How I started living HEALTHY
Now, this is not a blog where I tell you what to eat or which exercises you should do in order to get your dream body. I am here to share my experience of how I started living a healthy life. The concept of health is greatly subjective. For someone, healthy life might getting those toned 6-packs whereas, for someone else, it's being able to lose some weight and get into so-desired fashionable attires. For a few, it can be leaving bad food habits(sugar, alcohol, smoking) and for others, it can start living with a more green environment. It is very hard to define healthy living in general. My definition for “healthy living” is the continuation of healthy food intake and physical workout at least 5days-a-week. It might seem simple and clichè, but trust me, it was not.
If you knew me one year ago, I was all about trying out different foods, especially desserts, and getting stuck to one for months. I once ate Chocolate-Walnut Sandwiches for 2 weeks straight, along with chocolate milkshake. My favorites included Nutella-PeanutButter Sandwiches, PBJs, Tres Leches Sponge Cake, Chocolate Fondue, ChocoLava Cake, and any icecream. Just typing out these names, makes me drool. But its been about a year since I had these delicacies(I ate these few times. ssshhhhhhh!!).
My living healthy journey started out in last year August. I had just switched to a new job in a new city. It took me one month to set up my home and get accustomed to my new office timings. I weighed 75kg and 26.5 BMI back then. The thing is, in my new office, almost everyone were fit and in good shape, which gave me the inferiority complex. Fortunately, I had a few friends in my office who were also new to the city and wanted to get fit. We joined a fitness club starting 1st of August, 2018. And my journey for getting fitter started.
For mental preparations, I read a few blogs and articles, watched videos on youtube about ways of losing weight. And one of the best ways to lose weight, as mentioned in almost all the articles, is Running. Fortunately again, my brother, Rohit Khatana, has a passion for running. He being my motivational guru for running, I started to go for running with him. We have a running track in our fitness club. When I first started running, I could not complete even one single lap of 400m at the pace of 8minutes/km. I would stop running and start walking and start calculating how much more time for completing 1 km total. For about 10 days, I tried running. But there was not much improvement. Now when you first start thinking about losing weight, you want all of it to go away in the first 10 days, or at least see a significant improvement in your body shape. But nothing! I was still the same guy with old big fat belly.
This led me to thinking about my eating habits. Because first advice anyone will give you when you want to lose weight is Start Eating Healthy. So I started researching about healthy food. Almost everything that I was eating up till now, had great long-term health risks. My added sugar intake for a day exceeded what was recommended for a month by dieticians. It grew on me that, simply going out for running or any other physical workout is not gonna help me get fit faster. The famous 80–20 rule applies here. Getting fit is 20 percent Physical workout and 80 percent of it is your eating habits. Realizing I had too much added sugar in my diet. My first step was to reduce the latter. I would read the nutrition values of everything that I used to eat. If I could not find nutrition values for a particular food item, I used to google about its pros and cons. With all this newfound information, I was always way too conscious about what I would put in my body. This went on for about 1–2 months.
Meanwhile, I was seeing benefits from changing my eating habits. I was more active than before, which in turn helped me get regular at the gym. I stopped running on the track, as I was a little embarrassed. I would go to the gym and start my workout with a 15 minute HIIT running. I gotta say, that HIIT running program on the treadmill at the gym helped me get better with my running stance and stamina. After a month, I could run for 2.25 km with my HIIT program at the pace of 7.15minute/km. I spent more than 1 hour after running at the gym. I could see my body fat reducing as my weight reached about 70kg.
Losing those first 5kgs motivated to me stay at my goal of reaching 62kg weight. I was spending enough time at the gym, which left food as the only department with scope. Taking the next step at it, I started using a food nutrition app, myfitnesspal. This was the most helpful and important step in my whole weight loose journey. Using myfitnesspal app, I was taking notes of approximate nutrition values of my daily food ingested. Carbs, Protein, Fat, Calcium, Potassium and essentials vitamins. To my realization, my protein was way too low and carbs way too high. For next 2 months, my aim was to reduce unnecessary carb and fat and increase the protein percentage in food. Then I started reading about the dishes with high protein and less carbs. Every week I would change a few items in my diet and check the progress for that week. I removed Rice and Chapati from my diet, added more grains and green veggies. Eggs and Chicken were one of the main meals in the diet. Major changes were in breakfast, 3 days with milk oats, and other 3 days with ham omelet and English breakfast. At the end of 2 months, my diet had drastic changes in the amount of protein I was consuming in a day. I lost another 6kgs with this new diet change. But this time it was different. I did not just lose weight, I also gained much more muscles. I could feel the change and so could my friends.
For the next 4 months, I could not follow my exact diet and fitness plans as I was traveling a lot for work. I was changing cities almost every week. Even without keeping up with the fitness schedule and diet plans, my body remained the same. No weight gain. No muscle loss. I even lost another 2kgs. It was quite surprising for me, but I guess working out had a permanent effect on my body. One day I was going through an article recommended for me by Google, which had diet plans of actors from SuperHero movies. Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Henry Cavill. To my surprise, their diet plans were almost on the same terms as what I had planned for myself. Oats, Chicken, Eggs, Veggies, etc. It felt nice to know that unknowingly I had been following such a healthy diet which was followed by superheroes. :P #humbleBrag
Coming back from my work, I now have my desired weight. I am at the best version of myself physically. I now started eating chapati and added few more cheat dishes. It’s easier now to maintain the weight. For me getting 6packs was never a dream. I wanted to get fit and lose excess weight, and I did, I am happy with effects. The best part about my whole weight loose journey is that I now have long-lasting healthy eating habits. I go out for running now almost alternate days. I can now run for 5kms at the pace of <6minutes/km without any stopping in between. My next aim is to reach 10km at 6minutes/km.
Please share your experiences of getting fit and healthier lifestyle. Any suggestions or thoughts, let me know:
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