace and calm to my unsettled mind whenever I read it,

Gratitude for “Abundance”

“Gratitude is one of the strongest and most transformative states of being. It shifts your perspective from lack to abundance and allows you to focus on the good in your life, which in turn pulls more goodness into your reality.”

-Jen Sincero

If someone would have told me to count my blessings and be happy in the present 2 years back, I would have fumed at that person. Here I am in the middle of discussing my life’s problems, every single one of them felt life threatening back then and the reply I get is to “be grateful for what you have!”. This advice sounded simple and extremely useless to me.

Fast forward to the present moment, I am the one preaching the importance of having a deep sense of gratitude in our lives. How does being grateful help in transforming our life? When we shift the focus from our problems (lack) to our blessings (abundance), there is an instant change in our mindset to look at the brighter aspect of every situation. I agree, technically this doesn’t help us solve our problems, but does being anxious about it serve the purpose? It doesn’t, it aggravates the core issue and multiplies the severity by 100 or even more. Technically being scared, fearful, anxious, stressed also isn’t a big help. On the other hand, it makes the situation look much more dangerous than it already is.

Our mind is a powerful tool, maybe the most powerful element of human existence. The biggest battles in our life are fought in our mind in a much more grandiose manner than in the reality. It is extremely beneficial and useful to keep the mind in our favor so that it helps us when we need it the most. Dwelling on negativity hampers our growth and forces us to lead a life of mediocrity when we are capable of doing much more than we can ever imagine. Developing a grateful mindset requires consistent practice and constant effort. Once we develop a habit of practicing gratitude daily, our mind slowly learns to focus on the positive aspects of our life and every situation that we go through on a daily basis. Doing this consistently converts our mind into a magnet to attract abundance in our life. We are truly gifted with a lot of blessings in our life, being aware of them opens the doors to abundance and happiness.

Simple ways in which we can develop a gratitude practice

• Morning routine : Write down 3 things that you are grateful for each day. This could be anything from the food you really enjoyed last night to the presence of your friends and family in your life. This would hardly take 5 minutes but is the best way to set the tone for each new day.
• Night routine : Before the end of each day, write down 3 biggest highlights of the day, something that really made you happy, excited or simply made you feel better. This is an incredible way to focus on the present and live each day mindfully than just pass it by.

That’s it. It’s this simple. Since we have reached the last month of this extraordinary year, I’ve made a pledge to follow this routine daily to welcome the new year with an “abundance mindset“. I would love for you guys to also develop this practice and let me know if it helped make your life a little better, each day!

Life goes on

“Life goes on, let’s live on”

-BTS

My mental health was in shambles right before BTS’s last release “Dynamite” on August 21st this year. I remember having listened to the song on loop for hours on end during my bus travel to and fro from office as it was one of the very few things that gave me comfort during that time. The song felt like a tight hug and helped pick the broken pieces of my soul together to heal it. Exactly 3 months later, I’m not feeling my best self again. I had vowed last time when I felt disoriented to keep finding happiness in the small things that make up life and focus on keeping myself sane. Currently, I’m struggling to consistently do it yet fighting hard against the demons of my mind to not give up.

Right when I need it, BTS have dropped their new album “BE” today. I’m in office again, away from social media as I wait to get back home and watch the music video with my sister. I don’t have to go through an excruciatingly long bus ride this time, my travel time has eased up. I’m extremely excited to listen to the song, I’m sure it’s exactly what I need at the moment to get back on track. BTS’s existence in my life and listening to their songs have unfailingly been a rock solid source of my happiness. You can imagine from this description how special each one of their album comebacks is. I’m glad BTS have come at the right time as my knights in shining armour to save me from falling into the dark hole of negativity.

Less than 3 hrs to go for me to reach home and I can’t contain my excitement. I’m sure all of us must have that one thing that acts as their constant source of happiness. Hold it tight and keep coming back to it to keep the negative emotions at bay. For all the BTS armies out there, a new era has begun!

