Exercising for Weight Loss - The Golden Rules

One of the greatest scourges of urban society in the 21st century is the desire for instant gratification. After just one day of going on a weight-loss program, we get onto a weighing scale and start judging whether the programme works or not. Not surprisingly, many weight loss programs strive to show you results the next day or even the next hour, ignoring the long term consequences to your health. They are merely trying to give you what you want.

Most people begin an exercise program designed for weight loss with the intention of sticking with it. Unfortunately, statistics show that the majority give up after a month or six weeks, having decided that the program does not work for them.

There are usually two reasons behind this decision. Individuals claiming, "they don't have the time" are often hiding the real reason, that their expectations were not met. When there is a conflict between the results you expect from exercise, and what you actually get, it is easy to predict what happens next. In my years of dealing with clients I have had the pleasure of coming across some brilliant excuses for not exercising. “My trainer ran away with my wife” and “My astrologer told me I had started at an inauspicious time” come readily to mind.

( Ref: http://www.snappreviewcentre.com/)

Most experienced exercise scientists agree that the best weight loss results are achieved by a combination of appropriate diet, aerobic exercise and resistance training, but there is a time tested aspect of weight loss that most of us never learn or are never told by our trainers or doctors.

The ancient texts on Qigong place a large emphasis on the “Three Treasures”, namely posture, breathing and awareness. This is a pre-requisite for any program which enhances health, including weight loss and weight gain. Similarly in Yoga, we have the first two steps of authentic yoga practice, which are called “yama” and “niyama”. Loosely translated, they mean observances and restraints. Needless to say, the prime mover for these exercise routines is not the body, but the mind. The development of this key quality of Mindfulness brings us to Golden Rule 1.

Golden Rule 1 : Permanent normalisation of weight is directly related to gain in awareness.

The first thing is to become aware of posture, breath, thoughts and lifestyle choices we make daily. Work on building a habit of holding yourself tall and breathing deep but without straining. Do this for a few minutes every time you remember, during the day. This awareness can be enhanced through gentle, slow, mindful yoga or tai chi.

You will find that with increased awareness, blood oxygenation levels go up, depression and toxin levels receed, metabolic rate rises, blood pressure and other chronic conditions stabilise. To top it all, aches and pains are less, stress levels are better and it is easier to handle changes in dietary and other habits. Sleep improves and the body starts becoming more energy efficient. All these are critical to start the weight loss process stress-free.

The second thing to be aware of is the fact that your weight loss goals may be unrealistic. Many people starting an exercise program are told they can expect to lose around two pounds of fat each week. Some people do. But a lot of people don’t. All traditional medicine systems treat each individual differently for chronic disorders(obesity is one of them), rather than follow statistical data and thumb rules. I would recommend a similar approach, rather than running after the latest fad diet or celebrity workout.

Let us try to list what our objectives are for losing weight. For most people they may be

1. Looking good
2. Feeling better and younger
3. Having more energy
4. A better sex life
5. Freedom from chronic diseases and disability

So what’s wrong with losing weight fast?

Rapid weight loss usually involves different types of losses which most people are unaware about. You can end up losing not only fat, but also body fluids, muscle, minerals, vitamins, bone density. If this happens, you will not achieve any of the objectives above.

A healthy programme would obviously be one where you lose mostly fat, replenish fluids, vitamins and minerals, and build muscle and bone density. The problem is that gain in muscle mass and bone density makes the weight loss seem less spectacular on the weighing scale. The body mass composition, however, does change. This means you may see positive changes in shape and strength, but less than expected change in weight, say over a 6 week period. This simple logic brings us to the next golden rule.

Golden Rule 2 : Long term sustainability is better than short term results.

Sustainability is important for many reasons. You must lose fat slow enough to regain health. Your body is “structured” with its current percentage of fat. It may take anything between 6 months to a year before it stabilises at a new, healthier fat percentage. Till then the fat will keep pushing to come back. It is the body’s way of preserving itself. Pushing hard from day one to get rid of fat either through crash diets, intensive exercise or both will only build resistance in mind and body. When exhaustion, frustration or low motivation sets in, many end up gaining back the lost weight and more, in a very short time. So start exercising only as much as you can comfortably manage when you are at your busiest! Even 10 minutes is good for a start provided it is mindful. Never allow exercise to add to your stress! If we exercise with too many unrealistic expectations, exercise becomes a stressor rather than a stress buster. Compared to the widely marketed “quick-fix lifestyle”, psychotherapists recommend a different approach, which I will put down as golden rule 3.

Golden Rule 3: Avoid the “All or Nothing” mindset.

