Top 5 tangible learnings from my health journey that could certainly help you too:

Before I begin, I want you to know dear reader, that I’m in gratitude for all your support that you gave me for my first article. It was heart-warming! 

Climbing Everest is not an outcome of strength alone.  It is an outcome of grit, motivation, coaching, and years of preparation that led to conquering it.

You all are my co-everesters!

Perhaps we have different goals; that does not take away from the fact that we are all trying to conquer something. My initial Everest was health, your Everest is perhaps weight loss, maybe a difficult relationship, or a career change…and that’s just life.

Believe it or not, there is a common denominator. Life today is so complicated!

Remember those childhood days where everything was simpler?

We did not have to worry about earning money, we did not have to bother about managing a home, we got food on a platter, and we’re simply happy with the smallest of things!

Well, I’m sure there were some dull days too but overall, we were simply happy!

Then eventually we grew up!

Look at us today, we are so comfortable with the urban life – living it up in the sophisticated confines of capitalism!

Swiggy, Zomato & Netflix is all we need!

Hey, I don’t mean to make you feel bad about it! That was definitely me just a few months ago. In fact, I still have the applications and use them every now and then when need so hey, I get it.

Let’s just take a step back and think about our childhood.

Think about who you were as a baby!

From being a little bundle of joy to being always in search of joy, what changed?

What made our Everest too big today?

What is that common denominator that gets us all on our Everest?

OUR LIFESTYLE!

It took me nearly six months just to figure this out. It was the modern lifestyle I was so dependent on, that slowly over the years, messed my health up. You already know all the health issues I face at 22! Just in case you missed that, here is a link to that article.

My health coach, Stutii always told me that, “Noel, don’t look at weight and your acid reflux as the goal, they are just milestones. Once you conquer them, you will always have a new goal waiting for you. This could not be truer!

I was so obsessed with trying to fix my health, I never even realized that I had my priorities wrong. I had my LIFESTYLE wrong and I had to fix that first to begin my healing.

So now that we have established that:

YOU’RE NOT THE PROBLEM, YOUR LIFESTYLE IS,

How can we bring this shift?!

So here are the top 5 tangible learning from my health journey that could certainly help you too:

1. Sugar, the capitalist poison

I discovered this as my first concrete learning and shocked is an understatement! Just look around you in the kitchen. Pick up any 5 top packaged eatables you see around you. Read the label and check how many grams of Sugar. Well, you might agree to disagree with me but you can disagree with a scientific fact. I promise I will talk more about this sooner with more science involved but at this point, you need to

understand that sugar, very subtle, has made its way into our lifestyle and that too without your consent and knowledge. Sugar is highly addictive what you need to know right now is that you are consuming approximately 10x more than what your body is designed to break down. So that’s the first. I know it’s not easy. You can always try replacing sugar with Xylitol or Stevia, they are natural sugars that don’t spike blood sugar like direct sugar. There are a lot more options you can try and see what works for you and what does. The main them remains – avoiding a spike in your blood sugar.

2. Carbs are another name for sugar

Ever wondered why junk food is so addictive? It has the same effect on our body that sugar does. It spikes blood sugar! Carbs once digested convert into glucose and we well know the effect glucose has on our body. Not all carbs are bad. The ones that come in natural form are good. The key here is to understand, whatsoever we are consuming, what is the kind of effect it has on our body. We need to look at food from simply a place of being aware.

3. You’ve been blaming fats all this while for your weight gain when sugar is the real villain responsible for making you fat

If you are not an athlete – which let’s face it – most of us aren’t today. We talk about exercising every day but close the discussion by saying ‘Chalo, Kal say start karenegy’.Join the club, I am with you here. Heavy exercises are just not my thing – I have tried joining the gym every now and then and always failed miserably. So, amidst the pandemic and even otherwise, what we are living is a ‘Sedentary Lifestyle’. Fats are a good fuel especially for this kind of lifestyle. They can very easily replace glucose energy. They digest slowly and keep giving you the gradual energy that one needs for a modern lifestyle. Sugar/carb digest quickly and keep us longing for more. They keep us in a perpetual state of always eating and still feeling hungry. If we were to work out, this wasn’t an issue but since we don’t this energy is not getting burnt out and the body is reserving it as fat around our waistline.

Replace ‘chips and biscuits’ with ‘nuts and seeds. Include coconut in your daily meals. Just one 2-inch piece of coconut has around 300 good calories that your body needs.

4. Eating fewer calories might help you lose weight, but it’s damaging your body in the long run

Going on diets where you are eating fewer calories is the worst kind of damage you can possibly do, to your body. My coach got me to count my calories and, in her words, “Noel, anything below 1800 calories is a mortal crime on your body”! Our body needs enough to function. In fact, all these years you have never given your body the vitamins & minerals it actually needed!

So, the second most powerful conversation was to eat the right foods that will tackle my body’s deficiencies. Believe it or not, the modern lifestyle that we are living doesn’t let us get enough natural vitamins and minerals.  So, the first few months I was on the program, I was eating nothing less than 2000 calories. Eventually, when you start eating right and enough, you will realize those random body aches, weakness in the legs, hypertension, things that we never paid much attention to, disappeared! All because you were giving the right kind of food and replenishing your nutrients in your body. So, eat enough! Eat in awareness! Give your body the right nutrients it needs, not the chocolates and junk your mind is asking you to eat.

5. Be part of a community that enables you

You have been wanting to change your lifestyle for a while now. You have tried and you have failed. I know so many friends who have been in and out of fitness long before I even considered this important. Why did they fail? Because they tried to do it on their willpower and motivation ALONE. I have heard enough of ‘yaar, I don’t get the time’, ‘my partner doesn’t support me, ‘I get tempted when something good is cooked at home. There will always be an excuse! What’s hiding behind all this is the fact you are alone and you lose track.

However, when you have an accountability partner, a community that supports and believes in you, coaches who are continually sending you scientific information – your whole entire ecosystem changes. You are now in communication with a parallel world where people get your struggle and are here to continuously motivate you and give you solutions when needed.

Just yesterday, my coach completed 100 hours of fasting. Please be known that she has been working to get here for years but another thing that helped her get through the 100 hours was the continuous communication she maintained in our small community. She kept updating us on what she was experiencing, she was sharing her vulnerable moment and we were listening. We may have not been physically present but we were in her support with constant motivation in the background. She was indeed very happy by the end of it, but, our entire community was exalting in joy! It felt like a victory to all of us. It was this amazing feeling of “You are not alone. We got your back!”

So, find yourself a community that understands your struggles and supports you in building the healthy lifestyle we all deserve.

Remember, it is a process but you will get there eventually and once it becomes your life, there is no turning back.

…and dear reader, I am always here to help you with the struggles of your modern lifestyle.

I have been there,

Done that,

…and most importantly, I conquered!

Your health & fitness is just one lifestyle change away!