My Fitness Journey "Changing adversity to opportunity"

The COVID 19 pandemic has changed the world. It has become a reason for many people’s desire to erase the year 2020 from their calendars. However, if we think on the positive side of this adversity, it gave us a chance to slow down and take a moment to analyze our lives. I am glad that I could work on myself and get on to some of the things which were on my wish list for many years.

In this article today, I wanted to talk about my achievement in making myself fit. I was overweight since 2008. Over these last few years, I made several attempts to work on my fitness. But I could not win the battle against my mind. Yes, with my mind because I think you cannot win the war against the world if you cannot win it against your mind.

 Let me take you through to my 2020 Journey:

The year started with the fear of COVID-19 pandemic and the whole lot of negativity that came along with it. In the initial part of this year during the early days of the lockdown, I gained few more kilos. I could feel the increase in myself. I think it was sometime during Unlock 2.0, when I checked my weight in a doctor’s clinic and the scale showed up 102 Kgs. People who have seen me know that because I’m tall I mostly don’t look fat. I used to look overweight for sure, but not obese.  but in lockdown I had gained so much that I could feel it while watching myself in the mirror.

The 100+ mark on the weighing machine had become a bone of contention for me. I couldn’t sleep for days; I was unable to motivate myself and kept trying to convince myself with excuses such as being busy with work, family responsibility blah blah. But after few weeks, I thought I must do something otherwise this obesity was going to impact my health adversely. I then promised myself to get fit by end of 2020. I thought there is lot of negativity spreading in 2020, and few years later when people talk about 2020 pandemic, I should be able to talk about something positive that motivates people, inspires them to achieve their goals even in times of adversity. With this motivation, I started my fitness journey in July 2020.

"My Transformation Picture "

I started with morning walks and small runs in between. This was my routine until almost the end of August. Following that, we decided to go to our hometown for a few months as we were working from home. There, I had a long discussion with my nephew Sagar Bhasin who is a fitness enthusiast and a senior trainer in a reputed gym in Jammu. He promised to help me with whatever knowledge he had on fitness. Since health clubs were not open yet due to the pandemic, he started training me for an hour every day on our terrace in cardio exercises. Following that, we used to go for a brisk walk and running.

Once the gyms opened, he had to resume his duty, but I did not want to join a gym due to the fear of contracting Covid. By then, however, I could feel a remarkable difference in my physique. I had lost more than six kilos, but I wanted to achieve more. So finally, in October, I decided to join a gym taking all necessary precautions like gloves, masks, etc. to see if it helped further my goal.

I joined a small gym close to my home where only few people frequented. I was joined by my two nieces too. Honestly, I never liked gyms and had taken membership multiple times in past but never continued for more than 10 days. Hence, I was hoping that I could stick on at least this time as the cardio and running exercises were indeed helping me improve my fitness.

One week into my gym training and I knew this was a place I was going to stick on for a while now, thanks to our trainer Lakshya Khajuria. He is by far the best fitness trainer I have ever met.  If you follow his training schedule, he can help you lose over 4 kgs in a month. I was 102 kgs in July, and I am 82 kgs. as on 25th Dec. I feel fitter, leaner and much more confident.

Does it seem easy? No, it isn’t like that. I know you will read this and feel that he got good trainer and has time, etc. and that is why he could achieve this. However, it wasn’t easy at all. My colleagues know my workload and my friends know that being a single parent, how I manage my family. So, things were not as easy as it looks from the outside. However, I followed some of the practices that helped me to achieve results faster, and I want to share those with you, because if this can inspire even a single individual, I will feel honoured and privileged.

Here are some of my recommendations that can help you to achieve similar fitness goals:

Clear thought process: Having a clear thought process helps. You must be clear in your mind on what you want to achieve out of all this fitness regime. You would need to invest time on yourself or you won’t be able to fulfil your need. Once you decide on entering a fitness regime, you will need to invest couple of hours of your day to yourself and unless your thought process is clear you won’t be able to invest so much of your time on it.

