Category: Health

Is Social Media Abstinence The Next Diet Trend?

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

 

In mid-2018, I took a one-month break from Facebook. Though this hiatus was aimed at freeing up time and headspace to deal with the birth of my daughter, I found positive effects on other areas such as increased creative output and better focus on both my work and life. I eventually slid back into regular use, though at much reduced levels than in the past.

Three weeks ago, I dropped off Facebook again. I don’t log on to the platform, though the articles that I post on LinkedIn are posted to Facebook via the LinkedIn for Facebook widget. In a mere six days of abstinence, my writing output has shot up, and I find myself more focused. I now communicate one-on-one by Email or phone, and am drawing away from Whatsapp too. [since writing this, I briefly came back on the platform during the holidays]

I have discovered that I’m not the only person shunning Facebook. A number of people I have reconnected with in the past few days claim that they rarely log on anymore, and all of them report increased focus, better productivity, and improved mental health in separating from Facebook and Instagram.

In late 2011, I went on a low-carb diet to drop some weight. By July 2012, I had dropped to 74 kilos and 10% body fat from a peak weight of 110 kilos circa 2009. At that time, people following Low Carb, Paleo, and Keto diets were rare in India. However, now, with 2019 around the corner, almost everyone I know is on some sort of low-carb diet. In fact  These have become so popular, that here in Gurgaon, there are take-out kitchens that specialize in meals for those on Low-carb, Paleo, or Ketogenic diets. Considering the feedback that I’ve been getting from people who have cut back on Social Media use, could the Social Media Fast be the next diet trend?

With people now shunning Facebook in particular, it seems likely that Social Media has peaked. Multiple regulatory issues – starting with Cambridge Analytica – and now the indications of improper data sharing with Yandex and Netflix have revealed how the malevolent trinity of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp is exploiting user data and driving social behavior. There is no hope of any imminent regulatory oversight of these social media platforms. Mark Zuckerberg’s five-hour appearance before a US Senate Committee – available in its entirety on Youtube – revealed that the political establishment is arrogant in its ignorance of the real issues in ethics and privacy relevant to social media.

These public spectacles have begun to change the way people regard Social Media. Perhaps its growth days are over and we shall soon she the kind of stagnation that has hit tablet computers and e-book readers. In fact, a contraction may be around the corner.

Another key factor is that Humans in general are trending to internal improvement and introspection. According to Forbes magazine, Headspace, an app that provides guided Mindfulness meditation sessions has been downloaded 11 million times and has 400,000 paid subscribers. Publishers in the UK and USA are reporting a spurt in sales of books on meditation and yoga, and globally, the number of yoga alliance certified instructors is increasing exponentially. Meditation and Fitness are not the only self-improvement businesses that are booming. Life, career, and dating coaches are a rapidly expanding sector of the self-improvement market. Two years ago, one of my mentors joked that “Coach is the new LinkedIn code word for unemployed”. He has since engaged a coach to improve his social communication skills. My own mindfulness and self-awareness based advisory practice has grown substantially solely by word-of-mouth since 2015. An increasing number of people now realize that material fulfillment and social media bragging do not bring happiness. Mindfulness and self awareness are incredibly demanding pursuits. A fair amount of time and emotional labour is needed in the early months, and I’ve noticed that my own clients and other people on mindfulness programs tend to draw this time by cutting back on social media.

The addition of one billion new mobile data consumers in the Orient may bump social media adoption figures, but it is likely that social media utilization has peaked, and as people look inwards in the economic and social volatility ahead, the Social Media Fast could become the new diet trend, and Facebook the new Refined Sugar.

If your 2019 goals include increasing focus, happiness, or energy; completing self-paced educational courses; or resurrecting a long-forgotten hobby, consider Social Media Abstinence. It’s probably the one factor that will decide success or failure.

“Letting Go” Of The Past Is Bad For You

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

“Letting Go” has been a catchphrase for the personal development industry for ages. Coaches and motivational gurus speak of the power of letting go – with the past being termed “baggage” that you’re not supposed to carry into your present. This idea of distancing yourself from your personal history is so pervasive, that people with a beautiful and fulfilling present find themselves locked in an emotional battle to purge their past – that often taints their experience of the moment.

