Body weight is not an indicator of our fatness or fitness, but compliance to exercise indicates fitness.
Most of us feel fat now, or have felt so for 15 years or more. But when you log on Facebook today, a picture of yours from two, five or seven years ago crops up. Suddenly, you realise that you look thin in ‘memories’. So, you know that your current look might appear to be ‘very thin’ to you two years from now.
Essentially, this means two things. 1. You are constantly feeling fat. 2. Whatever you are doing today is progressively making you fat for the years to come. Here’s a simple way to reverse that.
Get rid of the weighing scale and get yourself an exercise calendar instead. You know this but it’s worth repeating—weight is a useless thing to lose. Body weight is not an indicator of our fatness or fitness, but compliance to exercise indicates fitness. Research in the field of exercise science says that exercising is four times more effective than losing weight. These are the kind of reports that we should be reading, but they never make it to the media. From the brain to the gut, from insulin to adipose tissue, from the bones to the nerves, exercise is uplifting and should be a non-negotiable aspect of our lives.
We also now know that we don’t need to kill ourselves in the gym; instead, we need only 150 mins of exercise a week to see changes in our body composition—‘weight-loss’ to the uninitiated. The next time you look at a picture from your past, don’t think of how much weight you have gained but how many hours of exercise you have lost.
(Rujuta’s new book, Indian superfoods, is out and available on the Juggernaut books app.)