5 Important Yet Baby Steps For A Beginner Health Enthusiast

- Sagar

Healthy Lifestyle

“Health is hearty, health is harmony, health is happiness.” 

– Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

Importance of a healthy body is known to all. The fact that you are reading this article testifies the same. Basically, investing in a healthy lifestyle is like investing in a Retirement Plan. Instead of monetary investment, you make an investment in terms of time and effort majorly. And just like a retirement plan, you will reap the benefits of this investment once you enter the latter part of your life.

But you would know that already. What you may not know, or maybe confused about is how to embark on this journey of a healthy lifestyle. You may have come across many people who would have started but could not continue. “I am too busy to hit the gym” or “I followed for some time but couldn’t get the results” or “I started well but got injured” or “I don’t know where to start”, these are some of the statements that you might come across when people are trying to express their inability to remain true to their not so uncommon new year resolution.

After analysing, we might find that major reasons why their healthy expedition gets derailed are because of:

a. they have a notion that following a fitness regime requires considerable investment in terms of time and effort,
b. they are unable to realize the return on their investment, and,
c. they are not aware of the options where one should invest in the initial stages of their journey to get the maximum benefits.

Keeping these obstacles in mind, let me present to you 5 simple tips which help you get the stone rolling and let you take off on the amazing journey of fitness

1. Weight and Watch

Healthy Lifestyle

The first step is weighing yourself every week. It may sound a bit unnecessary but it has its own benefits. First of all, it is simple and easily achievable. All you need is a weighing machine, which people generally have at their home, sitting under an almirah, gathering dust since the last time they wanted to confirm whether their luggage is within the flight weight restrictions or not: Secondly, the weekly frequency helps you keep your focus intact and holds you accountable. It acts like a constant reminder and sub-consciously moulds your decision towards your goal: And finally, it helps you correlate the changes you have made in your lifestyle with the effect on your bodyweight over time. You get to know whether the changes or improvements you have made have really paid off or not.

I will also suggest that you find out the ideal weight you should be having depending upon your height. I found this link to be helpful in calculating that.

Now having established the benefits, let us quickly go through the best weigh-in practices – weigh once a week; weigh yourself on the same time of the day (eg: in the morning, after attending nature’s call); wear light clothes or even better, no clothes at all and lose the footwear; make sure that you zero your weighing machine; be consistent.

2. Master the Posture

Healthy Lifestyle

The next step is to work towards correcting your posture. Due to the current lifestyle of working on too many screens (laptops and mobiles) and lack of awareness, we tend to develop a slouching form. If you continuously suffer from back, neck and shoulder pain, then improper posture might be a cause. Apart from this, bad posture has multiple drawbacks – it may result in poor blood circulation, impaired lung function, poor digestion and other spinal related injuries. On the other hand, there are numerous advantages of a good body posture. Not only does it minimize the drawbacks, but also ensures that muscles are being used effectively and efficiently, minimizes the risks of injuries and promotes a good physical appearance, by tucking your belly in without you making any effort to pull it in. You might be already correcting your posture temporarily when you are trying to impress someone, by pulling your shoulders back, pumping your chest out, isn’t it?

So how do you work towards the goal? There is a lot of literature present on the internet that can guide you towards maintaining a good posture, but I found the articles in Medlineplus, NHS (UK) and WebMD quite useful. In addition to this, a pro tip is that you need to be aware of your posture all through the day, and straighten up whenever you feel you are slouching. Over a period of time, it will strengthen your core and back muscles and an improved posture will become a habit.