I say, Don’t Let Go. Us humans are experiential creatures. Everything that we are in the moment is a sum total of our history. For those consciously aiming for self-actualization, introspection and analysis of these experiences are a key part of the journey. Framing past adversity as “baggage” that needs to be discarded is a denial of a massive part of the emotional self and is a rejection of the context in which we view the present. Sometimes when we get too involved with “the present” or “the moment”, the past begins to seem like a fog – the memories are dim at best. We need the mementos – we need to remember that there were moments of joy, of contentment, of anguish, of achievement, because in our hyperstimulative today, it’s very easy to lose touch with the self. Now I’m not saying that we should dwell in the past – that is unhealthy – but I think we do need to appreciate the anguish that we’ve endured and perhaps be a little smug about our triumphs.

A view of the past is crucial to self-improvement. All organisms behave in patterns. Feeding and mating for instance, have established protocols in every species. Humans, however, have public and private lives that are substantially more complex than the average cheetah or dung beetle. The tendency to act in patterns and protocols detracts from our opportunities to appreciate and experience the infinite possibilities that life offers. This is why we should remember our past – there are patterns for joy and happiness that we should preserve, there are also adverse patterns that lead to failure, unhealthy relationships, addiction, and poor health that we need to observe and break. In fact, the “emotional avoidance” advocated by the Letting Go clique is a key hurdle to therapeutic approaches to emotional and psychological trauma.

So, don’t let go, but don’t dwell in the Past. A difficult balance to achieve. Lots of the pain that the Past causes is due to a toxic game of “what if”, where people speculate about possible outcomes if they (or others) had acted differently. Mindfulness, in its radical acceptance of the present, is a powerful tool to deal with such negative tendencies. Denying or ignoring the emotional burdens of the past in the name of “letting go” is the worst possible way of dealing with trauma. Instead, catharsis – through a journal or talk therapy – is a good way to go. Anger, sadness, guilt, and other such emotions must run their course, and contribute to one’s emotional and psychological fortitude.

Simplicity

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

Since December 2014, I’ve been working on two fitness goals – first, to drop the flab that I’ve put on since mid-2013, and second, to strengthen my left shoulder after a round of physiotherapy. I’ve had a lot of tools at my disposal – because of my background in the martial arts, I’m a strong believer in bodyweight exercises; I also have kettlebells that I’ve used to shed some serious weight in the past. Additionally, I’ve always supplemented any weight-loss effort with High Intensity Interval Training, usually in the form of sprints.

Since February though, I’ve faced trouble with my left foot, which made me drop sprint training. To compensate, I built a weekly programme of alternating bodyweight and kettlebell training. This went on for a while, but the lack of gains in strength and endurance sent me back to the drawing board. After all, to come home on Friday evening with sore shoulders and no energy is not what I expected from my exercise regimen.

Two weeks ago, I stopped the Kettlebells. My exercise regimen now comprises only bodyweight workouts, with alternating days of upper-body and lower-body work. For weight loss, I relied on a high-protein / low carb diet that has served me very well in the past.

The change has been amazing. With a good 48 hours between workouts, my body now has time to recover, and I’m able to push the performance envelope, with data to prove it. I’m also losing fat. The best thing of course, is the improvement in temperament, which makes me look forward to each day’s workout.

There is a lesson in this – simplicity.

My goals were simple. I had enough (too much?) information. I wanted to try everything to get the maximum effect; however, what I did was to just wear myself out. It’s scary to think that I brought myself so close to another injury that would have taken me out of action for 3-4 months.

This is what my current workout looks like:

Upper body: Push-ups; Pull-ups; seated dips; Scapular pull-ups. I do two failure sets of these exercises in this order, with a timed one-minute rest between sets.

Lower Body: Deep Squats (butt to heels); forward lunges; single-leg Romanian deadlifts; side lunges; calf raises. I do two sets of these exercises in this order, with a timed one-minute rest between sets.

Further reading

Mark Lauren’s You Are Your Own Gym is a fantastic resource for bodyweight exercises. This is a well-illustrated book suitable even for beginners. A related app available for iOS and Android helps users build workouts and follow a 40-day plan.

Mark Lauren’s You Are Your Own Gym (Flipkart): http://fkrt.it/Ggn4MBNN

Mark Lauren’s You Are Your Own Gym (Amazon) http://amzn.to/1CycgJ2

Bodyweight Strength Training Anatomy by Bret Contreras is for athletes who want to get more into the dynamics of each exercise. This is a great resource for instructors and trainers.

