Hey!
How’s the weekend going so far? I had a chance to catch up with some reading yesterday and I am feeling happy about it. While I do read every day, some books are a lot harder to read than some others. Of late, I’ve been trying to learn more about meditation, mindfulness and all that, and I was reading a book that someone I highly respect recommended. Oh boy, I am floundering in trying to understand it. But it is also fun to read something so far out of my comfort zone and depth.
Anyways, on to the 3 things for today. #2 and #3 kinda segue into each other.
on how I thought I was eating healthy when I really was not, and what this means for you.
on how I practise being in the moment.
on how we are all time-poor and stuck in a rat race where our fulfilment seems to be under question. And how we can buy time!
As always, I’d hugely appreciate it if you can share ONE of my posts (does not have to be any of the below) with ONE of your friends. Thank you for considering it.
But I thought I was eating healthy
I always knew that once I moved to the US, my days of struggling with health and fitness were over. I mean, every actor you saw on TV had a six-pack. So, the magical food over there in that land was what I was missing.
Oh boy! I was not too smart back then, eh.
With this resolve, I started scouring the grocery store. I found heart-healthy cereals, and fat-free milk. Ha! I had found the start of the answer. These varieties of cereal were not available in India, plus they said they were healthy for the heart. Obviously fat makes you fat and fat-free milk will just dovetail along and make the glorious 6-pack happen.
Idiot.
I didn't know anything about macronutrients. I didn't know anything about calorie restriction. I didn't know to read ingredients on the packaging. I didn't know anything about anything.
Given my silly eating habits, just fixing one meal i.e. 33% of my nutrition should show an impact. That was my reasoning (pretty solid logic, actually). But unfortunately, my actual solution was wrong. I was misled by marketing gimmicks and a comprehensive lack of basic nutrition science.
And even after this, I made a bigger, more delicious mistake. I had never heard of granola until then. Here was something that had more complex carbohydrates in it, more crunch, and it did not come in a box. You literally dispensed granola from a box into your paper bag. It just felt so much cleaner and healthier, and not mass-produced.
In addition, I found flavoured yoghurt. Fruit + yoghurt + granola = 6-pack. I had found it. I seriously thought this was it. I disliked vegetables. Plus, I did not know to cook and eating my cooking made things hard. And vegetables were something that my mom and grandmother recommended and what do they know?! The solution obviously had to involve foods that were magical, not available in India, and I just had to find it.
It took me a while to understand that there's no escaping the obvious. Slowly, I learned about macronutrients, about micronutrients.
And the most obvious of lessons - eat more vegetables, eat less crap.
It is the same lesson that I continue to teach today - there's no loophole. There's no getting around eating real food. You cannot not eat vegetables and hope for a healthy life.
Eating better comes down to two things - quantity and quality. The awesome thing is higher quality (more nutrients) will help us take care of the quantity for the most part.
Today, I know I can have my cake and eat it too. It is not possible to have a life of avoiding the 'fun' foods. But 80% of your intake has to come from real, healthy food.
There's no escaping the obvious - eat like an adult.
Eat your vegetables.
Avoid 'food' that comes packaged. Or at least, realise it is not a healthy option. And you might as well eat candy or ice-cream or have a beer instead of wasting it eating pseudo-healthy foods.
Eat real food!
And that’s how I spent the better part of a year thinking I was eating healthy, and all I did was eat crap. You can read all about it here, or rather, this is the post to share with your friend.
practising being in the moment
This one’s a lot harder than I expected. I mean, how hard can it be to stop doing random things and just chill and drink coffee? Or not do anything and just breathe?
Apparently, it can be rather hard.
A simple trick I use is to look at all the wins I have in some context, and try to carry lessons over to the new context/environment, however irrelevant it might seem. I do a decent job of being in the moment when I lift weights, and so the aftermath of every training session, I tried to jot down how/what I did to be in the moment.
An interesting lesson I learned was that being in the moment or even being Zen need not be the mental image of a monk meditating with a smile on his face with no tension at all. Until I was able to connect this, I was failing whenever I tried this in unfamiliar contexts.
When I lift weights, while I am not angry or in Hulk-mode, I am certainly not trying to be tension-free, physically and mentally. I am zoned in, I am focused, and I want to express power/strength.
So, being relaxed and in the moment works for breathing drills but not so much for things like reading or writing - that requires something similar but different. Maybe in my early stages, all of this is more confusing than they need to be.
But the lesson for me is to steal from contexts I understand and transport/adapt them into new contexts.
I am not too happy with the post I wrote originally, but in case you want to read it, check it out.
on being time-poor and how we can buy more time
Time is our most finite resource today. Somehow, almost all of us, in our quest for living life to the fullest have misunderstood it and are cramming things in. Leaving the rat race seems to be a fuzzy goal but "in a few years". Because right now, it does not seem plausible.
Funnily, we have created a lot of time for ourselves. Most of us have help at home to do house-work. We might have a cook or order-in regularly. We have a chauffeur on hand, either via a cab or a permanent one at our disposal. And yet, with all this saved time, are we any better off?Either it is more work that's crammed in, or "I need to de-stress" and we watch more TV (or whatever it is that we do).
A large part of my thoughts are around us working too much and not having enough time to check if we are on the right track. I am not trying to say “stop and smell the roses”, which is what the previous post was all about. I think what I am trying to say is “stop and take stock” and “What if the way we’ve always done it is wrong"?” and “what if we don’t have to continue doing it this way?”.
But those are much larger and deeper questions that I am not qualified to answer. What I’d like to do though is share the questions I am asking of myself, which has led to some learning and growth over the last 10 months.
how often are you in the moment?
what are you doing when you are eating? brushing your teeth? drinking your tea/coffee?
how many 'work-related activities' have you reduced, as you've taken on more responsibilities?
what have you lost as a result of your progress at work?
and a few more.
is it really possible to be productive for >10 hours a day?
should we be productive at work for >10 hours a day?
should we sacrifice the quality of the time we spend on doing other things?
should we sacrifice the quality of our work?
are hobbies or knowledge or art or whatever it is that we do, for the sake of doing it alone, not worth it?
if we can do the same quality of work in lesser time, should we not?
Fitness is a great keystone habit, and using it, I’ve been able to ask these questions for myself. I am not able to pinpoint if my questioning starts at one place because honestly, it is all a bit of a mess in my head. But I feel my hunch is right i.e. doing more is absolutely not the answer. I am trying to reconcile that with “I am here to do work that only I can do”.
As a kid, I thought “Retire early and play videogames” was the holy grail. I am glad I do not feel that way anymore.
But what I do know is that we can buy more time, to help us solve these deeper issues. And that’s something I am qualified to talk to you about.
By investing time in your health and fitness and nutrition, you will buy more time. On a day-to-day basis, and over the long-term as well.
You will be more productive during the day. You will be mentally alert and able to get more done in less time.
You will fall sick less often.
You will not feel wiped all the time.
Your brain fog will go away.
You will physically be capable of a lot more which will make you feel better, and look better.
Your mind and body will slowly get healthier, and you can literally get younger.
And over the long-term i.e. when we are 70+, you will be in much better physical and mental shape. You will be capable of a lot more every year, including in those years that we associate with disease and being bed-ridden.
You can read the long-form here but I hope you get the idea.
You have a great weekend. And do share ONE post with ONE person.
If you aren’t sure which one, here’s 3 to choose from.
on being called short