3. Eat Supreme with Diet Regime

Healthy Lifestyle

It doesn’t matter how much I emphasise on eating right, it will not be enough. As per WHO, “…A healthy diet can protect the human body against certain types of diseases, in particular, noncommunicable diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, some types of cancer and skeletal conditions…”. In terms of attaining fitness, you will find multiple articles which state that fitness is 70% diet and 30% workout, the 70-30 rule. Therefore, it is already established that one needs to stick to a healthy dietary regime to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

So, where is the problem? What is stopping you from reaching your goal? I believe the problem is that there are too many options to confuse a beginner – Dieting, intermittent fasting, Keto diet, and the list will go on. Another reason which acts as a deterrent is suddenly stopping the intake of all the food items which are considered unhealthy. Thus, finding healthy foods a bit unappealing and people reverting to their normal and unhealthy eating style. To overcome these, based on my personal experience, I have some tips which you can follow to maintain a healthy dietary regime.

First, the most important concepts I found are calorie deficit (for weight loss) and My-plate concept. In a very simplified manner, the former means that you need to burn more than what you eat to lose weight and the latter states each meal should contain equal amounts of carbs, protein and vegetables. Secondly, instead of completely cutting down on that tempting dessert, restrict it to a moderate limit. To help with putting the above-mentioned concepts in practice and chalking out your diet chart, I found the app – Healthifyme very helpful. Some may find entering the food details daily a bit cumbersome, but you can use the app to zero in on your ideal diet by following the below-mentioned steps:
– Enter your general daily meals for the first time to check if it meets the dietary targets as per the calorie deficit and My-plate concept
– Tweak your diet by adding/ removing recipes until you zero in on your ideal diet

This ideal diet will act as a baseline of your food intake on a meal to meal basis (small measurable targets). Even if you deviate from your plan in one meal, you can try to compensate for it in the next meal. Also, if you plan your diet properly, it will let you have everything in moderation, and you will not have to put in a huge effort of cutting out on desserts or junk food altogether.

4. Water for Starters

HealthyHabits

This I believe, is one of the most underrated advice that one can give to achieve a healthy lifestyle. Undoubtedly, you must be drinking water, but you may not be drinking enough. In general, for men, water intake of about 3 litres is recommended, whereas for women the recommended amount is little over 2 litres. Further details regarding water intake can be found in this article in WebMD.

A useful hack that I came across is maintaining a separate 1 litre bottle for yourself. Doing so will help you to keep track of the approximate water intake you are doing on a daily basis without taking any extra pain for measuring your water consumption.

You may question why this is important. Allow me to inform you that drinking sufficient water has amazing health benefits which include enhancing brain function and connectivity, enabling weight loss, detoxifying the body, maintaining regularity in digestion, catalysing muscle recovery and maintaining a youthful skin. Not only does this have sustaining benefits, but it also is fairly easy to achieve and requires little effort from your side to accomplish it – thus in turn has a huge Return on Investment.

5. Workout Small, to Stand Tall

Healthy Lifestyle

As mentioned earlier when we talked about the dietary regime, we have addressed the 70% and now it is time to address the remaining 30% of workouts. People in their excitement, start with extravagant options, with most popular choices being joining a gym, or going out on a walk/ run. But they fail to realise that when they are choosing such options, not only does it require a lot of effort, it also takes up a lot of time. For example, if you are planning for a 20-minute workout outside your home you have to add at least an hour to that time which involves getting ready, commuting and other miscellaneous activities. Moreover, as workout constitutes only 30% of fitness, as a beginner, you need to invest your time and effort appropriately, unless you are aiming to replace Hrithik Roshan in Bollywood.

Hence, for a beginner, I will recommend a simple 10-minute home workout. If you have weights at your home, great! Otherwise even a bodyweight workout is sufficient for those who are just setting out on a healthy lifestyle for the first time. There are many apps that can help you regarding this, one of them being – 10 Minute Daily Home Workout (which requires sufficient space and just a yoga mat). In these workouts, investment (in terms of effort and time) from your side is minimal, and because of the short duration, it allows you to be flexible regarding the scheduling of these workouts.

Conclusion

On the onset, the 5 tips mentioned above seem easy and doable. But there’s no free lunch anywhere. So, what’s the catch? The catch is that you need to be consistent. A sporadic effort will lead you nowhere. However, sustained effort will give you small but continuous results. These constant and regular efforts will change the way you live your life, and you will literally adopt a healthier lifestyle.