Bret Contreras: Bodyweight Strength Training Anatomy (Flipkart): http://fkrt.it/GA~kXYNN

Bret Contreras: Bodyweight Strength Training Anatomy (Amazon): http://amzn.to/1BR8ZK5

A Fitness Lesson From The Red Queen

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

In Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland, Alice complains to the Red Queen about remaining in the same spot despite running for quite some time.

“Now, here, you see,” the Red Queen Retorts, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

How like fitness.

For the past month or so, I’ve been following an upper body training programme to recondition my shoulders and arms after about six months of disuse in the aftermath of the latest episode of my pinched nerve acting up.

I’ve been doing two sets each of push-ups, pull-ups, dips, and hanging scapular retractions. In case I encounter muscle failure before hitting my target, I cut intensity – moving from push-ups to kneeling push-ups and from pull-ups to negative pull-ups for instance. For the few days I seemed to have plateaued – though somewhat smug about the numbers that I hit.

Today, however, I decided to push harder, and raised my targets by 25 per cent, counting my reps backwards. Interestingly, I hit my enhanced targets on push-ups without any issues, and exceeded my previous counts on all the other exercises. This means that for the past one week, I wasn’t really growing – silly, silly me!

Sometimes, in the absence of an instructor or pace-setter we tend to be too easy on ourselves. This temptation is particularly strong when one works out solo in the privacy of a home. Fitness is like the Land Beyond the Looking Glass – you must run twice as fast just to stay in the same place!

So, here’s the change in strategy – my new targets are a minimum of 25 per cent beyond my highest good-form reps, with targets revised every 10 workouts.

Let’s see how this works. Watch this space!

It Doesn’t End In Class

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

Okay, so you’ve signed up for Krav Maga, and you’re regular with your weekend classes. You train, you appear for tests, you get your levels, and you’ve bought the T-Shirt. What next?

A martial art is not just an activity that you complete by showing up – it’s a lifestyle. The aim of this lifestyle is not just to survive, but to win. As a martial artist, you’re learning to use your body as a weapon. Your weapon’s performance is based on two things – how well you maintain it, and how well you know it.

Fuel Up

A strenuous activity like Krav Maga requires rest and nutrition for your body to recover. Without this, you will become more injury-prone. As soon as your session concludes, make it a point to drink one liter of water – this will purge your muscles of metabolic waste, and lower the intensity of cramping and muscle soreness. Within an hour or so, have a meal that is high in protein – this will provide your body with the necessary components to repair muscles, and will also cut cravings for sugary foods.

 

Keep Active

On other days, make it a point to set aside a minimum of 30 minutes for some exercise. Even if you do it in three 10-minute tranches on a busy day, it’s all right. Do push-ups, squats and pull-ups. These three exercises are enough to bring about a serious gain in strength in just a few months. An Android app called ‘Just Six Weeks’ can help you follow a progressive programme to improve.

Get Rest

When you’re in training, you need to get sufficient sleep to give your mind time to recharge, and your body the time to heal. Aim for seven hours a night. Avoid caffeine four hours before bed-time, and avoid staring at a screen for an hour before. Eat dinner in soft light from candles or an incandescent light bulb, rather than a harsh source like a tube-light – this will soothe your senses towards sleep.

 

Treat your Injuries

Injuries wage a war of attrition on the martial artist. Each untreated injury will leave you with lower mobility, lower strength, and increased vulnerability. Spurn the temptation to return to full-intensity training when you’re ‘somewhat okay’. All muscle, tendon, joint, and ligament injuries require a rehabilitation routine that extends to beyond the time that the discomfort ends. A return to strenuous activity before this healing is complete will likely result in further injury, and extended or permanent disability.

Keep Learning!

Your growth as a martial artist must span beyond the confines of a single discipline. Do you know a Jujitsu practitioner? Train with him in locks and ground fighting. Know a Thai boxer? Ask about the conditioning they do that lets them kick with their shins. Know a ballerina? Ask her about training for her insane power-to-weight ratio and flexibility. Spend some time each week reading about new trends in fitness and injury rehabilitation as well.

This article was first published on Krav Maga Hyderabad’s blog;

You could read more about the IKMF’s Hyderabad’s chapter at http://kravmagahyderabad.wordpress.com/

Why People Fail At Weight Loss

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ 1 Comment

I started my weight loss journey in March 2011, and achieved my goal by Feb 2012. Since then, my gains have increased, and I’m in the best shape ever. In the past few months, many people who have seen the changes in me over this period of time have asked me for advice, and in many cases, have started on a regimen similar to mine. Most of these people have failed to get remarkable results.

