Disclaimer: I am not the world’s healthiest person nor am I the most knowledgeable on the matters of the human body. But, I am learning more and more every day and enjoy sharing my growing knowledge and its practice that has become a part of my life, especially making me reach new realizations in this past month.
- Strength training makes you feel like a superhero.
Using your own body weight to train is hard enough, add a couple of dumbbells or if you are more ambitious, barbells, and you will know what a superhero feels like. I can attest to that. Yes, you might fail ( I still can’t do burpees) Yes, you might be sore in places that you didn’t even know muscle existed (hello, little muscle on the small of my back). Yes, you might also give up after a certain number of tries (I certainly have laid down for a good 20 mins after just 5 crunches). But, whether it is 2 reps or 20, once you complete what you had set out to achieve, you will feel like the strongest person alive. Soon, you will place your goals higher and higher focussing on doing the exercise in the best form possible. Soon, you will notice how your strength can be seen in your daily life like being able to carry more groceries or open a stubborn jar no one can. Soon, you will feel invincible and whether you get any physical benefits or not (which you will) the self-esteem boost it gives you will be enough for you to make it a part of your lifestyle.
- You can rewire yourself to crave wholesome foods.
Cravings are always for something bad, or so we think. But newsflash, that is SO NOT TRUE. Ever noticed how on bad days you tend to carve things that remind you of happier days like your mother’s cooking or the restaurant you went to as a kid. I have often craved the food that made me remember my childhood or my times with friends and if they were mostly junk, I did crave junk. But, for a while now I have intentionally been eating a lot of fresh fruit, vegetables, multi-grans and superfoods and when I savoured those moments remembering them for the happiness they bought me, I craved those wholesome foods on those off-days. I therefore found a way to re-wire my brain. It is very simple and may be simplistic in its theory but it works for me and there is no reason it shouldn’t for others too. I am now constantly devising ways to make these moments of eating delicious nutritious food as memorable as they possibly can and enjoying the benefits of those healthy cravings.
- Running can not only make you fitter but smarter too.
When I started running, listening to anything other than music was unthinkable to me. I needed that push of the fast beats, the peppy lyrics and the imagination that went with it just so that I could get through a run. Over time though, I felt myself running out of new songs to listen to every week to keep that pep in my step. So, one day I switched over to audio books and boy what a difference it did make. I could run and listen to a book syncing my pace to the pace of the author’s voice and focussing on what he or she was saying instead of on the fact that my entire body was dying a slow death. I could constantly have new content and never get bored. I could finish 1 book per week listening to it and I could get fitter week by week as well. Who says we can’t have it all?
A Life UNDER CONSTRUCTION! 