Healthy Lifestyle

Once you observe that you came closer to your ideal body weight even by 0.5 kgs over the course of a week, it will motivate you to push yourself further. With time these activities will become a second nature to you and sooner or later you will realize that subconsciously, you will start making healthier decisions. And that is when you will understand you are on the right track for achieving your fitness goals and ready to take your endeavours a notch further.

Ultimately, I will like to end with a doha, by the great poet Vrinda, which highlights the effectiveness of consistency:

“करत-करत अभ्यास के, जड़मति होत सुजान।

रसरी आवत जात तें, सिल पर परत निसान।।”

References

From the DummyWriter:

The DummyWriter took inspiration from the senior generation and observed that even those healthy habits that seem small and insignificant, have a huge impact once you enter your post-retirement life. For the past 9.5 years, the author has adopted a healthier lifestyle, and has found it very rewarding. During all these years, he has realized it doesn’t take a mountain of an effort to achieve a fitness level that will act as a major ally in weathering the storm of old age. It pains him to see that his colleagues, relatives and acquaintances ignore the fact that staying healthy is one of the most important things. Hence, leveraging his own experience, he decided to come up with this article that might help people to set the wheels in motion for a more fulfilling and healthy way of living.

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20 thoughts on “5 Important Yet Baby Steps For A Beginner Health Enthusiast”

  1. DiVa03

    Very well written and consolidated. Every point put forward is quite realistic and that’s what I like the most about the above article.

    1. Sagar Saxena

      Yes dada. The good thing about bodyweight exercises is that generally it can be done by all age groups. Moreover internet will give you multiple options if you are looking for a specific requirements like for kids or for senior citizens

  3. Subhendu Mahapatra

    Good write up.
    Another aspect would be add some subtle meditation. It takes the fitness journey to a complete holistic level.

    1. Sagar Saxena

      Thanks Subhendu. I totally agree with the fact that mental and physical health are intertwined with each other. In fact, your comment gives me an idea about a new article on mental well-being. Probably we might see a part 2 soon 🙂

  4. Neerav

    Very well thought article.
    Issue of obseity, unawareness of bmi is growing concern. I like the point 3rd of water intake. Keeping hydrated is crucial for health and well-being. It’s the most common and doable thing which people ignore in daily life.
    Let’s pledge to increase the amount of healthy beverages like water, that our we /family drinks.

    1. Sagar Saxena

      Exactly Heena. The main goal of the article is motivate people by keeping achievable targets in front of them. Once the focus shifts to day to day activities, results will automatically follow. 🙂

  6. Parag chinche

    Thank you for writing this sir it will be actually helpful for me.Very well written everyone can follow this easily and in many points in this article is the exact situations most of us are facing like too many diets concept and the posture thing.. infact when i read this since then i am being concious haha.. loved it

    1. Sagar Saxena

      Great Parag! The way you have mentioned, it seems my purpose for writing the article has been fulfilled. Nothing is more satisfying for an author to find that he has influenced and motivated his readers. Now whenever you find yourself slouching, your inner-self would shout out loud “JAWAN PEETH SEEDHI RAKHO!”

    2. Pramod Kumar

      Very informative topic on life style to improve the quality of life in both terms ie physical and mental. Because as saying goes a healthy mind leaves in a healthy body. Kudos !!!

      1. Sagar Saxena

        Yes Pramod, that’s completely true. As mentioned earlier in the comments, physical and mental health are intertwined with each other. We should take care of both when we are thinking about fitness

  8. sikis izle

    If you want to use the photo it would also be good to check with the artist beforehand in case it is subject to copyright. Best wishes. Aaren Reggis Sela

    1. Sagar Saxena

      Thanks Bernita, I hope you were able to implement some of the tips mentioned in your daily lifestyle.
      However I’m curious to know how you got directed towards my article

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