A search on Amazon for ‘weight loss’ yields over 123,000 results. Over 70,000 of these are books. A Google search for the same yields 320 million results! With that much of information around, why are so many people still overweight? Barring the very small percentage of people with hormonal imbalances or other pathological causes, the majority of overweight people are victims of a pattern of behaviour that they need to change to lose weight and keep it off.

Why do people fail?

1) Slothfulness

Weight loss is hard work. In its initial stages, it requires a commitment of time, energy, and money to get started, and break old patterns. With people hoping to get there with minimal effort, an entire industry selling magic machines, portions, and lotions has sprung up to relieve them of their cash. The only cure for this is information, and the willingness to do the hard work.

2) Misinformation

Lots of healthy foods aren’t. The food, pharmaceutical and medical industries are very aggressive in passing on information that is outdated, incomplete, or in some cases, false. In 2008, a physician told me that I would be taking antihypertensive medication for the rest of my life. I’m not taking it anymore, and have normal blood pressure. In 2009, another physician told me that my heart was at risk of damage if I exerted myself by running or other strenuous activity. I can today run several kilometres non-stop, and do interval or Tabata sprint training twice a week. Nutritionists and physicians who enquire about my diet are horrified by the fact that I avoid all grains. My point is simple – it worked for me! I am fit, have high energy levels, and have seen my performance skyrocket in all areas of my life! Even the results that I have achieved have been after years of digging through mountains of advice and information and sticking with what worked.

Food companies lie to you. Period. Physicians are mostly corralled by the narrow confines of the knowledge they received in medical school. The pharmaceutical companies just want you to believe that being unhealthy is alright – if anything happens, they have a pill for you to take to make you better. Look around for information on what has worked for people. You don’t have to fall for the $39.99 e-books that are available with 7 special gifts for a limited period only. Make your body your laboratory – try different stuff and stick to what works.

3) Complacency

Sometimes people are able to gain some success with their weight loss goals, but later get complacent and fall off the wagon. This is slothfulness lite. Like knowledge, fitness is progressive – just like Alice’s Wonderland, it takes all the running that you can do to stay in the same place, and if you need to get anywhere, you need to run twice as fast as that. Weight loss or fitness cannot be a phase – it needs to be a lifestyle that you refine with each passing day.

4) Cheating

A new diet or workout regimen causes sweeping chemical and physiological changes in the body. Diets like the Atkins rely heavily on ketosis that usually takes several days to set in – other low carb diets focus on breaking out of sugar or hormone cycles that drive hunger and satiety. These changes require the elimination of certain foods or food combinations, and the consumption of even a small quantity of these ‘banned foods’ can result in a complete chemical reversal that can destroy days of gains. This causes disillusionment with the diet itself. If you are on a diet, do not pat yourself on the back with a ‘cheat’ that you feel won’t make a difference – it will make you fail.

Once you have reached your goal, it may be possible for you to relax the rules a little bit, but be forever wary of becoming complacent.

5) Haters

This may be one of the biggest reasons that people fail. When you start getting results and your appearance begins to change, there will be people around you who will try very hard to make you fail. They will be trying to prove that your diet is a joke, and that you don’t have the willpower to make the changes that you desire. They will criticise you, ridicule you, and encourage you to cheat. They will say that you have changed, and that you’re making these changes because you think that you’re better than them.
If you have such people in your life, you need to cut them off immediately. These people do not just stand between you and a healthier you, they stand between you and a better life.

Instead, surround yourself with people who have goals like yours and understand the challenges that you’re facing. These new relationships will improve your chances of success.

6) Alcohol

This is probably one of the most common ways to sabotage a diet. Alcohol contains a huge number of empty calories, and is broken down into acetate by the liver. This acetate takes metabolic precedence over carbohydrate and fats, and thus as your body works to deal with the acetate, fat burning stops. Also, the snack foods usually served with alcohol are often unhealthy, and get stored away as fat while the acetate is dealt with.

The Bottomline

Yet, it is possible to drop weight and keep it off. The rewards are tremendous – you look better, you have more energy, and you are able to deal with stress better. In an age where medical care is horrendously expensive and medical insurance is a sham, health is wealth. Five years ago, if someone had told me  that my life would be so awesome if I fixed my habits and stuck to it, I would have done it from that day itself.