Keeping up with your word

#82/100

Image credit : Vectortoons (Source : https://vectortoons.com/products/a-very-afraid-girl-trying-to-hide-herself-from-danger)

I wasn’t going to write about this today but I’m unable to bring my mind to think about anything else right now. I really hope writing this post will help calm me down a bit. Last month, I had committed to my running group to attend a team relay run scheduled to take place next month. Last week, my running group mentor formed the teams and asked us to register for the event. After giving my name for the event, I also committed to attend a trip planned by my girl gang and it happens to fall on the same day as the run. This trip is my priority and I have to withdraw my name from the event. This was pure carelessness on my part. I should have informed my running group in advance before the team formation was done. Now I am in a soup and I’m freaking out!

I’m really scared. I don’t know how to get out of this situation. My running group members are few of the most inspiring people I know. The group mentor just removed a member from the group for irresponsible behavior. Going by her messages, it seems like this member informed last minute about his inability to attend the relay event. I’m going to have to do the exact same thing soon. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. I really don’t know why I’m freaking out. I really look up to my running mentor and don’t wish to let her down.

This doesn’t really sound like a big dilemma but has somehow made me very stressed. I have to pull myself together and inform my running mentor about my withdrawal from the event. I really hope she doesn’t take it the wrong way. Gosh, this is hard! Probably the hardest thing I’ve had to do in a long time.

I’ll have to do this tomorrow. I really hope this situation magically sorts out in a manner favorable to all. Till then, I’ll try not to overthink and hope for the best!

My fickle mind

#79/100

“The most powerful control we can ever attain, is to be in control of ourselves.” 

–Chris Page

My weekends are turning out to be the most unproductive days of my life at the moment. There are a 100 things I wish do during the weekend and I wish to do all those things at the same time. Yesterday I sat down to watch a YouTube video, it was a really engrossing video about the “neuroscience of love”. The video had a neurologist explaining what happens in the brain when a person is in love. 5 minutes into the video, my eyes fell on an unread book besides me and I somehow desperately wanted to start reading the book. I picked up the book, went through a page when my phone beeped, it was a comment on my instagram post. I ended up spending almost 30 minutes scrolling through random feeds on instagram right after that. I hope you get the idea by now, my mind is a like a kid in a candy store during the weekends. It wants to do everything at once.

This reminds me of my childhood. I’ve always been a day dreamer. My primary school teacher had the same complaint about me during the parent teacher’s meet, she mostly found me gazing at the sky outside the window in the middle of a lecture. I’ve consistently found it difficult to concentrate on one thing for a long time.

I still haven’t found a way out to deal with my hyperactive mind. It might be because I’m yet to work on myself to get past this limitation thrown by my mind. I guess it’s high time I take up the challenge to control my attention deficiency and use it fruitfully to get my work done!

I tried researching on the best ways to counteract lack of focus (I am not calling it Attention Deficit Disorder/ Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder yet because I haven’t been diagnosed by a certified psychologist but most of my symptoms point right at it). I’m planning to consistently try out these techniques for 90 days starting tomorrow (I’ve never been able to form a habit in 21 days) and post my experience about it after the end of this experiment (January 9th, 2021).

As per the internet, YouTube videos and TedX speeches by people diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, below listed techniques have helped them immensely to make ADD/ADHD their superpower :-

• Nutrition : Eat wholesome organic food and drink more water. Quitting food that drains our energy and makes us feel hazy. (Sugar, processed food, junk etc)
• Sweat everyday : Workout everyday, even if it’s just for 10 mins.
• 8 hrs of sleep everyday
• Morning routine : Meditation + Gratitude journaling + Workout
• 30 mins POMODORO : Break your to-do list into smaller tasks, set up a timer for 25 mins, work non-stop for 25 mins against the timer, take a 5 min break
• Music : Use music as a backdrop to avoid any background distraction while you work
• Block Time : Schedule time for each activity during the day. Set up a to-do list for the next day and review it by the end of the day.

Hope to see a positive change in my life (possibly a transformation) by the end of my experiment.

An achiever

#73/100

“Success in life is not for those who run fast, but for those who keep running and always on the move.”