“All or nothing” means either we lose 2 lbs as promised per week or else the program is a flop. It means if we wake up 15 minutes late for a morning workout, we curse and go back to sleep. It means if I eat some extra dessert because I got carried away, then I give up for good on the diet I am trying to follow.

This mindset is a way of punishing ourselves for the slip-ups we commit. Every time we follow this mindset, the compliance with any program is short-lived, because it triggers frustration, anger, disappointment and hence stress. When the body finds itself under stress and depleted of energy, its first instinct is to accumulate fat as an extra energy source.

Avoiding this mindset means we correct our errors, forgive ourselves and continue forward. It means we may be late by mistake so we exercise for less time today, becoming aware of what caused the error and how we can avoid the trap tomorrow. If we “exercise” kindness and mindfulness to ourselves, it will help us realise golden rule 4.

Golden Rule 4: Progressively develop an exercise plan which depends on only one factor, YOU.

It is now fairly well established that nutrition forms the most critical component of any weight loss programme. In various studies done over the past 3 decades, it was seen that the contribution of nutrition to weight loss was almost 70% with a healthy mix of aerobic and weight training contributing to the rest. However, in the maintenance phase of the body’s healthy weight, the importance of both aerobic and resistance training went up dramatically.

Western medicine tells us that the risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease, intestinal and prostrate disorders all get enhanced when the extra weight is put on around the midriff, what we call abdominal fat. Abdominal fat is your “very-easy-to-identify” wake up call. It means your body is not coping well with your lifestyle.

Your waistline is your wake-up call (http://www.carllewisfitness.com/)

Instead of stressing your body more by doing 100 crunches a day ( several programs recommend this!) it is necessary to slow down and become mindful of what you eat and what you do to rob your body of exercise and rest eg. taking the elevator every time instead of the stairs or partying / watching late night TV frequently and robbing yourself of sleep.

A simple aerobic activity like brisk walking is a great starting point. Not only does it contribute to weight loss, but it activates the circulation, oxygenation and hormone generation like no other, while being gentle on your joints and strengthening bones and muscles. Low intensity brisk walking is known to metabolise fat better than higher intensity running. Walk quick enough so that your heart rate rises to the following value:

• Number of heartbeats per 10 seconds = (220 – age in years) / 10
  

Try to hold this heart rate for a minimum of 10-12 minutes at a time before you take rest, and then repeat the cycle till you complete 30 minutes.If you feel breathless before this heart rate is reached, walk as quick as you feel comfortable and take frequent breaks. These are approximate guidelines.

Martial art movements are by far the best advanced aerobic workouts to enhance physical and mental performance. Combining this with the sun salutations will take your energy levels and mental poise to a new high. Spend one or two days in a week with one exercise form and then another. Do them with your kids. This will keep alive interest and joy.

Also introduce static postures from yoga ( you can use the same exercises which help sleep as described in the Nov,08 post!) into your routine. Balance asanas are great for toning abdominal muscles, forward bending asanas enhance detoxification and deeper abdominal muscles. If there is back or knee pain, tai chi forms are probably more comfortable initially to release stress and open energy channels.

Forward bending and balance asanas for activating abdominal and core muscles
(Ref: http://www.bodyweightculture.com/)

Once you find that your flexibility, joint stability, posture and breathing has improved, you will already feel lighter. This is a good time to engage in resistance exercises with moderate weights. You can use dumbells which are easily available at any shop. It is advisable to engage a trainer for a while. Ask him or her to teach you correct form and routine rotation. Be sure to start with low weights and high repetitions per set to tone up first, before you go for muscle growth. This will also keep aches and injuries at bay. Supplement with a lot of freehand resistance exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, and half squats, all done slowly. Limit crunches to 20 a day done slowly, without lifting your lower back off the floor and without holding your breath.

Mindfull Exercise for Weight Loss ( http://www.studymatrixart.com/)

Once you lose a few kilos, don’t be afraid to experiment with some sport like tennis or badminton or swimming, because competitive sport keeps your mind sharp and alert. Guard everyday against falling back into our old habits again. Aim for a life where you are independent of your cook, trainer, gym, equipment, city, weather, moods, budgets, preferences and aversions.

Equipment free workout ( Ref: http://www.exercise.about.com,www.nhs.uk/)

Golden Rule 5: The “How” is as important as the “What”.

Our attention is all the time on our weight and “what” we can do. A powerful lesson is to equally focus on “how” we do something. Realise how you eat, react, exercise, evaluate.Try to find a teacher who stresses on the philosophy and science behind the exercise.