Slipping Off The Wagon

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

OK, so I went on a regimen of diet and exercise, lost a lot of weight, and made tremendous improvements to my athletic performance. These weren’t easy changes to make, but I pushed, and was able to stay on the wagon long enough to see some pretty remarkable results, but then the slide started.

 

Normally, I’d allow myself one ‘cheat’ meal every week. At this meal, I’d eat a small portion of one food that I absolutely love, but is prohibited by my diet rules. Soon after this meal, I’d get back to my usual programme, with perhaps a couple of slightly more intense workouts thrown in. However, over the past few weeks, I’ve become a little more casual about what I eat. I found myself breaking my diet rules ‘ever so little’ but much more frequently.

 

Now, instead of the one bite of dessert while dining out, there was a humungous piece of cake at a birthday party; instead of a little bit of Biryani I had a pretty substantial portion with lots of other things that would temporarily alter my body chemistry and take me out of my fat burning zone. Instead of sticking to a single beer and a few glasses of water to restore hydration, I went on a drinking spree almost as extreme as my bar bankrupter days.

 

The results were predictable – my gains have tapered off. I have made no gains in either inch loss or weight reduction in the past two weeks. Thinking back on all these events made me realize that I’m slowly slipping back into the pattern of behaviour that resulted in me being overweight in the first place! I’m back on the wagon now, but this has been a frightening lesson in how easy it is to slip back into old habits, and reverse the gains I have fought so hard for.

 

I have been uncluttering my life, hoping for more time to ‘stand and stare’. This has given me far more free time that especially on weekdays has resulted in moments of utter boredom. While restructuring my life a few months ago, I had been able to link this boredom to smoking and ‘grazing’, both of which I have cut quite drastically since. Maybe I do need to keep myself occupied, and perhaps this is the best possible time for me to get back to finishing that novel and screenplay.

I love my new body, It’s totally worth the fight to keep it like this 🙂

What About The Kids?

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

I have often wondered about the ‘genetic’ link to certain diseases. Could it be that people ‘inherit’ infirmities from their parents, not because of their ‘genes’, but because of inherited patterns of behaviour, including food habits?

A few years ago, I was at a shopping mall with a friend of mine. In those days, I myself was quite overweight, but my friend, a 40+ former military man, was in better shape than most people in their 20s. Suddenly, he stopped  dead in this tracks, turned to me, and said “Nate, when you were in school, didn’t everyone make fun of the fat boys?”

“Yes” I replied, cautiously.

“Well, by the time you have school-age children of your own, it’ll be the fat ones making fun of the thin ones!”

I looked around. He was right. Many of the children around us were overweight, definitely a greater number than were overweight in my class at school. All who were accompanied by parents had at least one chubby parent.

A number of people I know have jumped on the health wagon late in life, making changes to their lives in recent times. Some have modified their diet, some cut back on alcohol and smoking, some have even discovered the demerits of simple carbohydrates and sugar, and have given them up, but what about the kids?

Here are some of the scenarios I have noticed in India.

1) Parents are reasonably health conscious and don’t eat much junk food, but they take their kids to fast food places and load them up with unhealthy foods and HFCS laced drinks.

The most serious problem with this is that since many of these visits are presented as a ‘treat’, the child may form a psychological ‘pleasure connection’ with that kind of fast food, and later, as an earning adult who can afford to eat it three times a day, may turn to it for emotional gratification. Indeed ‘comfort eating’ is a major cause of obesity! Some of them end up messing up their diets because of the kids’ junk food lying around the house.

2) Health conscious parents who fall for marketing fads.

I know of many adults who are ‘health conscious’, but perpetually get their health information from TV commercials.  Their kitchens are often full of sugar loaded name-brand cereals that claim to have health benefits, added nutrients, etc. In their misguided quest for health, they’re actually feeding their kids’ sugar addiction. I don’t blame them, lots of these companies use cheap shots in advertising. Indian television is full of emotionally abusive commercials usually targeted at mothers that show children losing martial arts tournaments, being growth stunted, or underperforming at school because they don’t use a particular energy drink or breakfast cereal.

3) The indifferent ones.

I’m not implying that these parents care any less for their kids, but because of a lack of information, they fail to prioritise good nutrition.

4) The unhealthy ones.

These are parents that need the most work themselves, because they’re unhealthy themselves and are passing that behaviour on to their kids. Kids copy their behaviour of sedentary life and bad food choices, setting themselves up for a lifetime of battles with weight and poor health.

If there is something that you would like to add to this, please note it in the comments section below.