2020 new year’s resolution — a promise kept
A number of us make new year resolutions. If you have not made such a resolution before, you are possibly living under a rock or on another planet.
Resolutions vary from reading 25 books a year, quitting smoking, learning a new skill, getting more organised, travelling more, spending time with family, losing weight, getting athletic fit and looking like George Clooney.
The last three were my resolutions in January 2020.
Result: while I am still working on the Clooney looks, have achieved significant success with my weight loss — down 22 kg — and put myself on a journey of achieving athletic levels of fitness.
I am capping 2020’s blogs by writing how one achieved this milestone and what it will take to keep forging ahead. This article is written in three parts:
1. Weight loss
2. Fitness
3. Eating right
Part 1: weight loss
80% of the gym is in the kitchen.
My brother was visiting India with his family early January 2020 and we were enjoying the sea views in Vizag, the place of my birth. I was working out in the hotel gym and was aghast at the sight of the weighing scale that tipped 90 kg.
It was both a moment of scare and epiphany.
At that very instant, I made a resolution that I needed to shed 20 kg in 9 months — which is a little over 2 kg a month.
We all know the immediate and long-term ill-effects of extra weight — a weaker heart, clogged veins, worn out knees and ankles, poor blood and health indicators and a general decline in wellbeing.
At five months short of 54, I realised I had to make a few radical changes. It immediately began with small habit adjustments.
My work involves intense travelling and I was eating without keeping an eye on my health. I reduced the sugar intake, stopped eating greasy and oily foods and significantly lowered my alcohol consumption. I am a minor social drinker but quitting ushered immediate and significant benefits.
Four months later — by mid-May — I had shed 8 kg or 2 kg a month. At this point, my weight loss began to plateau and I needed help. I reached out for professional advice from an old hand — Sharmila Sharan. Sharmila, a weight-loss nutritionist, had helped me miraculously shed 15 kgs between March and May 2013. It was time to seek her out again.
She sketched a non-fussy daily food plan (loathe calling it a diet) which entailed eating sensible foods at regular hours.
In order to achieve accelerated results, I started working out five days a week. (Read the next segment on how exercise catalyses weight loss.) Prior to the lockdown, I had a personal trainer visiting home. Once lockdown was announced, I used the home gym — dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells and resistance bands — to augment my fitness regimen.
By June, I completely eschewed sugar in every form (except in fruits — apples are good, mangoes are not), alcohol, fried food and snacking was limited to restricted fruits and nuts. My food plan comprised the entire range of green vegetables, proteins in the form of egg whites and paneer (cottage cheese; both of which I gave up later) and healthy carbs in the form of roti (Indian breads) with an equal portion of wheat bran for fibre.
The key was that I developed a nutritional relationship with food.
A big philosophical change that I incorporated was to treat food as fuel for my body. A suggestion to readers: practice mindful eating. Understand foods and the impact they leave on the human body. Just as you would not inject diesel in a petrol car, do not ingest foods that harm your body.
Sharmila’s well-rounded plan yielded dramatic results. From 83 kg in mid-May, I came down to 68 kg by mid-September — a loss of 15 kg in four months, an average of 4 kg a month or a kg a week.
On an average, my weight would decline about 150 grams a day. On occasion, it would inexplicably rise but only to start lowering again. The human body is not engineered to consistently shed weight and there will be intra-week variations. There were days when the weight would not drop no matter how hard I tried. I was stuck at the 76–77 kg levels for over two weeks and the mind started playing games. They key is to relentlessly stick to the plan and soldier on. Once I breached the 76 kg level, the next resistance was at the 70 kg mark, and after that, the fall to 68 kg was fairly swift.
Sharmila Sharan magically delivered again.
The best part was it was all done on the phone and What’sApp messages. Didn’t meet her in person, not even a video call. I last saw her in May 2013 and if Sharmila were to cross the street, I would not recognise her.
Fun fact: my waist dropped to 28 inches by September 2020 and has since remained the same. I am now in the cool company as my 19+ year old daughter, actor Shah Rukh Khan and U2’s drummer, Larry Mullen Jr. Take that for company!
Part two: fitness
I hate every minute of training. But I said, don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life like a champion. — Mohammad Ali
Fitness is not about looking good. It is about possessing strength, stamina, flexibility and balance.
Most people confuse fitness as walking for an hour. I did too. Only to realise later that the human body suffers involuntary muscle loss ranging between 3–8% every decade over the age of 30. And bone loss is a phenomenon that creeps in from the mid-forties, more so for women.
Humans today will live longer and in more stressful conditions. We will require greater levels of fitness to endure old age and physical atrophy. Consequently, being fit is not an option but an insurance against illnesses and aging. Look around and you will find folks who are overweight and terribly unfit. There is a dazzling array of excuses that people dole out for not working out:
Not a morning person
Not an evening person
Not a gym person
Not a workout person
Not a yoga person
Young kids at home
Aging parents
Workload is high
No gym close by
The list is endless.
So, how do we protect against physical degeneration? The answer is clear as daylight — adopt fitness with a vengeance and start strength training. Building muscles helps lose weight faster. And if weight loss is the primary goal, then a terrific combination is a healthy food plan combined with workouts.
Strength training does not equal joining a gym. Far from it. We can use body weights and calisthenics to achieve our goals. That said, a collective and community spirit fostered by a good gym is infectious and yields superior results. Given my goal of achieving higher fitness levels, I made enquiries on who and what might aid me on the journey.