–Bangambiki Habyarimana

I was watching a clip of Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s new book launch promo today and she said something that instantly struck a chord with me. She wants to be a person who sets goals and achieves them. The second part of this sentence is what differentiates it from any other motivational pep talk. We are always taught to chase dreams, our goals and made to feel bad if we don’t achieve them. But we are never pushed to finish what we start. Having goals is great, but it makes no difference to your life if you don’t put consistent efforts on it. Like anything in life, there will be failures and setbacks. That’s when 99% of the crowd backs out. The 1% who continue, end up realizing their goals or learn enough skills to chase a different one.

Instead of being a person who sets big goals, I want to be a person who lives up to my word, no matter what. I have envisioned a dream life for myself, yet I delay working on it every single day. Rest is great, watching movies and shows are blissful, but they’ll seem much more sweeter and victorious if earned as a reward on achieving your goals.

Instead of a ‘doer’ mindset, I have adopted an ‘achiever’ mindset in life now. The difference between the two is the consistency of efforts for any task or goal in life. A doer always has ample time to complete their work, probably till the end of their life. An achiever, well, they are focused on achieving their targets in minimal time. After all, their main goal is to complete what’s started.

Let’s push ourselves harder and break the self imposed restrictions set by our mind. As we all know, we are much stronger than we think!

My relationship with food

#63/100

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

― Hippocrates

Food is an essential part of our survival, perhaps the sole reason behind it. Food can instantly change my mood, make me happy, energized, motivated and exhilarated. I’ve experienced severe bouts of anger, irritation to the point of absolute frustration when I’m hungry. I’m extremely blessed to have a belly full of food whenever I desire it. My mother has always been an amazing cook and have prepared scrumptious dishes for our family all my life. At the end of a tiring day, having good food prepared by my mother has the power to reverse back all the stress built up during the day.

But I’ve never had a cordial relationship with food. While growing up I was overweight. I never thought that I ate too much to gain that weight. It was much later in life that I was introduced to the terms “binge eating” and “stress eating” to deal with it during my childhood. I was oblivious to the amount of food I had during the day as a child.

I always tend to eat too fast and too much. I somehow feel the need to have more than necessary portions of food to feel satiated. I tend to eat an indescribable amount of sugary treats when I’m sad or depressed. The dopamine rush that I get when I eat sugary food used to be my way to deal with stressful situations in life. I absolutely couldn’t live without sugar or sweet food. I swore of sugary food for a year and a half about 3 years back as a sacrifice to achieve one of my goals at that time. As silly as it may sound, it was my way of pleasing the universe to manifest my dream in exchange of something that I absolutely couldn’t give up. I never ended up fulfilling my dream but my abstinence from sugar made me mentally strong to deal with the frustrating situations in life.

The second breakthrough with my food habits came during my weight loss journey. I gave up eating all of my favorite food (junk, processed, with refined sugar etc) and resorted to healthy eating only. My portion sizes were also limited. I forced myself to eat slow and chew more, giving ample time for my brain to realize that it’s full. I drank water first whenever I felt hunger pangs to avoid eating because of boredom. I slowly acquired a taste for all the healthy food that I absolutely detested before. The effects of healthy eating showed up on my mind, body and overall health within a span of 3 months. I couldn’t have been happier.

My relationship with food still isn’t the best but I’m learning everyday. I feel extremely guilty when I have junk food or excess food. I feel the need to workout more than usual just to burn off the extra calories consumed from having “unhealthy food”. Up until few months back, I could eat multiple bars of chocolates in one sitting to cope with my anxiety issues. I don’t know how I got over it but I don’t crave sugary food anymore. I still tend to gulp down my food without realizing it. I order large portion sizes of food just for the sake of it and find it difficult to eat everything leading to overeating. There are many instances where I tend to allow food to control me rather than it being the other way around.

I’m learning each day and trying to heal my relationship with food. My mind has a lot to do with my food choices as I tend to use food as a punishment when I feel guilty of eating unhealthy food. I’m working very hard on my mental health and the desire to be happy despite any adverse circumstances. If we can get our mind to calm down and be patient, each and every aspect of our life would flourish, especially our food choices. So let’s try to understand our mind better and be patient enough to love every aspect of our life. Let’s be stronger, little by little, ever day!