Personally, I consider the “how” more crucial than the “what” for a simple reason. People follow thousands of exercise systems all over the world. The joyous, fit, healthy people you meet who are able to maintain themselves well will always teach you a thing or two about “how”, and their advice will be more or less as follows,

“Your obesity is not really around your belly, it is in your mind”.

( Disclaimer: It is advisable to do all the exercises mentioned above under the supervision of an experienced teacher. Consult your doctor before starting any exercise program in case you have a medical condition).

References:

1. Buemann,B., et al.,"Effecst of exercise training on abdominal obesity and related metabolic complications", Sports Medicine, 1996;21;191-212

2. Jahnke,R., "The Healing promise of Qi: Creating extraordinary wellness through qigong and tai chi", Contemporary Books, 2002.

3. Mcguire, MT., et al, "Long term maintenance of weight loss: Do people who lose weight through various weight loss methods use different behaviours to maintain their weight?" International Journal of Obesity, 1998;22;572-577.

4. Iyengar, BKS., "Light on Yoga Sutras of Patanjali", Ramani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, Pune, India, 2007.

Using Exercise to Manifest your Inner Beauty

Coming face to face with beauty is a powerful experience. Seeing a Carl Lewis run a 100m race, watching a beautiful woman walk in through the door, noticing a new blossom on your morning walk route or suddenly coming across an inspiring line in a book – they all touch our lives in different ways. Sometimes, it can be life-changing. Why does this happen? The ancient masters say “beauty” is our essential nature, hence we identify with it easily. We long to manifest it within ourselves, consciously and unconsciously, throughout our lives.

As we grow up, many factors contribute to our believing that we are “ordinary”. The conditioned mind keeps telling us this all the time. But the longing of our Being to unfold our beauty in all its glory does not go away.

One of the more obvious ways of addressing this issue is the quest for superficial beauty. So we focus our attentions on our skin, hair, nails, clothes, footwear, body shape, face, teeth and so on. When this is not enough we cling to beautiful friends, the latest gizmos, jewellery, but the frustration grows because the true inner beauty is still struggling to reveal itself.

No one can dispute that everyone wants to “look better”, but it is also equally true that even more people want to “feel better”. Few things are as striking as a child, adult or old person who radiates health, energy and wears a big smile on his or her face. Most of us identify this as “inner” beauty manifesting as “outer” beauty. Hence we find that wellness and beauty are intimately connected.

Assessing Yourself for Wellness

A simple self-administered wellness test ( Figure 1) will show you which way you need to go.

Figure 1. Wellness Self-Test

Mark the above table, using 1 and 0. For example, if your answer is Yes, mark “1” in the “Yes” column and “0” in the “No” column. Write down the total in the last row. If your total in the “Yes” is above 2, you need to start preventive practice to neutralize health problems while they are minimal. If your total in the “No” column is above 7, then you should spend less time in building energy and more time in learning how to effectively manage and maintain your health.

Understanding Cause and Effect

The very basic principle of computers, that most of us may have heard of, states:

“Garbage IN – Garbage OUT”.

If you feed bad data into your computer, you get erroneous results. Yoga says exactly the same about human beings. If we put into our system negative thoughts, unhealthy food, destructive emotions such as anger and jealousy, we reap bad relationships, excess weight, poor health and low beauty.

The two-pronged antidote that I would suggest is drawn from qi gong and yoga.

1. Make the Three Intentful Corrections : a. Adjust your posture
b. Adjust your breath
c. Adjust your thoughts
2. Improve integration of Head, Heart and Hand.

The method of the three corrections is something we do naturally every day whenever we are uncomfortable. If we are sitting for a long time and our back starts to hurt, we adjust our posture in the chair. If we are tense or we run up a flight of stairs, we stop to take a few deep breaths. If we are faced with an impossible situation, after a while our thoughts move towards acceptance rather than confrontation.

All these reactions are corrective, energizing, but unconscious. If we do the same things intentfully before we experience discomfort, then the energy levels in our system will go on rising, thus improving performance, immunity, and a sense of peace.

Similarly, some of us are in situations where we over stress our minds, emotions, or body. Sometimes it is a combination of all the above, especially if we are in a stressful job, bringing up little children and having relationship issues with our spouse or parents. We are constantly trying to manage on the mind, heart and physical fronts.

These responses of our mind, heart and physical being are again unconscious and constantly trigger the stress hormones in the body. Strengthening and integrating Head (mental), Heart (emotional) and Hand (physical/practical) aspects of ourselves with a regular practice keeps us better focused and calm in the face of the pressures of life.

