Inside out approach to health & fitness
On how a mindset shift can be a game changer in your journey
“So you had a wake up call with regards to your health & fitness - maybe you began to pant after taking a flight of stairs or your blood test report showed a high LDL or you realized you couldn't fit into your clothes & need to shop for a size larger. Whatever the episode, it made you sit up & take stock of your situation. And you didn't like what you saw.
You frantically started to look for ways to “fix yourself”. You carried with you all the shame of ignoring your health & fitness and wanted to quickly move on to a place where you could just be happy with yourself.
You found a coach to help you, got a diet plan and an exercise plan. And made a resolve to stick to the plan and change yourself into a healthier, fit and better version of yourself.
You detested each day of your training and being on a "diet" felt terrible. But in your mind, you knew you got to suck it up. After all it's the results that count.
Sticking to the plan you saw results. Your transformation story got ready. The before and the after for everyone to see. Those who saw you asked you the secret to your weight loss & good looks. Thankfully they could only see how you looked and not how you felt. Which was anything but happy.
And now the truth of having to live this way your entire life in order to sustain the results began to dawn on you. 2 options opened out - either suck it up & live that way for the rest of your life, feeling unhappy within or fall back on your old ways of being.”
Sounds familiar?
Maybe yes. Maybe no. Either way, I invite you to join me in introspecting the above scenario and exploring a bunch of "what ifs” along the way.
Current Mindset:
In the above scenario the dominant emotion is that of "fear, shame & lack" :
Fear of perhaps getting a disease
Lack of acceptance
Lack of love & appreciation for the body
Shame for having neglected the body
When we operate from a place of fear, shame or lack, the result is often devoid of joy and happiness.
Now, let's explore an alternative mindset. Instead of "fear, shame & lack", what if you decided to:
1. Forgive yourself for what you did or did not do, dropped the shame & instead recognised what a blessing it was to finally become health conscious?
2. What if, you decided to honour your past and respect your body for having come this far and for serving you to the best of its ability inspite of you not caring for it well enough?
3. What if, you decided to change your intention from trying to "fix your body" & changing it into some imaginary idea of a perfect body to giving your body "the love, care & nourishment" that you denied it all the previous years?
What do you think the impact of this altered mindset will be on your health and fitness journey?
A few things might happen:
A. You may adhere to the plan/listen to your coach of your own accord without having to suck it up as you now know that the steps you are taking are a way of offering nourishment and care for your body.
B. You may cease viewing exercise as a punishment and food as something to be feared.
C. You may beat yourself up less and favour steady progress over drastic transformation.
D. You may learn to be more gentle with yourself and give yourself the permission to rest and take a break when you feel the need.
As a result your journey to better health and fitness will have a lot more ease & the likelihood of you finding joy on the path & sticking to it will be high.
You may say, “All this is great, but what if I don't feel this way? What if I actually feel terrible about my current state?”
I hear you.
In that case, first acknowledge it. Change always begins with awareness.
Next tap into that "loving mindset" by perhaps trying the following practices:
1. Evoke a sense of awe for the body:
I came across this excerpt in a book by Sharon Salzberg that I am currently reading. It touched me deeply. I read it over and over. I even read it out loud. And I have half a mind to memorize it. The excerpt is on “appreciating our aliveness” and it reads:
“We get only one body in this life, the one we are each endowed with right this moment. Please begin by giving yours the respect it deserves. Did you realise every atom in it is 14.5 billion years old? All bodies are part of matter, created at the big bang, 10 billion years before the earth appeared. Yes, your overall body is composed of about 7 octillion venerable atoms (that's a 7 with twenty-seven zeroes after it), mostly produced by exploding stars. You are literally Stardust; so is everything around you.
The water in this body seems to flow into your mouth from a fountain or a glass, then out again through pores and orifices. But like all the waters of the earth, no one knows where it came from. Perhaps a comet's tail, it's said. And if you have gold fillings, your teeth carry a share of all the gold that exists in the universe, for the number of gold molecules is finite.
Your body is not just mineral and elemental. No, it's vividly alive, as anyone knows who's ever danced, had a sore throat, made love, or stubbed a toe.
Try to sense the skin around your body. Feel how alive it is! For this, you can thank a single-celled creature. All the baroque variety of life on earth is considered to come from a common tiny ancestor who appeared about 4 billion years ago (again, no one knows quite how). And still today, on a cellular level, basic functions like respiration look similar in plants and animals. So does our DNA - we humans share about half our genetic information with plants. We truly aren't very far away from anything.
Our salty blood remembers oceanic origins, the structure of our spines and ribs was first developed by fish. Population geneticists agree that all of us are literally one human family. What would our world be like if everyone acted on this truth?
Yet as connected as we are, there is astonishing diversity even within being human. Each person is utterly distinct. Our fingerprints, toe prints, and tongue prints will never be reproduced.
But surely it is the brain that is our most fabulous body part. Scientists believe the human brain is the most complex object in the universe, capable of making one hundred trillion neural connections. Lay all your neurons end to end, and they'll reach to the moon and back. Awake, asleep or dreaming, your brain is active night and day, a magic lantern. It's neurons interact in constantly shifting patterns of electrical energy and are deeply attuned to others and the outside world. Not only that, but your brain is capable of self awareness.
Brain and body are inseparable collaborators, producing the symphony that fully absorbs us. This is the wonder of a life. How amazing that we can be amazed.”
After reading that I couldn't help but feel like I owe it to myself to take good care of my body which is nothing short of a miracle. I hope this reflection of ‘our aliveness’ touched you just as deeply as it touched me.
2. Gratitude Journal:
Write down 2 things to be grateful for towards your body. It could be something as simple as gratitude to your arms for helping you carry stuff or to your legs to get you moving. Do it everyday.
Consistency in a practice is what brings change. And with this Journaling you are making an attempt to change your perspective from the inside. You will need to trust the process and do the daily work.
3. Care for yourself as you would a loved one:
Each day ask yourself in what ways you will show ‘love & care' for your body. Asking yourself this question is a deliberate way of awakening health consciousness within you. Allow the answers to come. And choose to act on them as only actions bring result.
4. Think of yourself as an integrated unit - body, mind and emotions & not just body:
Oftentimes in our rush to change our bodies we may ignore it's messages for rest or may fail to ask ourselves how we feel about our methods.
We ‘DON'T’ need to “suck it up for results sake”. Believe that you ‘CAN' find ease and joy in your journey to better health and fitness.
To give a personal example, it had been a struggle for me to add more vegetables into my diet until I learnt how to make them more palatable for myself. Over the years, I have figured several new ways of consuming them that feels good. I no longer “have to eat them”. I “get to eat them” - just the way I like.
Treating yourself as a unique individual & honoring your tastes, be it in food or exercise will serve you well in the long run.
Does all of this mean that when we love our bodies this way we will always do the right thing? Eat the right foods, drink the right amount of water, get the exact amount of sleep and never indulge?
NO.
It just means that we will begin to make better choices, more often. That’s all.
It's my belief that when we truly evoke that feeling of love for our bodies we may allow ourselves to indulge but it will become impossible to go overboard with our indulgence.
In the coming weeks and months, I invite you to explore this mindset and notice if it changes your approach to the way you nourish yourself and live your life. Do write back to share your experience.
Very well articulated. Amazed at the facts of our body! Especially the body which fight against the diseases - feeling grateful to be up and running again.
Very well articulated. Amazed at the facts of our body! Especially the body which fight against the diseases - feeling grateful to be up and running again.