Setting realistic goals: Just like how we set goals for ourselves to achieve career heights, it’s similar in fitness as well. We should set our fitness goals and make them as short-term goals, like losing 1 kg in 2 weeks, 0.5 inches in a month, etc. We should not go hard on our body. Once you start your fitness journey, you will be able to understand your body better and then you can reset your goals based on your understanding of your body and fitness regime.

Waking up early helps:  As most successful people say, getting up early gives you an edge over others and now I completely agree to this. If you wake up early and invest couple of hours on yourself in the morning, believe me, you will feel more energetic throughout the day. Working out early morning also gives you extra benefits, especially if you want to burn those extra calories. Mostly, you don’t have food in the morning and during workout your accumulated fats are used as energy and you burn more calories compared to when working out in the evening.                     

Choose the right company: Having the right set of people with a similar mindset to yours is very important. It’s not easy to achieve fitness goals alone. I am not saying it’s not possible to do it alone. However, if you have good company, the right set of people who are also motivated enough to work hard to achieve their goals, your chances of success increase dramatically. Your mates who can challenge you at each step will give that extra bit of motivation to work harder. I had the company of two most beautiful girls, my nieces Simran and Sonali, who also lost weight and inches along with me and together we enjoyed our workout to a greater extent. It was fun where we enjoyed the workout sessions everyday by pushing each other to do better.

Family Support: Family support is equally important even in achieving fitness goals. Exercise is fine, but it’s difficult for Indian parents to understand the benefits of dieting. I think you need to sit with them and make them understand what you want to achieve from the process. What is good for your health and what is not. Bring in the health factor in your talk as much as you can because they will support you only if they understand that it is important for your health to have a proper balance of your weight. You can also choose to ignore them, but if you want a happy environment around it is better to talk and make them understand what and why you are doing this.

Choose right Coach: Having the right coach is again a huge factor. I was lucky to find two, one Sagar Bhasin, who as I mentioned above is a nephew and a fitness trainer. He helped me initially for a month and got me into a fitness routine. Then I met with one of the most talented fitness coaches in my hometown, Mr. Lakshya Khajuria, who I regard by far the best coach I have ever met. His cardio and abs sessions are so intense that you will fall in love with the exercise. Post cardio, he made sure we did the right amount of weight exercise to keep proper balance. I always thought that heavy weight exercises are not important for weight loss. However, Lakshya made me understand that weight exercise is equally important, and I could see that in the results in few days.

Be agile /flexible:  The type of workload we have, especially in the IT world and that too in lockdown, is immense. It is very difficult to find time for workout. Office and family responsibilities make it even more complicated. So, it’s very important for us to be very flexible and agile. We shouldn’t wait for any slot for training. It’s better to start early and finish your workout in the morning. However, if you miss it in the morning, you should not skip the training for that day. You can use any time during the day, 30 mins of cardio session in the evening can help. We should not find excuses with meetings being at 10 PM and hence, nothing can be done after that. We do get time in the evening and since we are at home, we can use a 30-minute break between calls to do cardio or abs, or any other exercise. Believe me, this will make you feel better at the end of the day and increase our productivity at work. Sometimes you will find a solution for some complex problems at work during these small workout sessions.

Diet: Last but not the least, the most important factor of your fitness is always going to be your diet. More than 70% percent of your weight loss can be achieved by proper diet control. Again, you must be very cautious in choosing the right diet plans. We should not stop what we have been eating since childhood. Having parathas daily is normal, having spicy and oily food is also normal. However, we need to set limits for every meal, reduce the quantity of a meal by 30 % initially. You will be comfortable with that in few weeks, and once you are in tandem with this plan, then you can reduce it further but increasing the intervals. Don’t eat heavy meals. Don’t stop having oily food, just reduce the quantity of the oil used in food, don’t stop eating parathas or rice, just keep the quantity in check. Start slowly and once you are into this fitness regime; you will understand what is good to eat for your body and what is not. Additionally, there are many apps now which help you to track your calorie intake.

These are some of the learnings from my fitness journey. For any tips you can reach out to me and I will be happy to share some of my knowledge which I have gained in last few months.

Remember it is our choices and decisions we make that can help us to achieve our dreams. So, make right choices and take tough decisions if needed. I wish you all a very happy new year 2021. May the new year bring lot of happiness to every one of you.

 

Thank You

Chander Duggal