Practices for the Three Intentful Corrections

This is a practice which you try to make your second nature. Whenever you have a few seconds spare, maybe just before a meal or a meeting, just before you take a call and just after you disconnect, just before you start the car or just after you park it, first thing in the morning or just before you climb into bed, do the following:

Straighten your spine and purposefully relax. Imagine the crown of your skull being gently pulled towards the sky and the base of your spine towards the earth. Visualise your spine lengthening due to this.

As your body cavity increases due to posture correction, feel the body and especially the abdominal cavity fill with breath. Feel the extra oxygen entering your system and traveling to the furthest corners of your body. Hold your breath while reciting in your mind:

“One,one thousand; Two, two thousand; Three, three thousand”

Allow the exhalation to be deep and visualize it taking away all toxic debris from body and mind.

When you breathe out, feel stomach move inwards
When you breathe in, feel stomach move outwards

Purposefully, bring your thoughts to the present. Make a note of how your thoughts are flowing at the present moment. Clear from your mind for the moment all those thoughts that appear in Figure 1 under points 3,4,5,9.

Then continue with whatever you need to do next.

Practices for Integrating Head, Heart and Hand

Before we integrate we need to connect at a deeper level with these three aspects of ourselves.

a) Head : Just like we clean and feed the body everyday, cleanse and nourish the mind. How do we do this? Yoga exercises which focus on balance and inversion are a great way of quickly achieve a mind which is active but calm. Inversion is great for skin and hair.

“Internally active but externally still”

is the principle of these exercises. The balance postures in Figure 2 also dramatically affect your core muscles and hence your body shape.

Figure 2. Balance and Inverted postures

b) Heart : Allow the stagnant emotions to drain away and ingest fresh energy. This is cleansing and nourishing for the heart. Do forward bending exercises to effect release and reverse bending with an open chest for absorbing new energy. Twisting exercises balance the tensions of the left and right sides and allow the spine to settle into a more relaxed position.

“Empty your jug if you want to fill fresh water”

is the common sense principle of these exercises, illustrated in Figure 3. The release of toxins is triggered and emotions, appetite and immunity are improved.

Figure 3. Move along the arrows in any direction your body and mind feels like.

c) Hand: Circulate the energies generated by the above exercises by working multiple muscle groups simultaneously and in concert with your breathing and your awareness. This movement therapy aspect of yoga is grouped together under the various forms of sun salutations. In this case, we focus on

“Incessant action outside but complete stillness inside”

as the guiding principle. Scientific weight training can also be beneficial, provided they maintain the suppleness of the body and cardiovascular capacity. All the above prepare us for the past paced activity of the chaotic external world.

The word yoga essentially means “union” at a spiritual level. At a practical level, it may be interpreted as “integration”. The integration of Head, Heart and Hand is the next step, for which we train ourselves to be observers and “directors”, using sitting and moving meditation.

Sitting meditation is best achieved by progressive training in “Dhyana” (one example is sitting with eyes closed 5 minutes at a time, focusing on a recent event and watching your response to it at the head, heart and hand levels). Moving meditation is best begun with an introduction to Tai chi forms. These forms should be done slowly enough so that your awareness keeps in step with the graceful, relaxed movements, and your breath stays deep and full.

“If any exercise or activity is difficult for you,
Know that patiently mastering it is what is good for you”.

With this mindset, we overcome the blocks to good health in mind, body and spirit.

Once you have engaged in regular practice for about 6 months, revisit the table in Figure 1 once more and prepare to be amazed. This is a good time to choose what next to do with your hair, skin, nails, clothes, etc. which we call the outer aspects of beauty, because your body will be toned and more graceful. You will also make a balanced choice because the mind is peaceful. Your skin may clear up enough for you to avoid harsh chemicals.

Science is uncovering many things about wellness which we have always suspected to be true. The most dramatic find based on studies at Stanford University and University of Utrecht in the Netherlands is that the human body has a capacity to store light in its cells. The capacity to store light is a measure of vitality and can be measured from the light emissions of the skin and breath. Finally, there is direct evidence that inner vitality results in the sparkle in the eyes, the glow on the face and the lustre in the hair and nails.

( Disclaimer: It is advisable to do all the exercises mentioned above under the supervision of an experienced teacher. Consult your doctor before starting any exercise program in case you have a medical condition).


References:

1. Iyengar, G.S., “Yoga in Action for Beginners”, Ramani Iyengar Yoga Institute, Pune, India.
2. Jahnke,R., "The Healing promise of Qi: Creating extraordinary wellness through qigong and tai chi", Contemporary Books, 2002.
3. Tiller, W.A., “The Real World of Modern science, Medicine and Qigong”, Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 22(5), 2002, 352.
4. “Introduction: Biophoton emission, stress and disease”, Journal of Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, December, 1992, vol. 48. www.springerlink.com