Take control of your fitness

Its been sometime since I wrote a blog post. With this post I bring to you three major components that impacts your fitness and how can you really control your fitness.

So now lets look at what they are!

1) Exercise\Workout

2) Diet\Food\Nutrition

3) Sleep

Now as we look at the these 3 aspects, they form the base of your true fitness. You must wonder whats new about these, most of you might know this. What I want to draw your attention towards is how you can control these to your benefit.

Lets start with,

1) Physical Exercise or Workout. 

Control percentage 80%, means you have very high control over exercise routine, only thing you dont have voluntary control over is the reaction of your body to the exercise routine.

This aspect of fitness is tangible. You can choose Frequency, Intensity , Time and Type of workout you want or you enjoy doing.

How many times you workout per week. 

Its recommended that you workout at least 3 times a week to maximum 6 times a week.

Intensity with which you perform the workout.

For aerobic workout its suggested that you hit 60-90% of your maximum heart rate and for strength training, its recommended to have 8 to 12 reps at 70-80% of 1 rep max.

Duration of the workout per session.

Session needs to be minimum of 20 mins to optimum 60 mins.

Type of workout, Aerobic , Strength or Flexibility training. 

Its highly recommended to include all three i.e. aerobic, strength and flexibility training in your overall workout schedule.

Based on the workout that you follow, you will have your Aerobic capacity, Muscular strength, Bone density, and Range of Motion(Flexibility) enhanced. This will also determine the calories that you are going to burn. (Very important for weight management)

So this is a voluntary task, and the performing this task is in your control. 

Higher the frequency, intensity and duration of the training, more calories you burn.

Moving on to the second aspect, 

2) Diet\Food and Nutrition. 

Control percentage 70%, you have control over what, when and how much you eat. But you dont have control over how the food was produced(grown\processed) and how your body reacts to certain types of food(it could be allergy or certain aliments or hormonal levels).

This is one of the critical parts of the individual fitness. And this has different impact on each individual. With respect to diet and nutrition there are general guidelines laid for daily nutrition requirement. These requirements define the amount of carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals requited for daily consumption. 

As for choosing workout we also have a choice to decide what, when and how much do we eat. Most of the people who failed to manage their weight have gone wrong here. we often hear from them that in-spite of working out they are not able to loose weight or gain weight.

One of the things that we dont have voluntary control here is what our body does with the food that we eat. By choosing the right type, time and amount of food we can more or less control its effect on our body. 

Items you should include in your diet.

Fresh fruits and vegetables, Milk, Eggs, Whole grains. Replace sugar with honey and Jaggery(Brown sugar) where possible. And limit your total sugar consumption to less that 6 spoons a day.

Things you should limit in your diet.

Refined carbohydrates, desserts, table sugar, deep fired food, any food which is highly process and refined. 

And looking at last and most important and somehow widely ignored aspect of the health is,

3) Sleep

Control percentage 40%, we dont have too much of direct control over the quality of sleep. There are physiological as well as psychological factor that play a very important role.

However we may not have direct control on the quality and quantity of sleep, doing the first two(Exercise and Nutrition) right will help you improve the quality and quantity of sleep. One of the other things that can help you enhance your sleep\rest\recovery is bringing in a fixed schedule in your daily routine. 

Additionally there are multiple relaxation techniques that can help you better your sleep quality. Use dim lights in you bed room and reduce the over all light intensity in your house before bed time. Read some fiction book. Take a warm water bath. Slow down your breathing pace and inhale and exhale deep. Meditate if you can. Listen to some calm non lyrical music.

Avoid coffee\tea 4-6 hours before bed, stop use of any gadgets like mobile, TV etc 1-2 hours before going to bed. Avoid puzzles and brain teasers.

With understanding of the above factors you can gain more control over your health. As I conclude I would want to make a point that all three Exercise, Nutrition and Sleep are very profound scientific topics. This blog contains very generic guidelines and observations which I have drawn from my personal learning and experience.

Hope this helps your take control of your fitness

Dhaval Bhadeshiya

Certified Fitness and Lifestyle coach