Happy Halloween! Today’s the day when monsters and ghouls roam the streets in search of a sweet fix and even adults succumb to the guilty pleasures of consuming way more candies and treats than they could hold down. People love to get a good scare this day, and so it is doubly strange that it was on this very day a year ago that I got the biggest scare of my life: a real-life lesson in the truth about fitness and how I was going about it the wrong way.

It began with a freebie

Halloween 2005. Audible, the audiobook company was offering one free audiobook just for signing up (don’t bother checking - they don’t have a similar deal this year, unfortunately). I had a page full of choices including Life of Pi, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values and Tyrannosaur Canyon.

But my eyes were drawn to a bright orange colored book sitting silently on one corner of the page. Ho hum, I yawned - another fad diet book with a cover full of promises and content full of lies. I already knew what worked, right? I had just started using the company gym for a few months and I thought knew just what I had to do to make over my body - i just had to hit the machines everyday picking whichever ones were free and work out till I was tired. As for eating I had to eat less to lose weight - simple! I just had to this and I knew I would have the body I desired.

But there was one problem: I was 3 months into this regimen and could see no sign of any change whatsoever. What could be wrong? Heck, this was a free audiobook - what did I have to lose? Nothing, I realised a week later. Except years of misinformation, bad eating habits and random exercising!

Learning and implementing the facts about fitness

Everyday for a week, to and from work, the audiobook guided me chapter upon eye-opening chapter to help me understand the truth behind some of the deceptive marketing practices so prevalent today. I learned about calories, trans fats and high fructose corn syrup. Almonds, oatmeal and flaxseeds. Lowfat milk, cottage cheese and yogurt. Whole grains, eggs and lean meats - the juggernaut of information just kept on coming.

I had to listen to the whole thing again to make sure I got it right - I had been wrong all this time! My foods were wrong, my exercises were wrong - no wonder I saw no change in my physique or general health! I immediately did two things: implemented the recommendations into my life right away and made a plan to spread the word.

The first was easy because certain changes were downright simple to make:

1. Banish fried snacks (chips, doughnuts) and calorie-dense (but nutritionally empty) foods like ice-cream and cookies. These were now “special occasion” or “party foods” only and even then, in moderation.
2. Switch to whole grain alternatives for bread, pasta and rice.
3. Include a lot of dairy and eggs (being vegetarian I realised the importance of whey protein sources all the more)
4. Incorporate a comprehensive exercise plan that comprises weights as well as cardio.

Spreading the word with a blog

The difficult part was trying to spread the word about what I had learned. I already knew that obesity was a growing (!) problem in the world but the massive amount of misinformation and deceptive advertising was only making it worse. It wasn’t until early this year that I realised that blogging about my experiences with fitness and nutrition was probably the best way to get the word out there.

They say you learn the most when you teach and although Fitness Mantra is not really meant to teach but rather recount my experiences with products and fitness news , I have indeed gained a lot in this entire process. Certain posts take a lot of research because I strive to present an unbiased view yet take into account all the latest information available about a product. Doing this takes time, but the research keeps me much more informed and I take that as a healthful side-effect of running a blog like this.

The results and what’s next

A year later, I am certain that the efforts have not been in vain. I look better and am certain I am in the best shape of my life although I can see massive room for improvement. I feel more energetic, my clothes fit better, my posture has vastly improved and the best part is that I know what is good for me and my family helping us make better choices everyday. I certainly hope this site has been useful to you too and I can assure you of continuous and pertinent information about the world of health, nutrition and general fitness as I get hold of it.

Fitness became my Mantra because of a chance offer on Halloween, but I hope you wouldn’t leave it to chance, but instead make a conscious effort right now to get educated and inspired to make a positive change in your life through a good mix of healthful eating and exercising. The benefits of doing so (and the costs of not) are simply too great to ignore.

All together now, let’s repeat our mantra: Let’s Make Fitness Our Way Of Life!

Technorati Tags: fitness mantra, health, fitness, nutrition, halloween

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In one of my posts, a couple of months back, I wrote that “Body Fat % […] is a much better indicator of a person’s fitness levels than the BMI (which are often subjective depending on a person’s frame-size or how active his lifestyle is)” and this is very much true. Think of a well built, muscular person: just using his body mass index would be a poor way to judge his health when most of his weight is muscle.

Recently, an article I had tagged in del.icio.us titled “‘BMI’ a Bust for Predicting Heart Risk” expounded the same theory that:

BMI, a ratio of weight to height — proved to be a bust for predicting death from heart disease in an analysis of 40 previously reported studies involving 250,000 patients with heart disease followed for an average of four years. The seemingly paradoxical findings do not mean that carrying excess weight is good for heart patients, researchers say. But they do suggest that better ways of measuring obesity are needed.

The finding that overweight patients did not die as often and had fewer heart-related problems than normal-weight patients was more surprising. But the Mayo researchers say the answer may lie in muscle mass. Since muscle weighs more than fat, it is possible that many of the people in the study who were considered overweight, with BMIs between 25 and 29.9, were really fitter with more muscle than the patients with lower BMIs. If this was the case, it would stand to reason that they would have fewer heart problems.

-Via WebMD

While obesity (BMI greter than 30) has long been understood to be a leading cause of mortality, the same could not be said of being overweight. Yesterday, however, the New England Journal of Medicine published a report titled “Overweight, Obesity, and Mortality in a Large Prospective Cohort of Persons 50 to 71 Years Old” (Abstract, Original Article(PDF)) which concludes that even being overweight (as measured by having a BMI between 25.0 and 29.9) is indeed associated with an increased risk of death.

The 10-year study of more than 500,000 U.S. adults found that those who were just moderately overweight in their fifties were 20 percent to 40 percent more likely to die in the next decade. Another study involving more than 1 million Korean adults, also being published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, produced similar results.

The studies, both released yesterday, were aimed at helping resolve a long debate over whether the millions of Americans who are not obese but are nevertheless considered overweight are at significant risk.

-Via Washington Post

The study was conducted in the U.S. by the National Cancer Institute which surveyed 527,265 men and women aged 50 to 71 about their health and lifestyles, including their diet and physical activity, as well as their height and weight, including how much they weighed when they were 50.

After a decade, the researchers found that those who were moderately overweight when they were 50 were at significantly elevated risk of dying prematurely, and those who were obese were two to three times as likely. Just being overweight was not nearly as dangerous, but it still boosted the risk by 20 to 40 percent, the study found.

The findings were welcomed by public health and obesity experts as powerful new evidence that people should do whatever they can to maintain a healthy weight.

“The take-home message is that if you are not obese but just overweight, it’s still a good idea to lose weight,” said Thomas A. Wadden, president of the Obesity Society. “It’s kind of a bummer, but maybe this will help motivate people that it’s time to do something about their weight.”

By eating the Fitness Mantra way and exercising regularly, we can not only keep obesity at bay but also avoid being overweight and reduce significant risk to our health and life.

Technorati Tags: overweight, obesity

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