My first pit stop was athlete and physical trainer Manisha Khungar. Manisha, with two daughters (one in college), looks every bit a teenager in form and spirit. She put me through a series of questions on my fitness targets and delivered a zinger — ‘Venkat, your six-pack goal is only aesthetics, it has nothing to do with fitness’. I quickly swallowed the humble pie.
Manisha introduced me to Piyush Pandey of CrossFit Himalaya. Piyush is a pioneer for bringing CrossFit to India. CrossFit is a strength and conditioning workout that is made up of functional movements performed at high intensity levels.
I have seen several fitness and gym coaches and Piyush is outstanding. His understanding of the science and mechanics of the human body is unparalleled. His grasp of what constitutes perfect form and technique while using weights and performing calisthenics is a delight.
Joining CrossFit Himalaya or CFH has been a gamechanger. It has put me on a journey of becoming stronger, athletic, agile and given me new skills.
CFH is a supportive and enabling community and the power of this community cannot be understated. CFH has an army of fitness enthusiasts who serve as an inspiration and are pushing each other to excel and achieve. David — focused, relentless, tough as a horse and ever helpful — is the go-to person for setting specific goals and learning new techniques. Rose, at five feet, is a fitness maven on energizer batteries. Works out from 6 am to 7 am. Then does a post workout workout between 7–8 am. And then assists folks like me at 8 am for another 30 minutes. Vikash, taller and leaner than a bean stalk, packs in more stamina and power than his 6 feet frame belies. Anita, who lifts a serious barbell, resembles an accomplished academic who walked out of delivering a lecture to pump iron. And the mystical, Zen-monk-like Karun, a man of incredible strength and quiet, walks into the CrossFit box on his hands, trains like a beast for an hour and exhales for the first time as he leaves.
At fifty-four and a half, I am the oldest person in the box with everyone atleast 20–25 years younger than me. The performance tables reveal that everyone registers a score that is 50% or double mine. But equally, everyone is vested in my progress and when I am tiring at the 15-point mark in a 20-point workout, they gather around goading me to complete the set.
Important: find a trainer and gym who is vested in your success. Read Coach Piyush’s text to me at 8:54 am on Wednesday, 30th December asking me to set goals for 2021. He is the kind of coach one needs. It is this that motivates me to wake up at 5 am, four times a week, drive for 25 minutes to start a 7 am session.
Part three: eating right
The single most defining aspect of health is what we eat.
The biggest revelation during the lockdown has been my education on what constitutes food. Not good food or bad food but the question — what is food?
I read extensively on this subject and watched a few documentaries that changed my notions about food quite significantly.
First, I re-read Food Rules, Michael Pollan’s immensely simple and sensible book. Golden rule — eat food, mostly plants, especially leaves. Pollan shreds Western packaged food habits and elevates old-style traditional cuisines that rely on healthy and nutritional eating. Sample this wisdom: don’t eat anything your great-grandmother would not recognise as food. And don’t eat anything that comes out of a packet.
Second, I watched Game Changers on Netflix. A cult movie, the documentary advocates the benefits of plant-based eating and eschews animal meats and fish. It’s a discovery that plant-based foods provide as much if not more proteins than meat. Added to that are the immense health risks posed by ingesting animal meat in the human body.
Third was Dr Michael Greger’s science and evidence-based book, How Not To Diet. Greger is also founder of NutritionFacts.org. The book is luminous in its wisdom and information.
Fourth, sugar is cancer. Had sugar been discovered today, it would have been a banned substance given that it poses the biggest health challenge to mankind — it is carcinogenic and causes diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
Based on reading on extensive scientific reading and watching talks and documentaries by doctors and nutritionists, I made a switch to a plant-based diet. Do we need to consume animal meats to eat well? The answers point to overwhelming scientific data on the ill-effects of meat eating. Why are those studies not publicised widely? The answer is simple: the food industry lobby is the biggest hurdle to human health and correct eating.
Food habits that I now follow:
1. Consume only plant-based food
2. Almost no dairy products. Switched to almond milk. The ill-effects of dairy are one the least discussed issues of daily diets. It is a revelation that humans are the only animals that consume the milk of other species
3. Eschewed sugar. All through 2020, possibly had desserts about 12 times. This will reduce to half in 2021. Beat sugar cravings by consuming fruits, dates, figs and prunes. They are rich in fibre and nutritious too
4. Same as above with alcohol
5. Completely avoid snacking. If peckish, keep some nuts handy
6. Dinner by 6: 30 pm
I would recommend watching the below videos:
1. Game Changers: https://youtu.be/tMSTYLR2v_8
2. Plant-based strong and healthy eating: https://youtu.be/AAkEYcmCCCk
3. Introduction to plant-based diet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-u4YnfcTf0
4. Forks Over Knives: https://youtu.be/ICDRYEpNYtI
My 2021 goals
1. Set aggressive training plans with Piyush at CFH
2. Reduce body fat to 12%. The acceptable levels are 18–24% for men and 25–30% for women. Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is at 8%
3. Lower body age to half my biological age. At 54 / 55, the challenge I am posing myself is, can I bring my body age down to that of a 27-year old?
Lastly: let’s wait till 31st December 2021 to assess the progress on my George Clooney looks.
