Hey there!
Hope your weekend is going well. As the lockdown in Madras continues and we are caught in the midst of this pandemic for more than a year and some, this weekend is at least showing some semblance of things slowly getting better, at least in the rest of the world. The FA Cup final yesterday had fans back in the stadium, at 25% capacity. My buddy in SF is going camping this weekend. I think I’ll clutch at any semblance of things going back to some normalcy, even though I don’t think the old normal will ever be back. We’ve all changed irrevocably and all that.
Anyhoo, on to the 3 things for this week’s edition.
a fool-proof system for losing weight. Simple. Effective. Click-baity. Doable.
3 quotes, and a highly recommended article to read.
am I advocating that you do nothing else but strength train? That any and all other physical activities are a waste of time? No, not at all. Strength as the foundation is my bias, although founded on solid principles. But I think, if we have the luxury, we should do a wide variety of activities.
a fool-proof system for losing weight
While there are hundreds of reasons why we fail in our dietary goals, one of the most common reasons is eating when you are not hungry. Rather than give you 10 more rules and constraints and hoops to jump through, I am going to give you one simple and fool-proof system.
Eat 3 meals a day.
It can be 2 meals and a snack, sure.
If you are walking around and you open the fridge and pop in a walnut, that counts as one. Meaning - don't do that.
Whatever you are going to eat, make it a part of your meal. A part of your plate.
3 meals a day. Nothing between meals. Nothing outside of meals. Nothing before or after meals. If you are eating it, it happens in that thirty-minute window that you are eating.
Try it out for a week and get back to me. Oh, don't forget to measure yourself today and after one week.
It is so simple and powerful that you are going to ignore it. It is okay. You'll eventually try many other things and come back to this.
The system will wait for you, for when you are ready.
3 quotes for this week
You can’t heal a sick culture with personal bandages. We still live in a world that normalizes physical health challenges but stigmatizes mental health challenges. As we head into a new post-pandemic reality, it’s time to rethink our understanding of mental health and well-being. “Not depressed” doesn’t mean you’re not struggling. “Not burned out” doesn’t mean you’re fired up. By acknowledging that so many of us are languishing, we can start giving voice to quiet despair and lighting a path out of the void.
– Adam Grant, from this wonderful article.
Learning to name an emotion is powerful. Learning to not run away from negative emotions is empowering. I think it is time we all had the courage to be fine with things not being okay all the time. We don't need to portray that everything's well, especially at a time like this.
This post helped me label an emotion. It struck a chord because it helps when I locate things on a spectrum. It is not just black/white.
What's amiss I'll stop to mend, and endure what can't be mended.
– Bruce Lee
Simple. Powerful. As always.
Practice, and during practice, allow yourself to make mistakes. Give yourself a mental high-five when you do well. And when you make a mistake, let it go.Not all reps will be good reps. And that's okay.
– ummm, me
This is something I tell myself when I train. I used to (and sometimes habitually still do) go Tsk! Tsk! whenever I wasn't entirely happy with my rep. Or shake my head. My gut tells me that is not useful. So, I came up with an antidote for that, and well, I thought I'd share it.
do we strength train to the exclusion of everything else?
spoiler: no
Is strength training the only thing that you should do? To the exclusion of everything else?
Well, no.
Will it fix all of your life's woes? Will it give you fat loss and six-pack abs? And throw in a great personality and a winning smile?
Hmmm.
what it does
Strength training is the base. That's my bias. While this might have a lot to do with me growing up weak and skinny and small, I still think strength as a universal base, a foundation to build on top of makes sense for all of us.
Strength has a huge carryover effect on a lot of other attributes. Let's take endurance, for example. Having more strength in your muscles means your muscles can do more work. This can range from doing a lot more work briefly or translate that into doing a little bit of work for a lot of time, and everything in between. A bigger engine in your car, so to speak. Power and speed are directly related to strength. Proper training movements will ensure that your mobility i.e. full and proper range of motion for the joints is taken care of. An ass-to-grass goblet squat with a reasonable load means a whole lot of things are going right.
It helps you build muscles (I don't mean getting big and bulky, although that's possible as well). It can aid fat loss, for a combination of reasons. From being able to do more work (coz you are stronger), and having more muscle (meaning a shift in your metabolism and energy requirements).
But it is not a magic answer that you do to the exclusion of everything else. In fact, I think that applies to most modalities of training.
a positive feedback loop
Let's say you practice martial art. Practice will get you stronger. You might get gassed out in 5 minutes but practicing the skill slowly will improve your endurance and conditioning. In a few weeks or months, you will be able to go for much longer.
You might NOT need to complement it with your strength training. But if you do, it will have a great carryover effect. Think about it. Putting more force into a punch, besides the timing and skill and balance, comes down to how much strength you have. And that's a specific part you can work on and improve.
Likewise, with running. If you want to run longer or run faster, the more work your muscles are capable of doing, the better. Teach yourself the squat and the deadlift, and your newfound capabilities will have positive feedback on your running speed and skills.
the base of the puzzle
Strength training is the base of the puzzle. Of the available options, it makes the most sense to have as the foundation. After you get past the initial stages, if it is your wish, you can move to a rather minimalist approach to strength training. It can be one component of what you do. For example,
2 days of strength work
1 day of yoga
2 days of cardio (run, play badminton, walk, dance, etc.)
2 days of rest and recovery
The larger things to keep in mind are to ensure that
you don't have pain.
your range of motion around the joints is full and not compromised.
you have a flexibility routine aka stretch regularly.
you eat well.
you drink enough water.
you take care of stress.
This might mean that your wellness routine is a combination of proper strength work, yoga or Animal Flow or Original Strength, etc., a cardiovascular routine that might be separate or in-built into your other activities, breathing and/or meditation practices, proper focus on your nutrition, working on your stress by having a creative outlet and spending time with your friends and family and by yourself.
Strength is the base for taking care of your physical and mental health. You can extract a lot from it but a more holistic outlook is needed.
But if you have time to do only one thing, don't fret. If you haven't figured out what that is, my obvious vote is for strength training. But if you are already doing one thing - yoga/running etc. - and don't have the bandwidth to add more and worry about this holistic nonsense, ignore it. You are already doing a lot of things right, just keep going down your path.
As long as you are keeping in mind the bigger picture - it should add more to your life than it takes.
Thanks for reading/listening! I’ll see you here next week. Stay safe!
